Huldah
Prophetess in Jerusalem whom King Josiah’s officials consulted when the book of the law was found. She confirmed its warning of judgment on Judah and told the king he would not live to see it.
Huldah was the wife of Shallum, keeper of the wardrobe, and lived in the second quarter of Jerusalem (2 Kings 22:14). When the book of the law was found, Josiah sent the high priest Hilkiah and four officials to inquire of the Lord, and they went to her. She answered in the Lord’s name that the disaster written in the book would come on the city because its people had turned to other gods, and that the king, who had humbled himself, would be gathered to his grave before it came (2 Kings 22:15–20). Chronicles gives the same account (2 Chronicles 34:22–28). See Josiah’s Reform and the Book of the Law.
In the timeline
- 622 BC, estimated dateJosiah’s Reform and the Book of the Law
During repairs to the temple in Josiah’s eighteenth year the high priest Hilkiah finds a book of the law. The king consults the prophetess Huldah, renews the covenant, destroys the shrines of other gods throughout the land and keeps a great Passover.