Imagine locating an unexploded bomb in a ruined building. What they found was even more alarming!
It seems the temple had been severely damaged. This wasn’t the kind of job a little paint and putty could fix. Former kings had “destroyed” the place (2 Chron 34:11). As Hilkiah the high priest sifted through the rubble, what do you suppose he found! Hurrying to Shaphan the scribe, he said, “I have found the Book of the Law in the house of the Lord” (v 15). In those days, of course, people didn’t possess their own copy of Scripture, as we’re privileged to do. A copy was to be accessible to the priests and Levites, and the king was to have a copy, at least of the pertinent instructions he was to follow. But they had been flying in the dark without instruments for years. I suppose if I don’t have the Book which “is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path” (Ps 119:105), I can be quite smug and self-satisfied. The scribes certainly were in Jesus’ day—until He switched on the light! Shaphan gave a good report of the building project to Josiah, and then showed him the Book, recounting the story of its discovery. But then “Shaphan read it before the king” (2 Chron 34:18). Josiah was devastated! “When the king heard the words of the Law,…he tore his clothes” (v 19). Evidently they read the part about the curses if they disobeyed God’s Word. This was the equivalent of a five-alarm fire! Here are the five alarmists: “Hilkiah, Ahikam the son of Shaphan, Abdon the son of Micah, Shaphan the scribe, and Asaiah a servant of the king” (v 20). Their mission? “Go, inquire of the Lord…concerning the words of the book…for great is the wrath of the Lord that is poured out on us, because our fathers have not kept the word of the Lord” (v 21). And where did these men go for help? To Huldah the prophetess! Whatever will she say to them?