exhort the people to repentance.* It is quite possible that then, as so often happens, the fear of a great calamity brought about a certain revival of religious feeling. In the meantime the danger was averted. The Scythians hardly entered Judæa, if at all. They marched to Egypt by the sea-coast; this forced Psammetichus, who was then king of that country, to raise the siege of Gaza; but subsequently they allowed themselves to be persuaded by him to give up their plans and turn back. This occurred, according to the most probable calculation, in or about the year 625 B.C. Four years afterwards the remembrance of those anxious days had not faded, nor the fear that perhaps they would soon return. The Scythians were still roving about in Asia. Did the thought of them add weight, in the estimation of Josiah and his counsellors, to the threats which they heard in the year we have mentioned? This is not impossible. But let us see what took place at this time. Some repairs were to be made in the temple at Jerusalem. Josiah sends his scribe, Shaphan the son of Azaliah, to Hilkiah the high-priest, to order the latter to make up the amount of the voluntary gifts which the doorkeepers had received from the people, and to hand this money to the men charged with the superintendence of the work. When Shaphan had delivered these injunctions, Hilkiah made an important communication to him: "I have found," he said, "the book of the law in the house of Jahveh." Shaphan immediately read the book, went back to Josiah and hastened to inform him of the discovery and to read it to him. It made the deepest impression upon the king. Did it not contain precepts which had been broken by the fathers and by the generation then living, and also terrible threats of punishment which there was every reason to fear would consequently be fulfilled? Josiah wishes at once to ascertain for certain what he and his people have to expect. He sends five * Jer. ii.-vi.; comp. my Hk. O. II. 174 seq. Vers. 8-11. men of high rank, among whom are Hilkiah and Shaphan, to consult Jahveh for him. They go to the prophetess Huldah and lay before her the king's wishes.* Her reply does not seem to have been reported by the historian with literal exactness.† It is not probable, at all events, that on this occasion she would have represented the fall of Jerusalem and the ruin of the kingdom as irrevocably decreed. But the main point was that she recognized "all the words of the book which Hilkiah had found" as the expression of Jahveh's will and counsel. Now Josiah could hesitate no longer as to what he had to do. He called the people-probably represented by their elders and great men— together in the temple at Jerusalem and read to them "the book of the covenant." Whether it be that this reading made the same impression upon all of them as it had previously done upon the king, or that no one dared oppose the monarch, "the whole people" solemnly bound themselves "to walk after Jahveh and to keep his commandments, his testimonies and his statutes, with all their heart, and to perform the words of the covenant written in the book" which had been read to them.‡ Not a moment was lost in carrying out this engagement. At the king's command, Hilkiah and the rest of the priests remove out of the temple everything that is connected with the worship of false gods. The following are specified: the holy vessels which were used in the service of Baal, Ashera and the host of heaven ;§ the Ashera-symbols themselves, which had been erected by Manasseh, as we have seen ;|| the chapels in (or adjoining) the temple, in which the priestesses of Ashera sold themselves to the worshippers of that goddess; the horses and chariots of the sun, which the kings of Judah had placed at the entrance of the temple, in the chamber of Nathan-melech ;** and the altars which had been built by the kings of Judah on the roof of the * Vers. 12-14. + Vers. 15-22. 2 Kings xxiii. 1—3. ¶ Ver.-7. ** Ver. 11. upper chamber of Ahaz, and by Manasseh in the two courts.* This return of the things in or adjoining the temple that required reform, can give us some idea of all that there was to be done beyond it, in order fully to carry out the decrees of Hilkiah's book. In the immediate vicinity of Jerusalem, in the valley of Ben-Hinnom, there was the Topheth, the holy place where the worshippers of Molech burned their children in honour of that god; it was defiled.† On the right hand of the “mount of corruption," i.e. on the south-western slope of the mount of Olives, there stood the sanctuaries of Ashtoreth, Chemosh and Milcom, founded by Solomon; they were laid waste.‡ The "pillars" and Ashera-symbols were everywhere broken in pieces and hewn down. § The priests of the false gods, the chemarim appointed by the kings of Judah, were prevented from pursuing their calling.|| From Geba to Beersheba, i.e. from the northern to the southern limits of the kingdom, "the high places" (dedicated to Jahveh) were defiled; their (Levitical) priests, thus deprived of their only means of support, were brought to Jerusalem, and “ate" from that time forward "unleavened bread among their brethren," who served in the temple; they were not permitted, however, “to sacrifice upon the altar of Jahveh¿” probably they performed other, subordinate functions.T Josiah was not content with these measures. He worked zealously in the same spirit, even beyond the borders of his kingdom. At Beth-el and in "the cities of Samaria" in general, the high places were destroyed and their priests slain by his command.** And finally, the work of purification was crowned by the splendid celebration of the passover, in accordance with the regulations of the "book of the covenant." "There was not holden such a passover"—says the historian-"from the days of the judges that judged Israel, nor in all the days of the kings of Israel, nor of the kings of Judah.”†† * Ver. 12. + Ver. 10. § Ver. 14. || Ver. 5. Ver. 13; comp. Vol. I. p. 331. ¶ Vers. 8, 9. ++ Vers. 21-23; comp. Note III. at the end of this Chapter. ** Vers. 15-20. So runs the oldest and thoroughly credible account of Josiah's reformation. It will now no longer be asked why we expressed above* some doubt of the complete success of Hezekiah's measures. If he had already worked as vigorously as Josiah did after him, how was it that the latter found so much idolatry and illegal Jahveh-worship to reform at Jerusalem and elsewhere? We can make Manasseh and Amon account for much, it is true, but not for all. That which the historian indicates as the work of the "kings of Judah" or definitely ascribes to Solomon,† was not introduced by Manasseh, but was not abolished by Hezekiah. Our conception of the religious condition of the kingdom of Judah during the centuries which preceded Josiah's reign, must of course adapt itself to the accounts given of what he found in existence. What a difference there was, then, between the prophets' demands and the reality! How lofty was the ideal of the Mosaic party compared with what they saw around them! Their conception of Jahvism differed so much from what their predecessors and the multitude knew by this name, that its introduction may, without the least exaggeration, be called a revolution. There can hardly be any difference of opinion with regard to Josiah's intention. No other gods but Jahveh; no other Jahvehworship than in the temple at Jerusalem: these two demands show the drift of his reformation. We have already pointed out more than once‡ that the one is intimately connected with the other; that the centralization of the public worship in the one sanctuary at Jerusalem was deemed necessary, in order to put an end to the serving of false gods and of Jahveh with idolatrous practices. But we cannot possibly remain content with the knowledge of this outline of the tendency which now predominated. We desire to know more of the ideas, the spirit and the wishes of the party which received Josiah's powerful aid to realize their plans. This desire is legitimate, and need not remain + 2 Kings xxiii. 5, 11, 12, 13. * P. 1 seq. unsatisfied. Josiah's reformation was the result of the enforcement of the code found by Hilkiah. If we consult this code, we are almost certain to find what we seek. As we have already said, Hilkiah's book of the law has not been lost; we possess in Deuteronomy the programme of the Mosaic party of that day. It will be necessary for us, however, to explain more fully, and at the same time to prove, this assertion, before we make ourselves acquainted with the contents of the book itself. As every one will at once perceive, it is of such vital importance to Israel's religious history, that it is less than any other assertion to be taken upon trust. The book of Deuteronomy is now a part of a whole, the Pentateuch. Not merely in the sense that it is reckoned among the "books of Moses," but also because it is interwoven in many respects with the four preceding books, from Genesis to Numbers. To name a few instances: when we have finished reading Numbers, we have not yet arrived at the end of the history of Moses: the narrative of his death-already referred to in Num. xxvii. 12—14—is wanting; we find it in Deut. xxxiv. In the beginning of the book* there occurs a date which fits on to the chronology of Numbers. The first discourse‡ delivered by Moses is a free recapitulation of what has already been said in the previous books about the Israelites' wanderings through the desert, and especially the events of the fortieth year. Now let it be taken into consideration, that part of the narratives and laws which we possess in the first four books of the Pentateuch, are more recent than the seventh century before our era, and therefore cannot have been linked to Deuteronomy before Josiah's reformation. Let it be further remembered, that the writing found by Hilkiah is called the “book of the law," and the "book of the covenant,"§ and that it cannot have been of any great length, if we may believe the statement that it was read by Shaphan, and then read before Josiah, in one day, and was * Deut. i. 3. Deut. i. 6-iv. 40. + Num. xx. 22—29 (xxxiii. 37—39), xxi. 1 seq. § 2 Kings xxii. 8, 11, xxiii. 2, 3, 21, 24, 25. |