13 Go and get directions from the Lord for me and for the people and for all Judah, about the words of this book which has come to light; for great is the wrath of the Lord which is burning against us, because our fathers have not given ear to the words of this book, to do all the things which are recorded in it.
In that day my wrath will be moved against them, and I will be turned away from them, veiling my face from them, and destruction will overtake them, and unnumbered evils and troubles will come on them; so that in that day they will say, Have not these evils come on us because our God is not with us? Truly, my face will be turned away from them in that day, because of all the evil they have done in going after other gods.
And that all the land is a salt and smoking waste, not planted or giving fruit or clothed with grass, but wasted like Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboiim, on which the Lord sent destruction in the heat of his wrath: Truly all the nations will say, Why has the Lord done so to this land? what is the reason for this great and burning wrath? Then men will say, Because they gave up the agreement of the Lord, the God of their fathers, which he made with them when he took them out of the land of Egypt: And they went after other gods and gave them worship, gods who were strange to them, and whom he had not given them: And so the wrath of the Lord was moved against this land, to send on it all the curse recorded in this book: Rooting them out of their land, in the heat of his wrath and passion, and driving them out into another land, as at this day.
But be doers of the word, and not only hearers of it, blinding yourselves with false ideas. Because if any man is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man looking at his natural face in a glass; For after looking at himself he goes away, and in a short time he has no memory of what he was like. But he who goes on looking into the true law which makes him free, being not a hearer without memory but a doer putting it into effect, this man will have a blessing on his acts.
We are sinners, acting wrongly and doing evil; we have gone against you, turning away from your orders and from your laws: We have not given ear to your servants the prophets, who said words in your name to our kings and our rulers and our fathers and all the people of the land. O Lord, righteousness is yours, but shame is on us, even to this day; and on the men of Judah and the people of Jerusalem, and on all Israel, those who are near and those who are far off, in all the countries where you have sent them because of the sin which they have done against you. O Lord, shame is on us, on our kings and our rulers and our fathers, because of our sin against you.
Now it came about in the seventh year, in the fifth month, on the tenth day of the month, that certain of the responsible men of Israel came to get directions from the Lord and were seated before me. Then the word of the Lord came to me, saying, Son of man, say to the responsible men of Israel, This is what the Lord has said: Have you come to get directions from me? By my life, says the Lord, you will get no directions from me.
Son of man, these men have taken their false gods into their hearts and put before their faces the sin which is the cause of their fall: am I to give ear when they come to me for directions? For this cause say to them, These are the words of the Lord: Every man of Israel who has taken his false god into his heart, and put before his face the sin which is the cause of his fall, and comes to the prophet; I the Lord will give him an answer by myself in agreement with the number of his false gods;
The word which came to Jeremiah from the Lord, when King Zedekiah sent to him Pashhur, the son of Malchiah, and Zephaniah, the son of Maaseiah the priest, saying, Will you get directions from the Lord for us; for Nebuchadrezzar, king of Babylon, is making war against us; it may be that the Lord will do something for us like all the wonders he has done, and make him go away from us.
And they gave out the words of the book the law of God, clearly, and gave the sense of it, so that their minds were able to take it in. And Nehemiah, who was the Tirshatha, and Ezra, the priest and scribe, and the Levites who were the teachers of the people, said to all the people, This day is holy to the Lord your God; let there be no sorrow or weeping; for all the people were weeping on hearing the words of the law.
So death came to Saul because of the sin which he did against the Lord, that is, because of the word of the Lord which he kept not; and because he went for directions to one who had an evil spirit, And not to the Lord: for this reason, he put him to death and gave the kingdom to David, the son of Jesse.
But Jehoshaphat said, Is there no other prophet of the Lord here from whom we may get directions? And the king of Israel said to Jehoshaphat, There is still one man by whom we may get directions from the Lord, Micaiah, son of Imlah; but I have no love for him, for he is a prophet of evil to me and not of good. And Jehoshaphat said, Let not the king say so.
Take care that you do not let the agreement of the Lord your God, which he has made with you, go out of your mind, or make for yourselves images of any sort, against the orders which the Lord your God has given you. For the Lord your God is an all-burning fire, and he will not let the honour which is his be given to any other. If, when you have had children and children's children, and have been living a long time in the land, you are turned to evil ways, and make an image of any sort, and do evil in the eyes of the Lord your God, moving him to wrath: May heaven and earth be my witnesses against you today, that destruction will quickly overtake you, cutting you off from that land which you are going over Jordan to take; your days will not be long in that land, but you will come to a complete end. And the Lord will send you wandering among the peoples; only a small band of you will be kept from death among the nations where the Lord will send you.
Worthy.Bible » Commentaries » Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible » Commentary on 2 Kings 22
Commentary on 2 Kings 22 Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
CHAPTER 22
2Ki 22:1, 2. Josiah's Good Reign.
1, 2. Josiah was eight years old when he began to reign—Happier than his grandfather Manasseh, he seems to have fallen during his minority under the care of better guardians, who trained him in the principles and practice of piety; and so strongly had his young affections been enlisted on the side of true and undefiled religion, that he continued to adhere all his life, with undeviating perseverance, to the cause of God and righteousness.
2Ki 22:3-7. He Provides for the Repair of the Temple.
3, 4. in the eighteenth year of king Josiah—Previous to this period, he had commenced the work of national reformation. The preliminary steps had been already taken; not only the builders were employed, but money had been brought by all the people and received by the Levites at the door, and various other preparations had been made. But the course of this narrative turns on one interesting incident which happened in the eighteenth year of Josiah's reign, and hence that date is specified. In fact the whole land was thoroughly purified from every object and all traces of idolatry. The king now addressed himself to the repair and embellishment of the temple and gave directions to Hilkiah the high priest to take a general survey, in order to ascertain what was necessary to be done (see on 2Ch 34:8-15).
2Ki 22:8-15. Hilkiah Finds the Book of the Law.
8-11. Hilkiah said … I have found the book of the law in the house of the Lord, &c.—that is, the law of Moses, the Pentateuch. 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 [Keil]. Delivered by Hilkiah the discoverer to Shaphan the scribe [2Ki 22:8], it was by the latter shown and read to the king. It is thought, with great probability, that the passage read to the king, and by which the royal mind was so greatly excited, was a portion of Deuteronomy, the twenty-eighth, twenty-ninth, and thirtieth chapters, in which is recorded a renewal of the national covenant, and an enumeration of the terrible threats and curses denounced against all who violated the law, whether prince or people. The impressions of grief and terror which the reading produced on the mind of Josiah have seemed to many unaccountable. But, as it is certain from the extensive and familiar knowledge displayed by the prophets, that there were numbers of other copies in popular circulation, the king must have known its sacred contents in some degree. But he might have been a stranger to the passage read him, or the reading of it might, in the peculiar circumstances, have found a way to his heart in a manner that he never felt before. His strong faith in the divine word, and his painful consciousness that the woeful and long-continued apostasies of the nation had exposed them to the infliction of the judgments denounced, must have come with overwhelming force on the heart of so pious a prince.
12-15. the king commanded … Go, inquire of the Lord for me, &c.—The agitated feelings of the king prompted him to ask immediate counsel how to avert those curses under which his kingdom lay; and forthwith a deputation of his principal officers was sent to one endowed with the prophetic spirit.
Ahikam—a friend of Jeremiah (Jer 26:24).
14. Achbor—or Abdon (2Ch 34:20), a man of influence at court (Jer 26:22). The occasion was urgent, and therefore they were sent—not to Zephaniah (Zep 1:1), who was perhaps young—nor to Jeremiah, who was probably absent at his house in Anathoth, but to one who was at hand and known for her prophetic gifts—to Huldah, who was probably at this time a widow. Her husband Shallum was grandson of one Harhas, "keeper of the wardrobe." If this means the priestly wardrobe, [Harhas] must have been a Levite. But it probably refers to the royal wardrobe.
she dwelt … in the college—rather, "in the Misnah," taking the original word as a proper name, not a school or college, but a particular suburb of Jerusalem. She was held in such veneration that Jewish writers say she and Jehoiada the priest were the only persons not of the house of David (2Ch 24:15, 16) who were ever buried in Jerusalem.
15-20. she said unto them, Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, Tell the man that sent you to me—On being consulted, she delivered an oracular response in which judgment was blended with mercy; for it announced the impending calamities that at no distant period were to overtake the city and its inhabitants. But at the same time the king was consoled with an assurance that this season of punishment and sorrow should not be during his lifetime, on account of the faith, penitence, and pious zeal for the divine glory and worship which, in his public capacity and with his royal influence, he had displayed.