2 Kings 22–23 · An Iconic Story
Josiah Finds the Book
A lost scroll turns up during a building repair, and a king who has already been reforming his country for six years tears his clothes when he hears what is in it. Everything after that comes out of one found book.
The Dutch line printed along the bottom of the sheet reads Josias gesantschap aan de Prophetesse Hulda: II. Regum. XXII.— Josiah's embassy to the prophetess Huldah. That is what you are looking at: the delegation of 2 Kings 22:14 arriving. The high priest stands at the centre in his vestments, an officer in armour behind him, and one of the men is already leaning in with both hands open, asking. On the right, seated on the step with scrolls beside her, is Huldah, mid-sentence, one hand raised. She is one of the least painted named prophets in Scripture, and this small engraving gives her the whole right side of the plate.
A Scroll Turns Up During a Building Repair
2 Kings 22–23, told plainly
Josiah became king at eight years old. By his eighteenth year on the throne he was having the temple repaired: money counted out to carpenters and builders and masons, the ordinary business of a building project. And in the middle of it the high priest Hilkiah said to the secretary Shaphan: I have found the book of the law in the house of the LORD. Shaphan read it, took it to the king, mentioned it almost as an afterthought at the end of his report on the money: and then read it aloud to him.
Then Hilkiah the high priest said to Shaphan the scribe, “I have found the Book of the Law in the house of the LORD!” And he gave it to Shaphan, who read it.The sentence the two chapters turn on, spoken between two officials doing paperwork.
When Josiah heard the words of the book, he tore his clothes. He sent five men to enquire of the LORD, because great was the wrath kindled against them, and their fathers had not listened to the words of this book. They did not go to Jeremiah, who was already prophesying in the city. They went to a woman (huldah the prophetess, who lived in Jerusalem)and she gave them the word of the LORD, and it had two halves. To the nation: everything written in that book is coming. To the king: because your heart was tender and you humbled yourself and wept, you will not see it.
When the king heard the words of the Book of the Law, he tore his clothesThe reform was six years old. This is what the book did to a man already obeying.
because your heart was tender and you humbled yourself before the LORD 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 the LORD. ‘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.Heaven quotes his own gesture back to him: you tore your clothes, and you wept.
Then Josiah did the most public thing any king of Judah ever did. He went up to the house of the LORD with every man of Judah and all the people of Jerusalem, the priests and the prophets, small and great: and he read the book to them himself. He stood by the pillar and made a covenant, and all the people stood to it. Then he tore the country down: the vessels of Baal out of the temple, the high places from one end of the land to the other, and the altar at Bethel, where he did something a man of God had shouted about three hundred years earlier, calling Josiah by name. And he kept a Passover, and the text says there had not been one like it since the days of the judges.
The king commanded all the people, “Keep the Passover of the LORD your God, as it is written in this Book of the Covenant.” No such Passover had been observed from the days of the judges who had governed Israel through all the days of the kings of Israel and Judah.Kept “as it is written in this book of the covenant”: the feast comes out of the scroll.
Six Places the Retellings Drift
what the text actually says, against what the story has become
“THE REFORM STARTED WHEN THE BOOK WAS FOUND”
2 Chronicles 34 has Josiah purging Judah and Jerusalem from his twelfth year: six years before the scroll turns up. The repairs during which it is found are themselves part of a reform already running. The book did not start the reform; it broke the king's heart in the middle of one.
“NOBODY IN JUDAH HAD EVER SEEN THE LAW”
What was lost was the temple copy (the one laid up beside the ark)not the Law itself. Albert Barnes takes the forgery charge head on and lists four independent checks that would have caught a fake or an honest mistake.
If Hilkiah had been bold enough and wicked enough to forge, or if he had been foolish enough to accept hastily as the real book of the law a composition of which he really knew nothing, there were four means of detecting his error or his fraud: (1) The Jewish Liturgies, which embodied large portions of the Law; (2) The memory of living men, which in many instances may have extended to the entire five books, as it does now with the modern Samaritans; (3) Other copies, entire or fragmentary, existing among the more learned Jews, or in the Schools of the prophets; and (4) Quotations from the Law in other works, especially in the Psalmists and prophets, who refer to it on almost every page. … It had been lost, or secreted, during the desecration of the temple by Manasseh, but had not been removed out of the temple building.
Albert Barnes· Notes on the Old and New Testaments (1832–1869), on 2 Kings 22:8
“THE PUBLIC READING WAS ROUTINE”
The Law itself commands a public reading every seventh year. It had lapsed for something like three generations. When Josiah reads it aloud he is doing something no living person in that courtyard had seen done.
He read - The present passage is strong evidence that the Jewish kings could read. The solemn reading of the Law - a practice commanded in the Law itself once in seven years Deu 31:10-13 - had been intermitted, at least for the last 75 years, from the date of the accession of Manasseh.
Albert Barnes· Notes on the Old and New Testaments (1832–1869), on 2 Kings 23:2
“THEY WENT TO HULDAH BECAUSE JEREMIAH WAS AWAY”
The text gives no reason at all. Jeremiah was already prophesying in Jerusalem, and the commissioners went to her instead: and the commentators who notice this offer guesses and label them guesses. What the text says is that the king's men went to a prophetess, and she gave them the word of the LORD, and it stood.
Went unto Huldah - It might have been expected that the royal commissioners would have gone to Jeremiah, on whom the prophetic spirit had descended in Josiah's 13th year Jer 1:2, or five years previous to the finding of the Law. Perhaps he was at some distance from Jerusalem at the time; or his office may not yet have been fully recognized. The prophetess - Compare the cases of Miriam Exo 15:20; Num 12:2 and Deborah Jdg 4:4. Keeper of the wardrobe - literally, of the robes.
Albert Barnes· Notes on the Old and New Testaments (1832–1869), on 2 Kings 22:14
“JOSIAH'S REPENTANCE SAVED JUDAH”
It did not, and Huldah says so in the same breath. To the nation: everything written in that book is coming. To the king: because your heart was tender, you will not see it. A reform this thorough, by a king this good, did not reverse the sentence.
“THE BETHEL ALTAR WAS JUST ANOTHER HIGH PLACE”
It was the one altar in the country with a prophecy attached to it. Three centuries earlier a man of God had cried out against it and named the king who would defile it (josiah, by name)and 2 Kings 23:16–18 records the moment it happens, and the old prophet's grave left undisturbed.
But it is remarkable that this act was predicted three hundred twenty-six years before his birth, and his name also was expressly mentioned, as well as the very place where it should be done (1Ki 13:2).
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory (1871), on 2 Kings 23:16
What the Book Was, and Where It Had Been
the temple copy, the pillar, the reading, and the Passover that needed correcting
When Moses had finished writing in a book the words of this law from beginning to end, he gave this command to the Levites who carried the ark of the covenant of the LORD: “Take this Book of the Law and place it beside the ark of the covenant of the LORD your God, so that it may remain there as a witness against you.Where the book was supposed to be: and, seven centuries later, roughly where it was found.
The commentators agree about which copy this was and roughly when it went missing. Manasseh reigned fifty-five years, filled the temple courts with other altars, and the ark itself had to be put back later. A scroll kept in the holy place does not survive that untouched.
It was the temple copy which, had been laid (De 31:25, 26) beside the ark in the most holy place. During the ungodly reigns of Manasseh and Amon--or perhaps under Ahaz, when the temple itself had been profaned by idols, and the ark also (2Ch 35:3) removed from its site; it was somehow lost, and was now found again during the repair of the temple.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory (1871), on 2 Kings 22:8–11
Was it Moses' own manuscript?
Adam Clarke asks it directly and answers carefully: very probable, on the strength of the wording in Chronicles, which calls it the book of the law of the LORD by the hand of Moses. Matthew Henry gives both options and does not choose: some think it was the original, others an old and authentic copy. That is the honest range, and the story does not depend on settling it.
I have found the book of the law - Was this the autograph of Moses? It is very probable that it was, for in the parallel place; 2Ch 34:14, it is said to be the book of the law of the Lord by Moses.
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1832), on 2 Kings 22:8
Now the reading itself, which is stranger than it looks. The high priest was standing there. So were the scribes, and the prophets: Jeremiah and Zephaniah were both alive and in Jerusalem. And the king read it. Adam Clarke, who spent his life around professional readers of Scripture, finds that remarkable enough to stop and say so.
The king went up into the house of the Lord - Here is another very singular circumstance. The high priest, scribes, priest, and prophets, are gathered together, with all the elders of the people, and the king himself reads the book of the covenant which had been lately found! It is strange that either the high priest, Jeremiah, Zephaniah, or some other of the prophets, who were certainly there present, did not read the sacred book! It is likely that the king considered himself a mediator between God and them, and therefore read and made the covenant.
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1832), on 2 Kings 23:2
And he went up to the house of the LORD with all the people of Judah and Jerusalem, as well as the priests and the prophets—all the people small and great—and in their hearing he read all the words of the Book of the Covenant that had been found in the house of the LORD.Small and great: the whole population, and the king doing the reading.
So the king stood by the pillar and made a covenant before the LORD to follow the LORD and to keep His commandments, decrees, and statutes with all his heart and all his soul, and to carry out the words of this covenant that were written in this book. And all the people entered into the covenant.He stands on the platform kings stood on, and pledges the nation along with himself.
Josiah renewed the old covenant made between God and His people in Horeb Deu 5:2, so far at least as such renewal was possible by the mere act of an individual. He bound himself by a solemn promise to the faithful performance of the entire Law. With all their heart - Their rather than his, because the king was considered as pledging the whole nation to obedience with himself.
Albert Barnes· Notes on the Old and New Testaments (1832–1869), on 2 Kings 23:3
And then the Passover: which is not a claim that no Passover had been kept in four hundred years, but that none had been kept like this. Reading the book showed the king the gap between what was written and what had quietly become the custom.
the reading of the book had shown him differences between the existing practice and the letter of the Law - differences consequent upon negligence, or upon the fact that tradition had been allowed in various points to override the Law.
Albert Barnes· Notes on the Old and New Testaments (1832–1869), on 2 Kings 23:21
Huldah the Prophetess
the last great revival in Judah was authenticated by a woman, and Scripture reports it without comment
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.The high priest of Israel, the king's secretary and three officers of the crown: sent, and they go to her.
WHO WAS SENT
Not a private enquiry. The king dispatched Hilkiah the high priest, Shaphan the secretary, Ahikam, Achbor and Asaiah (the most senior religious and civil officers in the kingdom)with an instruction to enquire of the LORD.
WHAT SHE IS CALLED
Ha-nevi'ah: the prophetess. The Hebrew Bible uses that word six times in total. Miriam, Deborah, Noadiah, Isaiah's wife, one later reference, and Huldah.
HOW SHE SPEAKS
In the standard prophetic formula, with no qualification and no hedge: Thus says the LORD, the God of Israel. She delivers a national oracle and then a personal one to the king.
WHAT HAPPENED NEXT
Her word was acted on immediately and at national scale: the assembly, the covenant, the demolition, the Passover. Kings and Chronicles both record the whole thing without a single remark about her being a woman.
The old commentators place her in the line without fuss — alongside Miriam and Deborah — and fill in the domestic details the text gives: her husband Shallum kept the royal robes, and she lived in a particular quarter of Jerusalem. She is a married woman with an address, and the government came to her door.
Went unto Huldah - It might have been expected that the royal commissioners would have gone to Jeremiah, on whom the prophetic spirit had descended in Josiah's 13th year Jer 1:2, or five years previous to the finding of the Law. Perhaps he was at some distance from Jerusalem at the time; or his office may not yet have been fully recognized. The prophetess - Compare the cases of Miriam Exo 15:20; Num 12:2 and Deborah Jdg 4:4. Keeper of the wardrobe - literally, of the robes.
Albert Barnes· Notes on the Old and New Testaments (1832–1869), on 2 Kings 22:14
It was a mercy to Jerusalem that when Bibles were scarce they had prophets, as afterwards, when prophecy ceased, that they had more Bibles; for God never leaves himself without witness, because he will leave sinners without excuse.
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1710), on 2 Kings 22:14
that this is what the LORD 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.’Her word to the nation. It is not softened, and it is not reversed by anything that follows.
“Go and inquire of the LORD 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 the LORD that burns against us because our fathers have not obeyed the words of this book by doing all that is written about us.”The commission she was answering: the king's own words, carried to her by his officers.
Four Things the Text Does Not Say
what the text does not say
Exactly what “the book” contained
Whether that means Deuteronomy, the whole Pentateuch, or something else, Scripture does not say. What can be observed is that the reforms Josiah orders track Deuteronomy closely: the single sanctuary, the high places, the Passover regulations. That is an observation about the shape of the reform, not a statement the text makes.
How it came to be lost, and where it was found
“I have found the book.” Not in which room, not under what, not who put it there. The commentators reconstruct the loss from Manasseh's reign and say openly that they are reconstructing. Scripture reports the finding and moves on to what it did.
Why Huldah and not Jeremiah
Jeremiah had been prophesying for five years by this point and was in the city. The king's men went to Huldah. The text supplies no explanation whatsoever: Barnes offers two possibilities and labels them possibilities, and Wesley guesses at distance and calls it a guess. The one fact on the record is that they went, and that what she said was treated as the word of the LORD by everyone involved.
“Gathered to your grave in peace”: and Megiddo
Huldah tells the king he will be gathered to his grave in peace and will not see the disaster (22:20). Seven verses into the next chapter's ending, Josiah is killed in battle at Megiddo (23:29). Readers have long proposed that “in peace” means before the catastrophe rather than peacefully. That is a reading, and a reasonable one, and it is named here as a reading. The text sets both statements down and explains nothing.
A Prophecy Three Centuries Early: and an Ending That Refuses to Lift
the New Testament never quotes this episode; Scripture's own material is enough
No apostle cites 2 Kings 22–23. Say that plainly, and then look at what Scripture does supply, because it supplies a great deal: starting with a prophecy-and-fulfilment pair entirely inside the Old Testament.
And he cried out against the altar by the word of the LORD, “O altar, O altar, this is what the LORD says: ‘A son named Josiah will be born to the house of David, and upon you he will sacrifice the priests of the high places who burn incense upon you, and human bones will be burned upon you.’”Spoken at Bethel roughly three centuries before Josiah was born: and it uses his name.
And as Josiah turned, he saw the tombs there on the hillside, and he sent someone to take the bones out of the tombs, and he burned them on the altar to defile it, according to the word of the LORD proclaimed by the man of God who had foretold these things.The fulfilment, reported as ordinary demolition work: until the text stops to name the grave.
But it is remarkable that this act was predicted three hundred twenty-six years before his birth, and his name also was expressly mentioned, as well as the very place where it should be done (1Ki 13:2).
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory (1871), on 2 Kings 23:16
Then the pattern itself, which is Scripture's own account of what Scripture does. A book is lost, found, read aloud, and a nation is reordered around it: the priests, the calendar, the borders, the graves. The New Testament's version of that claim is not a comment on Josiah; it is a description of what the word of God is like.
All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for instruction, for conviction, for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be complete, fully equipped for every good work.Placed beside the story as the New Testament's teaching about the word: not as commentary on 2 Kings 22.
For the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it pierces even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow. It judges the thoughts and intentions of the heart.What it did to Josiah in one sitting is what this verse describes.
If Josiah had seen and read it before, which seems more probable, yet the great reverence which he justly bare to the original book, and the strange, and remarkable, and seasonable finding of it, had awakened and quickened him to a more serious and diligent consideration of all the passages contained in it. And what a providence was this, that it was still preserved!
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765), on 2 Kings 22:11
And then the ending, which the page is not allowed to soften. Josiah is the best king Judah ever had after David (the text says so in the strongest terms it uses about anyone)and it does not save the country. Twenty-two years after that Passover, Jerusalem burns.
Neither before nor after Josiah was there any king like him, who turned to the LORD with all his heart and with all his soul and with all his strength, according to all the Law of Moses.With all his heart, all his soul, all his might: Scripture's highest verdict on a king.
Nevertheless, the LORD did not turn away from the fury of His burning anger, which was kindled against Judah because of all that Manasseh had done to provoke Him to anger. For the LORD had said, “I will remove Judah from My sight, just as I removed Israel. I will reject this city Jerusalem, which I chose, and the temple of which I said, ‘My Name shall be there.’”And the very next sentence. The book does not end on the revival, and neither does this page.
That is the Christ beat here, and it is exact rather than decorative. The best king, the recovered book, and the greatest Passover in four hundred years were still not enough, which is precisely the argument Hebrews makes about every institution of the old covenant, and precisely why there had to be a better one. Jeremiah was standing in Jerusalem through these very years, writing down what came next.
The New Covenant: what Jeremiah wrote while Josiah was reforming →
The Commentators on a Found Book
four old expositors on what it means for a nation to lose its Bible and get it back
The question these chapters have always raised is whether a book can really have gone missing in the one building built to keep it. Barnes answers it not by insisting but by counting: four independent things that would have exposed a forgery, all of them outside Hilkiah's control. The argument still works, and it is the reason this page treats the find as a find.
Matthew Henry, writing for a country that had recently fought over who was allowed to read Scripture aloud, sees the political point immediately and makes it in one sentence.
It is really the interest of princes to promote the knowledge of the scriptures in their dominions. If the people be but as stedfastly resolved to obey by law as he is to govern by law, the kingdom will be happy. All people are concerned to know the scripture, and all in authority to spread the knowledge of it.
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1710), on 2 Kings 23:2
A note on how this page was built
Most pages on this shelf carry teachers from across the whole roster the site works from. This one carries five old commentators and stops. The modern writing that attaches itself to 2 Kings 22 is mostly about how the Bible came to be the Bible: a real and interesting subject, and a different one from the story these chapters are telling. The site has a page for it, linked below, and this page stays with Josiah.
THE ARTWORK
Not a painting: a jug. A sixteenth-century French wine ewer in painted Limoges enamel, worked in grisaille so the figures come up white out of a black ground. Around the shoulder rides the Triumph of Diana, a Roman goddess in her chariot with her hounds; around the body below it, the museum's title names the other band as Josiah reading the Law, its figures crowded in front of an arcade. A luxury object for a French table carried both, one above the other, and nobody at the time thought that odd. It is a useful reminder of how these chapters actually travelled: not only in commentaries, but on the things people ate and drank from.
Jean de Court, Ewer with the Triumph of Diana and Josiah Reading the Law (16th century), Walters Art Museum 44.167. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
Read the Great Books
the works that have carried this teaching: go further than this page
Notes on the Old and New Testaments
Albert Barnes · 1832–1869
The fullest treatment of the find itself: which copy it was, why a forgery could not have survived scrutiny, how long the public reading had lapsed, and what the covenant at the pillar actually bound.
READ IT FREE AT CCEL →Commentary on the Bible
Adam Clarke · 1832
Clarke asks whether this was Moses' own manuscript and answers it as a probability: then notices the strangest thing in the chapter: every professional reader in Judah was present, and the king read.
READ IT FREE AT CCEL →Commentary on the Whole Bible
Matthew Henry · 1710
Henry on what it costs a nation to be short of Bibles, and on the duty of anyone in authority to spread the knowledge of them: written by a man whose own century had fought about it.
READ IT FREE AT CCEL →Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament
John Wesley · 1765
Short, warm and pastoral, and the source of the line this page keeps coming back to: what a providence was this, that it was still preserved!
READ IT FREE AT CCEL →One Book, and Everything It Moved
Neither before nor after Josiah was there any king like him, who turned to the LORD with all his heart and with all his soul and with all his strength, according to all the Law of Moses.No king like him before or after: and the sentence immediately following it is 23:26.
A scroll comes out of a building site and a country is remade: the temple swept, the border crossed, the calendar corrected, a covenant sworn in front of everybody. It is the most thorough obedience in the history of Judah, and Scripture records it, and then records that the sentence stood anyway. Both halves are the story. What was needed was not a better king reading a better copy: Josiah was the best there was, and the copy was the real one. What was needed was a covenant that could do what this one could not, and the man writing that promise down was standing in the same city while the Passover was being kept.
GO ON FROM HERE
Built from MannaFest's research brief on 2 Kings 22–23 and the gate-verified quote pool for the Kings stories — public-domain commentary quoted word for word (Albert Barnes, Adam Clarke, Matthew Henry, John Wesley, Jamieson-Fausset-Brown). Hebrew word data verified against the site's own word-level text of 2 Kings 22–23. Scripture is the Berean Standard Bible, fetched live from the site's text. Artwork: a Rijksmuseum engraving (CC0) and a Limoges enamel ewer by Jean de Court at the Walters Art Museum (public domain), both license-verified at Wikimedia Commons.