The Decline and Fall of the Kingdom of Judah
by Thomas Kelly Cheyne (9781458914156)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III HULDAH THE PROPHETESS AND THE REFORMATION Let us now return to the story in 2 K. xxii. No importance attaches to the fact that Shaphan and not Hilkiah is expressly stated to have read the book that was found. Even if the reformers had taken the trouble to put the law- book into ancient Hebrew script, yet we might fairly assume that priests of high rank would be able to read it, otherwise how could they hand on the old religious traditions, or adapt old laws to the use of a later age ? M. Naville, therefore, has no solid ground for maintaining that Shaphan the scribe read the book to Josiah because he had enjoyed a better literary training than Hilkiah. He read it because it was his function to do so, just as a secretary in our day would naturally read a newly found document to his superior. Whether any one else heard it besides the king, we are not told. But we are informed that as soon as the reading was over (it cannot have taken long), the horrified king sent a deputation, including both Hilkiah and Shaphan, to obtain an oracle from Yahweh. It is evident that some part of the book was of a highly threatening import. Most probably there were solemn curses imprecated upon the people, in the event of its disobedience to certain fundamental laws, and forming a suitable close to the entire law-book. Can this part of the traditional story be altogether historical ? Surely Josiah and his priest must have been at one as to the best means of reforming religion. Surely, too, Josiah must have foreknown and approved the choice of a prophetic adviser made by the deputation (cp. 2 K. xix. 2). The choice fell, not, of course, on Jeremiah, who was out ofsympathy with book-religion, but on the prophetess Huldah. She is described (xxii. 14) as being 'the wife of Shallum, son of...

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