No Small Parts - Huldah

July 19, 2020 Sunday Evening Study

Have you ever had to deliver bad news? I for one could never be a police officer or doctor -  someone who had to inform someone that something terrible happened to one of their loved ones. I had to do that once in my life, and it was one of the most difficult things I have ever done. 

Sometimes when you have to deliver bad news, you get a bit of a reprieve from the pain of it. Back when I lived in Arizona, I managed a fairly elite IT team working for a bank headquartered in California. As can happen, I had become good friends with several of my employees, and even hired one of my friends to work for me. As can happen, not everyone on my team shared the same work ethic, and after approximately 8 months, I had to fire the friend I had hired. 

Arizona was a right to work state, so firing someone was nearly impossible without a laundry list of recorded sins. I had already been through two write-ups with him, and we had still maintained friendship despite the work issues. When I did have to fire him, I was sick about it. I looked for any other way, but our job was so critical that there was no way around it. The day that I planned to terminate him, he called in sick. We were a skeleton crew and worked 12 hour turnarounds, so his calling in created the need for me to work nearly 18 hours that day. During that work, checking Facebook on my breaks, I saw him posting pictures of himself at Disneyland while I covered his shift.

Needless to say, firing him wasn’t quite so difficult after that.

Sometimes we don’t get that break. In many cases we are called to speak the truth in love, and it can often be an incredibly difficult thing to do. When you look at the Old Testament, there are a lot of characters whose entire story is based on their calling to do this very thing. All of the prophets in the OT - major and minor and otherwise all had to deliver bad news - sometimes devastating news, and many lived with that burden for the rest of their lives. 

Tonight we are talking about one of the two predominant female prophets named in the Old Testament Nevi’im - the Hebrew Book of Prophets. The first, Deborah, was the only female judge mentioned in the book of Judges, and was responsible for ordering the attack and subsequent overthrow of Jabin the King of the Canaanites and relieving the oppression of the Israelites under his occupation.

So who is this other prophet? For this we fast forward hundreds of years until we are well into the time of the monarchy. Under the 16th King of Judah in the divided kingdom, Josiah was the last king before the people were exiled to Babylon. If you know much about the Kings of Judah, especially after the righteous King Hezekiah, they had a bit of a reputation for turning away from God.

Things had gotten so bad that not only were there idols and high places dedicated to worshipping the Baals and Asheroth, but the temple itself had been desecrated with idols and retrofitted for worshipping pagan gods under Josiah’s predecessors Manasseh and Amon. Amon was so wicked in fact that his own servants conspired and murdered him, forcing Josiah to assume the throne at only 8 years of age.

Josiah changed everything, being obedient to God in all things. He tore down all the idols, destroyed the high places, and even went so far as to exhume the bodies of the dead pagan priests and burn their remains. He set about renovating and restoring the temple to its purpose of housing the Name of God. During the renovations, they discover the original Book of the Law given to Joshua by Moses. Josiah reads it, looks at the history of his kingdom, and rightly panics.

The story picks up in 2 Kings 22:11 - 

11 When the king heard the words of the Book of the Law, he tore his robes. 12 He gave these orders to Hilkiah the priest, Ahikam son of Shaphan, Akbor son of Micaiah, Shaphan the secretary and Asaiah the king’s attendant: 13 “Go and inquire of the Lord for me and for the people and for all Judah about what is written in this book that has been found. Great is the Lord’s anger that burns against us because those who have gone before us have not obeyed the words of this book; they have not acted in accordance with all that is written there concerning us.”

14 Hilkiah the priest, Ahikam, Akbor, Shaphan and Asaiah went to speak to the prophet Huldah, who was the wife of Shallum son of Tikvah, the son of Harhas, keeper of the wardrobe. She lived in Jerusalem, in the New Quarter.

15 She said to them, “This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: Tell the man who sent you to me, 16 ‘This is what the Lord says: I am going to bring disaster on this place and its people, according to everything written in the book the king of Judah has read. 17 Because they have forsaken me and burned incense to other gods and aroused my anger by all the idols their hands have made,[a] my anger will burn against this place and will not be quenched.’ 18 Tell the king of Judah, who sent you to inquire of the Lord, ‘This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says concerning the words you heard: 19 Because your heart was responsive and you humbled yourself before the Lord when you heard what I have spoken against this place and its people—that they would become a curse[b] and be laid waste—and because you tore your robes and wept in my presence, I also have heard you, declares the Lord. 20 Therefore I will gather you to your ancestors, and you will be buried in peace. Your eyes will not see all the disaster I am going to bring on this place.’”

That is grim news. Imagine being Huldah in this time. You have been a prophet for God through the reign of a truly evil king, and now, blessedly, there is someone in charge who knows and fears the LORD. Is is almost like if someone like Franklin Graham were elected president of the US - we would begin to hope for our future in a way that we have not for quite some time. Yet when he seeks her counsel, she has to tell him that the world is going to end for Judah. And we all know what it was she was prophesying - the conquest and exile of the Israelites to Babylon for 70 years. This is essentially the end of Israel’s sovereignty, as they never exercise control over the promised land in the same way again.

Did Huldah experience relief knowing that she could tell Josiah that his faithfulness would allow him to live in peace until the end came?

Huldah did more than speak of the exile and recognize King Josiah’s faithfulness. By calling the words in the book the very Words of God, she is the first in the land of Israel to declare any piece of writing to in fact be holy scripture. This is a significant milestone in the establishment of the Jewish scripture - most scholars believe that this “Book of the Law” either was the book which became Deuteronomy, or it was the main source material from which Deuteronomy was written, likely during the exile.

Huldah appears in the Bible only in nine verses, 2 Kings 22:13-20, 2 Chronicles 34:22–28. This short narrative is sufficient to make clear that Huldah was regarded as a prophet accustomed to speaking the word of God directly to high priests and royal officials, to whom high officials came in supplication, who told kings and nations of their fates, who had the authority to determine what was and was not the genuine Law, and who spoke in a manner of stern command when acting as a prophet. Nonetheless the Bible does not offer the sort of background information it typically does with other pivotal prophets. Indeed, we are left knowing more about her husband's background than we know of hers, and the little information we know of her personally is largely in relation to her husband, known as the “Keeper of the Wardrobe” - a position that was a contemporary of the King who quite literally attended to the King’s robes.

According to Jewish Rabbinic interpretation, Huldah said to the messengers of King Josiah, "Tell the man that sent you to me ..." (2 Kings 22:15), indicating by her unceremonious language that as far as she was concerned, Josiah was like any other man. The king addressed her, and not Jeremiah, because he believed that women are more easily stirred to pity than men, and that therefore she would be more likely than would Jeremiah to intercede with God on his behalf. Huldah was a relative of Jeremiah, both being descendants of Rahab. While Jeremiah admonished and preached repentance to the men, Huldah did the same to the women. Huldah was not only a prophet, but taught publicly in the school according to some oral doctrine.

There are a few other things to be discovered about the character of Huldah. Her name means quite literally “weasel” or “mole” - which intrigues me as to the story behind her name. Based on her profile she appears to belie her name as she is a public figure used to being in the company of high ranking people.

In Jerusalem today, the Huldah Gates in the Southern Wall of the Temple Mount are named for her, largely due to the traditional belief that her burial site is located between the walls of the Old and New Cities in Jerusalem.