A few weeks ago we looked at how Solomon had started the kingdom of Israel on its road towards absolute disaster. He started worshipping pagan idols. And after his descendants split the Kingdom into two (Israel in the North and Judah in the South) the majority of the kings fell deeper and deeper into idolatry.
After Solomon, a set of 19 kings and one queen ruled over Judah… of those 20 only 5 were considered good and “right in the eyes of YHWH”. One of those kings was Josiah. So we’re going to look at part of Josiah’s story found in 2 Kings 22:
2 Kings 22:1-2
Josiah was eight years old when he became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem thirty-one years. His mother’s name was Jedidah, daughter of Adaiah; she was from Botskat. And he did what was right in the eyes of YHWH and walked in all the ways of his father David; he did not turn aside to the right or to the left.
If you read through the book of kings you’ll find that this is the typical way they introduce a new king… We find out how old he was when he became king, how long his reign lasted, and who his mother was. In the ancient world, being a mother to a king was way more influential than being a wife. A king could have many wives, but he only had one mother. Mothers of the king were respected and they had a certain amount of influence. Notice how young Josiah was when he became king? He was eight, and so his mother may have had some power behind that young throne. Josiah, this little 8 year old king, would become one of the most faithful kings of YHWH. Let’s read his story…
2 Kings 22:3-7
Now in the eighteenth year of his reign, King Josiah sent the scribe, Shaphan son of Azaliah, the son of Meshullam, to the house of YHWH, saying, “Go up to Hilkiah the high priest and have him count the money that has been brought into the house of YHWH, which the doorkeepers have collected from the people. And let them deliver it into the hands of the supervisors of those doing the work on the house of YHWH, who in turn are to give it to the workmen repairing the damages to the house of YHWH— to the carpenters, builders, and masons—to buy timber and dressed stone to repair the temple. But they need not account for the money put into their hands, since they work with integrity.”
After years of placing the Temple of YHWH low on the list of priorities, Josiah decided to “work on the house of YHWH”… he’s doing renovations and “repairing the damages”. Why suddenly renovate? What caused “the damages”? The two kings before Josiah were Amon and Manasseh. Manasseh reigned for 55 years, Amon for 2. They were not good kings.
Manasseh, Josiah’s grandfather, was probably the worst. He was the one who desecrated the Temple with idols to foreign gods and he instituted the practice of child sacrifice. Horrific stuff.
Josiah “repaired the damages”. Did his mother Jedidah encourage him to renovate and repair the Temple? I like to think she may have had something to do with this. Josiah’s father Amon, and his grandfather Manasseh, rejected YHWH, so he didn’t get his piety from them. They were polytheistic followers of the gods of the nations. During their reigns, Jerusalem may have had the Temple of YHWH, but they helped build shrines to a wide variety of pagan gods, including Baal, Molech, Chemosh, and the goddess Asherah, to name a few. We’ll take a look at some of those characters next week.
But why did Josiah suddenly decide to renovate? We don’t know… but it’s a good thing he did, because something incredible happened. During renovations, lo and behold, they found a long lost artifact…
2 Kings 22:8-9
Then Hilkiah the high priest said to Shaphan the scribe, “I have found the Book of the Law in the house of YHWH!” And he gave it to Shaphan, who read it. And Shaphan the scribe went to the king and reported, “Your servants have paid out the money that was found in the temple and have put it into the hands of the workers and supervisors of the house of YHWH.” Moreover, Shaphan the scribe told the king, “Hilkiah the priest has given me a book.” And Shaphan read it in the presence of the king.
What is “The Book of the Law”? First of all, don’t think of a book like the kind we have. Bound books wouldn’t come along for quite a few centuries. In Josiah’s day a “book” was a scroll. In Hebrew the Book of the Law, or Scroll of the Law is Sefer ha-Torah… Sefer meaning book. Ha meaning “the”. And Torah meaning “law”.… The Torah Book. The Law Book. Traditionally, the Torah is the first 5 books of our Bibles: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy. It covers the Creation account, the stories of the Patriarchs and Matriarchs of the Jewish faith, the history of the peoples of Israel, their rescue story out of Egypt, and their claim to their ancestral land, given by God. The Torah set the foundation for all the events to come and placed YHWH at the center of life and the living.
The Torah is the treasure that binds the people to their Creator through story and wisdom. It’s an incredible gift. But it had been lost and forgotten for many many years. If it had been lost since the time of Solomon, that would be 300 years!
Now just so you know… scholars argue that maybe it wasn’t the whole Torah, maybe it was just one of the books. Many think that it was just the Deuteronomy scroll that was discovered. We don’t know for sure.
What we do know is that they had lost the Word of God in the House of God. Through apathy and indifference they let the Word of God slip away into oblivion right under their noses… until Hilkiah the priest rediscovered it.
So Shaphan the Scribe read the whole thing to Josiah, king of Judah, and then we read:
2 Kings 22:11
When the king heard the words of the Book of the Law, he tore his clothes.
When do people tear their clothes in the Bible? When they feel great grief. David tore his clothes when he heard that his best friend, Jonathan, died. David also tore his clothes when he heard the false rumour that Absalom, his rebellious son, had killed all his other sons (he didn’t, by the way; he only killed David’s oldest son and heir, Amnon, who had raped his sister, Tamar… but that’s a whole other story). All this to say… you tear your clothes when you feel great grief. Josiah felt great grief because he realized that for, potentially, centuries they had become so disconnected to YHWH, their God, that they had lost the Sacred Scriptures and, as a result, they had also lost their connection to YHWH.
2 Kings 22:12-13
…and [so Josiah] commanded Hilkiah the priest, Ahikam son of Shaphan, Achbor son of Micaiah, Shaphan the scribe, and Asaiah the servant of the king: “Go and inquire of YHWH for me, for the people, and for all Judah concerning the words in this book that has been found. For great is the wrath of YHWH that burns against us because our fathers have not obeyed the words of this book by doing all that is written about us.”
Let’s think about this. It had been about 300 years since Solomon introduced idolatry into the kingdom of Israel. That’s 300 years of idol worship! Somewhere along the line they got so far into the pagan weeds that they stopped reading the sacred Torah scrolls. When you stop reading any book it tends to get placed somewhere and forgotten… be it a bookshelf, piled in the corner, or tossed under the bed. The Torah, the sacred Temple scrolls, were just tucked away somewhere in the House of God and forgotten… for, potentially, centuries. Now maybe this sounds weird to you. How would they forget the Bible? Think about it this way. The time difference from when David was king, treasuring the Torah, and when Josiah was king was about 350 years. For us, that would be like a book written in 1676. It’s not so hard to imagine that a book that old could get lost to time, forgotten, unopened and untouched for maybe up to 300 years. I have a book right here… published in 1746. Once it was probably someone’s treasure, now it’s in my hands… discarded from the library, awaiting its fate on my bookshelf, where, honestly, it has been gathering dust.
The Torah was a dusty old lost sacred scroll but now it had been rediscovered by Hilkiah the high priest during Temple renovations. This was BIG news!
And so after the discovery of these sacred writings, Josiah was moved to reclaim their allegiance to YHWH and he called on his closest advisors to seek out God’s message for them. He told them to “go and inquire of YHWH” about this text Hilkiah discovered, and to do that, everyone knew that they had to speak to a Prophet who was, in their eyes, the person most connected to YHWH.
Now, Josiah had a very famous prophet in his court… a young prophet named Jeremiah. But when the men went out to seek God’s message, they didn’t go to Jeremiah… they went to a different prophet:
2 Kings 22:14-20
So Hilkiah the priest, Ahikam, Achbor, Shaphan, and Asaiah went and spoke to Huldah the prophetess, the wife of Shallum son of Tikvah, the son of Harhas, the keeper of the wardrobe. She lived in Jerusalem, in the Second District. And Huldah said to them, “This is what YHWH, the God of Israel, says: ‘Tell the man who sent you that this is what YHWH says: I am about to bring calamity on this place and on its people, according to all the words of the book that the king of Judah has read, because they have forsaken Me and burned incense to other gods, that they might provoke Me to anger with all the works of their hands. My wrath will be kindled against this place and will not be quenched.’
But as for the king of Judah, who sent you to inquire of YHWH, tell him that this is what YHWH, the God of Israel, says: ‘As for the words that you heard, because your heart was tender and you humbled yourself before YHWH when you heard what I spoke against this place and against its people, that they would become a desolation and a curse, and because you have torn your clothes and wept before Me, I have heard you,’ declares YHWH. ‘Therefore I will indeed gather you to your fathers, and you will be gathered to your grave in peace. Your eyes will not see all the calamity that I will bring on this place.’”
So they brought her answer back to the king.
Who was Huldah? A prophetess in Jerusalem. When the king essentially said, find out if this is God’s message”, Huldah was who they went to immediately.
They had no qualms about going to a woman, which indicates that women prophets were not uncommon or unexpected or, in any way, shocking. There were other female prophets: Deborah, Miriam, and Noediah. In the New Testament, Anna was a prophet and we are told that Philip, one of Jesus’ disciples, had four daughters who were Prophets. What seems extraordinary, to our ears, is that the priests didn’t hesitate. When choosing to hear from God, through a prophet, they immediately chose Huldah. They could have gone to Jeremiah, but they didn’t. They immediately went to Huldah. Huldah would know what to do. Huldah would give them God’s message. And she did.
She was straight up with them… all the words you have read in the book are true. You will suffer for all the idolatry you brought upon yourselves. What the Bible declared will happen.
Huldah confirmed with them that the book they found was, indeed, the Word of God and the fall fo Jerusalem was coming. But Josiah, due to his tender heart and genuine grief, would be spared from experiencing the tragedy.
By the way, Huldah was the first person in the Bible to authenticate a written text as the Word of God. This old dusty scroll that Hilkiah found during the renovations… Huldah declared it was the word of God. Huldah canonized it as scripture!
And so the five men (Hilkiah the Priest, Shaphan the Scribe, Asaiah servant of the king, Ahikam, and Achbor) returned to Josiah with the news. That book that was found was, indeed, the Word of God. Next week we’ll look at the next chapter and see what Josiah did, once he heard Huldah’s prophecy.
But this chapter we’re in today is remarkable. It paints such an interesting picture… renovations in the neglected Temple and the discovery of an old dusty scroll, which turned out to be the greatest treasure of our faith. How cool is this story! But it’s more than a story, it’s scripture, and it teaches a valuable lesson.
The lesson is this… How easy is it to detach ourselves from our connection to God? Quite easy. If you stop studying Scripture, you’ll lose it. You’ll place it on an old shelf and forget about it. Where is your Bible? On your bedside table? On a dusty shelf? Packed away in a box? Do you even know where it is? Can you picture it sitting in your home right now? Maybe you have it with you here? (Gold Star if you do!) Or maybe all you can say is, “it’s somewhere in my house, but I’m not sure exactly where”. This is how the Torah got lost. Someone forgot its value, placed it somewhere, and let the dust build up so it became a forgotten object lost to the ravages of time… Don’t let that happen to your Bible! You’re supposed to devour it… every day. What did the prophet, Jeremiah, say?…
Jeremiah 15:16
Your words were found, and I ate them. Your words became my joy and my heart’s delight. For I bear Your name, O YHWH God of Hosts.
Note that Jeremiah says, “Your words were found.” Jeremiah was very likely around when the scroll was discovered!
The Words of God were lost IN the House of God. Think about that. That’s significant. Today there is no temple anymore… Why? Because when Jesus came He announced that our bodies were now the Temple. God’s Spirit resides in us, and so the Word of God needs to reside there as well. We need to ingest the Word of God… live it, breathe it, devour it daily, so that we don’t lose the Word of God in the House of God… inside of us… in our hearts.
During the reign of Josiah, Jeremiah was a young prophet… and there have been some interesting discoveries around the Temple Mount in Jerusalem associated with Jeremiah and Josiah. We’re going to watch a video… as you listen, pay attention to two names that we just read about: Hilkiah the Priest (who found the lost scroll) and Shaphan the Scribe, (who read the long lost book to Josiah)…
Archaeology Confirms 5+ men: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQJ7RKxtIhY
More bullae is a story for another day… but I will add one more. Just last year a bullae was discovered bearing the inscription, “Belonging to Yediyah, son of Asaiah”. Twenty years earlier a bullae was found with the inscription, “Asaiah, servant of the king”… These two Asaiah’s are very likely the same person… and we can find this person in the passages we read earlier, along with Hilkiah the priest and Shaphan the scribe:
2 Kings 22:12-13
…and [so Josiah] commanded Hilkiah the priest, Ahikam son of Shaphan, Achbor son of Micaiah, Shaphan the scribe, and Asaiah the servant of the king: “Go and inquire of YHWH for me…”
These were the five men who went to Huldah, took heed of her voice, and brought her message back to the king. Archaeology proves that these men existed.
The Bible is not a fairy tale. These are real people, living very real lives, trying to find their way back to God through the rediscovery of Scripture.
YOU are also real people, living real lives… and maybe someday something of yours will be found in an archaeological excavation… maybe they’ll find your Bible in the dust. I hope not. I hope that you love your Bible so much that it starts to fall apart long before you leave this world. So, this week I implore you… pick up your Bibles! It’s time to rediscover Scripture. Don’t lose the Word of God in the House of God… which is you, because your body is God’s temple!
And btw, you might be surprised that a library employee is saying this, but I honestly don’t care if it’s a book or a phone app. Whatever version of the Bible you’re willing to read, is the right one for you. If you’re at work and you’re on your lunch break and you have time to scroll on your phone, then you have time to read the Bible. Dive in! Let me know what you’re reading… what jumps out at you… and PLEASE, ask the preaching/teaching team questions! Kent, Roger, Ed, myself… use us as a resource !
We are supposed to be your go-to-guides to understand this big, bold and sometimes super-weird thing we call Scriptures. Use us! Make us work for our pay. Just a thought, would people be interested in having a box where you could drop your Bible questions? If that’s something you’d like us to do, let us know.
Listen, I just want you to feel passionate about the Word of God… and I’ll do whatever it takes to make you want to pick the thing up.
Jesus, when he was chastising the pharisees and scribes, said:
Mark 7:8
“You have disregarded the commandment of God to keep the tradition of men.”
Don’t disregard your Bible. Don’t set it aside and forget about it. Don’t make all your little daily routines and traditions more important than the time you set aside for God, because even if you’ve been away from it for what seems like 300 years, it’s not too late to become friends with your Bible once again. It’s never too late!… Don’t lose the Word of God in the House of God!
Amen? Amen.
Next week: Sermon- 2 Kings 23
