- ter of familiar and general knowledge among the Jews that
their forefathers had solemnly adopted Jehovism as the only lawful national creed, invoking upon themselves those very curses which the most devout of monarchs was now unable to hear without astonishment and alarm? And how are we to explain the production of this book by the priests as a new discovery? If it had been merely the re-discovery of a lost volume would the language of the narrative have been at all appropriate? Must not Josiah in that case have rejoiced at the restoration to Judah of so precious a treasure, however much he might have regretted the failure of the nation to observe its precepts? The difficulty of supposing such facts to have been forgotten is equally great. It would be scarcely possible to imagine that not only the people, but the priests, could at any period have lost all memory of the fact that they were bound, under the most terrible penalties, to adhere to the faith of Jehovah. At least the spiritual advisers of so religious a monarch must have been well aware that their own creed formed an essential part of the Jewish constitution; and we cannot doubt that they would carefully have impressed this fact on their willing pupil, not as a startling disclosure made only after he had been seventeen years on the throne and had attained the age of twenty-five, but as one of his earliest and most familiar lessons. In fact, this sudden discovery, in some secret recess of the temple, of a hitherto unknown volume, concerning whose claims to authority or antiquity the writers preserve a mysterious silence, rather suggests the notion of a Jehovistic coup d'etat, prepared by the zeal of Hilkiah the priest and Shaphan the scribe. A long time had passed since the accession of the king. His favorable dispositions were well known. Since the eighth year of his reign at least he had been under the influence of the priests, and in the twelfth he had entered (no doubt under their directions) upon that career of persecuting violence which was usual with pious monarchs in Judea.[1] His mind was undoubtedly predisposed to receive with implicit confidence any statements they might make. Hence, if Hilkiah and his associates had conceived the idea of compiling, from materials at their
- ↑ So in 2 Chron. xxiv. 3-7. But in 2 Kings xxii. 1, 2, there is no mention of the period at which "he began to seek after the God of David."
