now or later, in connection with it. Foremost among them is Hilkiah, the high priest, the father or

grandfather of Seraiah* (1 Chronicles 6:13, 14; Nehe miah 11:11) who was high-priest at the time

of the captivity (2 Kings 25:18), and an ancestor of Ezra (Ezra. 7:1). Again, chief among those

whom Josiah sent to Hilkiah, was Shaphan the Scribe (2 Kings 22:3), the father of Gemariah,**

the protector of Jeremiah (Jeremiah 36:10, 19, 25), and grandfather of Micaiah (Jeremiah 36:20-

* But he could not have been identical with the father of Jeremiah (Jeremiah 1:1), since the priests

at Anathoth were from the line of Ithamar (1 Kings 2:26), while the h igh-priest Hilkiah belonged

to that of Eleazar.

** He must not be confounded with the father of Ahikam. Comp. 2 Chronicles 34:14.

*** The other members of the deputation to Hilkiah and to Huldah, mentioned in 2 Chronicles

34:8, 14, are not otherwise kn own.

Of the personages afterwards mentioned 1 Kings 22:14), we have definite notices about Ahikam

(the son of another Shaphan), who protected Jeremiah (Jeremiah 26:24), and was the father of

Gedaliah (2 Kings 25:22); and about Achbor, the father of Elnathan, one of those among "the

princes of Judah" who vainly endeavored to prevent the burning of the prophetic roll dictated to

Baruch by Jeremiah (Jeremiah 36:12). Scanty as these notices are, they leave the impression that

Josiah had surrounded himself with men embued, on the whole, with a true religious spirit.

This inference is the more important in view of the general state of the people. The whole history

leads to the conviction that the reformation inaugurated by Josiah, although submitted to, and

apparently shared in by the people, was not the outcome of a spiritual revival. It was a movement

on the part of the king rather than of the nation. Of this we have only too much confirmation in the

account which the prophets give of the moral and religious condition of the people, and of the

evidently superficial and chiefly external character of the reformation.*

* Comp. here such passages as Jeremiah 3:6, etc.; 8:5, etc.; 15:6; 16:10, etc.; and other passages.

Comp. also Zephaniah iii. 1.

And as we derive our knowledge of it from the pages of Jeremiah, we bear in mind that the

beginning of his prophetic activity, in the thirteenth year of Josiah (Jeremiah 1:2), synchronized

with the commencement of the reformatory movement. Thus we further understand why the

changes inaugurated, however extensive, could not avert, as the prophetess Huldah announced, the

Divine judgment from the nation, but only from their king (2 Kings 22:14-20). A reformation such

as this could be but transient, and the people hastened only the more rapidly to their final apostasy.

It was during the extensive repairs in the Temple that a discovery was made of the greatest

influence on the movement about to begin, and which has, especially of late, been connected with

some important crit ical questions regarding the Pentateuch. As we read in Holy Scripture, the high

priest Hilkiah informed "Shaphan the Scribe," that he had "found the book of the law (in 2

Chronicles 34:14: "the book of the law of the LORD, by the hand of Moses") in the house of the

LORD" (2 Kings 22:8). This book Hilkiah gave to Shaphan. Its perusal led Shaphan not only to

inform the king of it, but to read the book to him. On this Josiah "rent his clothes," in token of

mourning for the guilt which Israel had incurred in their long absolute breach of its

Into the complicated questions, What was the exact compass of this special book (whether it

comprised the whole Pentateuch, or what parts of it), and again, What was the date of this copy,

and how it came to be found in the Temple - the present is not the place to enter. On some points,

however, all sober-minded and reverent inquirers will be at one. Assuredly the finding of the book