Part One:
Era of Josiah merged with Era of
Hezekiah
by
Damien F. Mackey
Why did king Josiah, upon the
finding of the Book of the Law, send his chief ministers to consult, not the
male prophets, Jeremiah and Zephaniah, but a mysterious female prophetess named
Huldah (חֻלְדָּה, a Hebrew name supposedly meaning "weasel" or
"mole")? (2 Kings 22:8-20).
The situation becomes even more
extraordinary in the context of my revision which merges the era of king Josiah
with that of king Hezekiah, showing that the king's servant "Asaiah"
of Josiah is to be identified with the great Isaiah himself. Previously I wrote
on this:
"What has king Hezekiah of
Judah to do with Jeremiah? it may well be asked.
That is all explained in my most
recent article:
De-coding Jonah
in which I merge the era of king
Hezekiah with the era of king Josiah, Jeremiah’s era. And so we find:
Hezekiah becomes Josiah;
Hilkiah becomes Hilkiah the high
priest;
Shebna the secretary becomes
Shaphan the secretary;
Joah the recorder becomes Joah
the recorder;
Isaiah becomes Asaiah.
And there will be more names to be added to this
list". [End of quote]
Indeed, I have since added Jeremiah as Eliakim son
of Hilkiah:
Jeremiah was both prophet and high priest
Two things to be noted here.
Firstly, the prophet Isaiah (=
Asaiah), to whom the king was wont to send his officials for consultation
(Isaiah 37:2), is now to be found amongst those of the king's officials
consulting the woman, Huldah. And, secondly, regarding my statement "there
will be more names to be added to this list", we need a female from the
era of king Hezekiah to merge with Huldah of king Josiah's era - a female
pairing to restore some balance for all of those male connections.
Can we find such an incredibly
famous woman at the time of king Hezekiah?
To achieve this, which is the
purpose of this present article (see Part Two), will fully serve to
answer the question in my title above, "Huldah who?"
Part Two: Huldah’s identity
in reign of king Hezekiah
There is
only one woman, and one woman alone, at the time of king Hezekiah of Judah, who
can possibly be identified with the famous prophetess Huldah.
That is
the Simeonite heroine, Judith.
Before I
had realised that the era of Hezekiah had to be merged with the era of Josiah,
Huldah’s era - and having already come to the conclusion that Huldah must be
Judith - I had been forced, chronologically, to regard Huldah as Judith in her old age.
That
interpretation, for me, accounted, perhaps, for how Huldah - traditionally a
mentor of king Josiah - had been able to speak so bluntly about the pious king:
‘Tell the man …’.
2 Kings
22:15-16: “She said to them, ‘This
is what the Lord, the
God of Israel, says: Tell the man who sent you to me, ‘This is what the Lord says: I am going to bring disaster on this place and its
people, according to everything written in the book the king of Judah has
read’.’”
Here was
an aged and famous prophetess, I had thought, bluntly speaking her mind.
{Although
it may have been that Huldah was merely quoting verbatim the words that the
Lord himself had directed her to speak}.
Huldah
appeared to me to have had the same sort of bluntness that Judith had exhibited
when addressing the elders of “Bethulia” (e.g., Judith 8:11-13):
‘… you were wrong to speak to the people as you
did today. You should not have made a solemn promise before God that you would
surrender the town to our enemies if the Lord did not come to our aid within a
few days. What right do you have to
put God to the test as you have done today? Who are you to put yourselves in
God's place in dealing with human affairs? It is
the Lord Almighty that you are putting to the test! Will you never learn?’
And I had
compared Judith, in this regard, with the forthright and outspoken Joan of Arc:
Judith
of Bethulia and Joan of Arc
With
Josiah’s era now to be merged into the era of Hezekiah, though, there must take
place a major chronological reconsideration. Instead of Huldah’s statement
belonging to an historical phase significantly later than the victory of the
young (or young-ish) Judith over the Assyrian commander-in-chief (on this, see
my):
"Nadin" (Nadab) of Tobit is the
"Holofernes" of Judith
the
Huldah incident must now be regarded as pre-dating by some several years
Judith’s victory.
This
would mean that Huldah was quite young when she uttered her words, making it
even more extraordinary that king Josiah had chosen to send his chief
ministers, including the great Isaiah (= Asaiah), all males, to consult the
gifted woman.
In this
way, we might understand Isaiah’s praise of Judith when he, a fellow Simeonite,
said of her, as Uzziah, that Judith’s wisdom was known ever since she was a
child (Judith 8:28-29):
“Then Uzziah answered Judith,
‘Everything you have said makes good sense, and
no one can argue with it. This
is not the first time you have shown wisdom. Ever since you were a child, all
of us have recognized the soundness and maturity of your judgment’.”
Uzziah (=
Isaiah) also calls Judith here ‘a deeply religious woman’ (v. 31).
This, therefore,
must go a long way towards explaining why the woman Huldah (= Judith) was
consulted by king Josiah’s most eminent male officials – even over the great
Isaiah himself.
So,
adding to our former merger:
Hezekiah becomes Josiah;
Hilkiah becomes Hilkiah the high priest;
Shebna the secretary becomes Shaphan the secretary;
Joah the recorder becomes Joah the recorder;
Isaiah becomes Asaiah;
Eliakim son of Hilkiah becomes Jeremiah son of Hilkiah,
Judith becomes Huldah.
This last
identification is not without several difficulties pertaining to genealogy and
geography that will need to be addressed now in Part Three.
Part Three:
The heroine’s husband
Happily, we know something about Judith's
husband, about Huldah’s husband.
But
is the former husband the same person as the latter husband?
Whereas
Judith's husband seems to have been situated in “Bethulia”, identified as
Bethel-Shechem in the north, Huldah, and presumably her husband, appears to
dwell in Jerusalem, in the south.
The
apparent geographical problem, at
least, can easily be accounted for with reference to Isaiah and his father,
Amos, the father-son combination of, respectively, Uzziah and Micah, of the
Book of Judith. Like Judith, these men were Simeonites, and were no doubt
related to her. They spent large portions of their time in the northern Bethel,
but were also often found residing in Jerusalem as advisers to a succession of
kings of Judah.
Jewish
legend even has Amos as the “brother” (no doubt a marriage relationship) of
king Amaziah of Judah.
Judith’s
husband, “Manasseh, who belonged to her tribe and family”, had
died only about three years before the Assyrians invaded Israel (Judith
8:2-5):
Her
husband Manasseh, who belonged to her tribe and family, had died during the
barley harvest. For as he stood overseeing those who were binding sheaves in
the field, he was overcome by the burning heat, and took to his bed and died in
his town Bethulia.
So
they buried him with his ancestors in the field between Dothan and Balamon.
Judith remained as a widow for three years and four months at home where
she set up a tent for herself on the roof of her house. She put sackcloth
around her waist and dressed in widow’s clothing.
He
had left Judith a very wealthy woman (v. 7): “Her husband
Manasseh had left her gold and silver, men and women slaves, livestock, and
fields; and she maintained this estate”.
And
Judith never married again (16:21-24):
After
this they all returned home to their own inheritances. Judith went to Bethulia,
and remained on her estate. For the rest of her life she was honored throughout
the whole country. Many desired to marry her, but she gave herself to no
man all the days of her life after her husband Manasseh died and was gathered
to his people. She became more and more famous, and grew old in her
husband’s house, reaching the age of one hundred five. She set her maid free.
She died in Bethulia, and they buried her in the cave of her husband
Manasseh; and the house of Israel mourned her for seven days. Before she
died she distributed her property to all those who were next of kin to her
husband Manasseh, and to her own nearest kindred.
That
is all that we learn about Manasseh.
We
also need to take into account the fact that names in the Book of Judith have
become confused over time. See e.g. my article:
Book of Judith: confusion of names
Thus
Manasseh, for instance, may be found elsewhere in the Scriptures under a
different name.
Perhaps,
for example, the name “Manasseh” has been derived (in Greek) from a name
like Meshelemiah, Meshillemith, Meshillemoth, Meshullam, Meshullemeth, all being “related
names” to Shallum, the husband of Huldah.
Shallum
was renowned in Jewish legends. We read of Huldah and Shallum in the article, “Huldah”:
https://www.encyclopedia.com/people/philosophy-and-religion/biblical-proper-names-biographies/huldah
HULDAH (Heb. חֻלְדָּה;
"weasel"), wife of Shallum son of Tikvah, the "wardrobe
keeper" of the king; one of the five women in the Bible referred to
as nevi'ah, "female prophet") and the only woman prophet
in the book of Kings (ii Kings 22:14–20). She was consulted by *Josiah when he sent to
"inquire of the Lord" concerning the Book of the Law discovered
during the restoration of the Temple. She prophesied God's ultimate judgment
upon the nation. However, this judgment was to be postponed until after
Josiah's peaceful death because of the king's acts of repentance. Inasmuch as
Josiah's death was not peaceful hers may be a genuine predictive prophecy. Most
of her prophecy is molded by the authors of the Book of Kings in Deuteronomistic
style. It is of interest that women prophets are well-attested in roughly
contemporary Neo-Assyrian sources.
[Tikva S. Frymer /
S. David Sperling (2nd ed.)]
In The Aggadah
She was one of the seven
prophetesses (by rabbinic count) mentioned by name in the Bible. After Josiah
found the copy of the Torah in the Temple, he consulted Huldah rather than
Jeremiah, because he felt that a woman would be more compassionate and more
likely to intercede with God on his behalf (Meg. 14b).
Since Jeremiah was a kinsman
of the prophetess, both being descended from Joshua and Rahab, the king felt no
apprehension that the prophet would resent his preference for Huldah (ibid.).
While Jeremiah admonished and preached repentance to the men she did likewise
to the women (pr 26:129). In addition to being a prophetess, Huldah also
conducted an academy in Jerusalem (Targ., ii Kings 22:14). The "Gate of
Huldah" in the Temple (Mid. 1:3) was formerly the gate leading to Huldah's
schoolhouse (Rashi, ii Kings 22:14). Huldah's husband Shallum, the son of
Tikvah, was a man of noble descent and compassionate. Daily he would go beyond
the city limits carrying a pitcher of water from which he gave every traveler a
drink, and it was as a reward for his good deeds that his wife became a prophetess.
Huldah's unattractive name which means "weasel" is ascribed to her
arrogance when she referred to Josiah as "the man" (ii Kings 22:15)
and not as king.
[Aaron Rothkoff]
Bibliography:
Ginzberg, Legends,
index. add. bibliography: M. Cogan and H. Tadmor, ii
Kings (1988), 295; S. Parpola, Assyrian Prophecies (State
Archives of Assyria vol. ix; 1997), xiviii-lii". [End of quotes]
Huldah's husband
must have been very old (article, “Shallum”, Jewish Encyclopedia):
"....
Even at the time of the prophet Elisha, Shallum was one of the most eminent men
("mi-gedole ha-dor") in the country. Yet he did not think it beneath
his dignity to lend personal aid to the poor and the needy. It was one of his
daily habits to go outside the gates of the city in order that he might give
water to thirsty wanderers. God rewarded him by endowing him and his wife
Huldah with the gift of prophecy. Another special reward was given him for his
philanthropy, for it is he who is referred to in II Kings xiii. 21, where one
who was dead awoke to life after being cast into Elisha's sepulcher and
touching the prophet's bones. A son was granted him, who became distinguished
for exceeding piety—Hanameel, Jeremiah's cousin (Jer. xxxii. 7; Pirḳe R. El.
xxxiii.)".
This
brings us to a deeper problem, genealogy.
Whereas
Judith’s husband, Manasseh, would appear to have been a Simeonite, as he “belonged to her tribe and family”, Shallum was clearly a Levite. He
was “son of Tikvah, the son of Harhas, keeper of the wardrobe” (2 Kings
22:14).
They,
apparently, “lived in Jerusalem, in the New Quarter”.
Shallum's
ancestors, Tikvah and Harhas, were Kohathite Levites (I Chronicles 6:33, 37): “From
the Kohathites .... the son of Tahath [Tikvah], the son of
Assir [Harhas] ...”.
My
tentative explanation
would be that Manasseh was Shallum, a Kohathite Levite, hence related to the
prophet Jeremiah, whose ancestors had set up home in the city of Shechem. “The
hill country of Ephraim gave the Kohathites Shechem, which was a city of refuge
...”.
(Giver
of Truth Biblical Commentary-Vol. 1: Old Testament, pp. 405-406).
There, Shallum had married into the family of Simeon, as the Ephraimite (?)
father of Samuel may have married a Levite. “It is possible that Elkanah was an
Ephraimite who married Hannah, ostensibly a woman from the tribe of Levi”
(Robert D. Bergen, 1, 2 Samuel, p. 64). Shallum, or Manasseh, may have
married a daughter of Judith's ancestor, Merari.
Judith
may have been a wife of Shallum's old age, his second wife.
Shallum,
or Manasseh, “belonged to her tribe and family”, but only, I
suggest, through marriage.
“Before [Judith] died she distributed her
property to all those who were next of kin to her husband Manasseh, and to her
own nearest kindred”.
Shallum
may also have possessed a field in Anathoth (Jeremiah 32:7).
Part Four:
The prophet Zephaniah as Shallum-Manasseh
“Woe to you who long for the
day of the Lord! Why do you long for the day of the Lord?
That day will be darkness, not light”.
That day will be darkness, not light”.
Amos
5:18
“The great day of the Lord is near—near and coming
quickly.
The cry on the day of the Lord is bitter; the Mighty Warrior shouts his battle cry”.
The cry on the day of the Lord is bitter; the Mighty Warrior shouts his battle cry”.
Zephaniah
1:14
Zephaniah
appears to me to have, like Shallum, a Levite
genealogy, except that, whereas Shallum is Kohathite Levite - as argued in Part
Three - the lengthy genealogy of Zephaniah looks to me definitely like
a Merarite Levite one. Zephaniah, who must have been important to have been
introduced with an untypically lengthy genealogy (1:1): “Zephaniah son of
Cushi, the son of Gedaliah, the son of Amariah, the son of Hezekiah [var. Hilkiah]
...”, was, again like Shallum-Manasseh, a contemporary of king Josiah, as
argued above, “during the reign of Josiah ...” (1:1).
In I Chronicles
6 we finally seem to find our genealogical pathway.
Firstly, we are
given the chronological location to the time of king David (vv. 31-32) “These are the men David put in charge of the music in the
house of the Lord
after the Ark came to rest there. They ministered
with music before the tabernacle, the tent of meeting, until Solomon built the
Temple of the Lord in
Jerusalem. They performed their duties according to the regulations laid down
for them”.
Now compare the
genealogy of Zephaniah with this Merarite list (vv. 44, 45):
“... and from their associates, the
Merarites, at his left hand:
Ethan son of Kishi (var. Kushaiah), the son
of Abdi,
the son of Malluk, the
son of Hashabiah,
the son of Amaziah, the son of Hilkiah
...”.
Cushi - Kishi
(var. Kishaiah/Kushaiah); Amaziah - Amariah; Hilkiah - Hilkiah.
Young Jehudi of
Jeremiah 36:14 appears to have been of the very same Cushi lineage: “Jehudi son
of Nethaniah, the son of Shelemiah, the son of Cushi ...”, again an impressive
genealogy.
The “Ethan”
above, in the Merarite list, a contemporary of King David, could possibly be
the same as Jehudi's “Nethaniah”. Thus T. K. Cheyne writes in “From Isaiah to
Ezra: A Study of Ethanites and Jerahmeelites”, The American Journal of
Theology, 5, no. 3 (Jul., 1901), p. 435: “Elnathan is a variation of
Nethaniah, which is an altered form (note the reflex action of n) of
the ethnic Ethani”.
This would then
give us the Merarite line as (with gaps):
Nethaniah-Ethan;
Cushi - Kishi (Kishaiah); Amaziah - Amariah; Hilkiah - Hilkiah.
{I am not
claiming that the names Amaziah and Amariah are of the same meaning, but they
are alike and might easily have been confused}.
Given that
Jehudi, at the time of Baruch, was at least a close contemporary of the prophet
Zephaniah, the latter’s ancestor “Cushi” could not have been his actual father,
as the superscription of Zephaniah 1:1 might seem to imply. Cushi was at the
very least the great grandfather of Jehudi, and hence a few generations removed
from Zephaniah.
Remember that
Eliakim (son of Hilkiah), high priest at the time of king Hezekiah, was still
in office, as Jehoiakim (son of Hilkiah) in the days of Baruch, Jehudi’s
contemporary.
Zephaniah a
Simeonite?
With Shallum,
husband of Huldah (my Judith), a Kohathite Levite, and the prophet Zephaniah, a
Merarite Levite, I would have left the matter alone right there.
Except that
there is a tradition (pseudo-Epiphanius) that Zephaniah was a Simeonite - as I
have argued Shallum to have been (as Judith’s husband “Manasseh”) through
marriage. Regarding the Simeonite tradition, we read in The Holy Bible,
Containing the Old and New Testament, and Apocrypha, Volume 2:
According to Epiphanius,
[Zephaniah] was of the tribe of Simeon, and of mount Sarabatha, a place not
mentioned in Scripture. Dr. Gray thinks it probable, that the place of his
nativity was Saraa, near Eshthaol, in the tribe of Simeon, which, by the
addition of the common word beth to the name of places, would come
near to Sarabatha. The Jews are of opinion, that the ancestors of Zephaniah,
mentioned at the beginning of this prophecy, were all prophets themselves. Some
have pretended, but without any foundation, except from the enumeration of his
ancestors, that he was of an illustrious family.
Zephaniah would
most certainly have been “of an illustrious family”, “all prophets themselves”,
if he were related through marriage to the Simeonite clan of Amos, Isaiah, and
Judith (= the prophetess Huldah). Tradition has Zephaniah “buried in a cave” in
the north, and Judith’s husband was likewise buried in a cave near “Bethulia”
(my Shechem) (Judith 16:22).
It would not be
surprising, then, if Zephaniah (meaning “northerner’?) were closely related to
Amos and Isaiah, that one might find, as Greg A. King writes (“The Message of
Zephaniah: an urgent echo”, Andrews
University Seminary Studies, Autumn 1996, Vol. 32, No. 2, p. 212), “thematic
and verbal parallels between the book of Zephaniah … and the books of the
eighth-century prophets, Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, and Micah …”.
In my revision,
Amos is Micah and Isaiah is Hosea (refer back to “De-coding Jonah” article).
Marriage would
be the likely way that a Merarite Levite would find his way into the Ephraïmite
city of Shechem, which was, as we have found, a city of refuge for the
Kohathites. It was not one of the cities set aside for the Merarites, however
(I Chronicles 6:63): “The
descendants of Merari, clan by clan, were allotted twelve towns from the tribes
of Reuben, Gad and Zebulun”.
Zephaniah's
genealogy includes the name Hezekiah, though some versions have Hilkiah, which
I accept. Regarding any connection back to king Hezekiah, some have expressed
doubts about this. For instance, according to the Jewish virtual library: “The
genealogy given in Zephaniah 1:1 traces Zephaniah's ancestry back four
generations to a certain Hezekiah, who some have identified with Hezekiah, king
of Judah (715–687 B.C.E.) [sic], although
this identification is sometimes doubted because Hezekiah is not referred to as
king ...”:
The connection
would be quite impossible in my revision, given that Zephaniah was an actual
contemporary of king Hezekiah, as Josiah. As said, some texts replace the name
“Hezekiah” with the variant reading, “Hilkiah”, in Zephaniah's superscription.
“Hilkiah”, I
believe, is the correct reading.
Can my Shallum =
Manasseh, a Kohathite Levite, be connected to the prophet Zephaniah, a Merarite
Levite, through, say, a marital fusion of the two related families?
Perhaps Ethan is
the vital connection between Kohathite and Merarite.
…. It is not impossible,
however, that the names “Heman, Calcol, and Dara” have been interpolated in the
text of Chronicles [from] the passage in Kings, especially as the writer goes
on to state only the descendants of Carmi or Zimri and Ethan [verses 7,8]. In
this case Ethan, the son of Zerah, may be Ethan the Ezrahite; but there is no
Heman the Ezrahite.
-
Kitte, S.V. A readier solution of the whole difficulty
would be to suppose that “Ezrahite” in the title to Psalm 88 is merely an
orthographical variety for IZRAHITE … Ch 26:23 …, a Levitical family to which
the musical Heman certainly belonged [I Ch 1:33-38]; and that the epithet has
crept into the title of Psalm 89 by assimilation of the names of Ethan and
Heman so frequently associated together [these two Psalms being apparently
closely related in authorship, and perhaps originally joined together; [see]
Delitzsch, Commentar fib. den Psalter, 1;653
sq.]. SEE ZARHITE.
-
For the Izharites
were Kohathite Levites:
(Izharites): “The descendants of Izhar, son of Kohath,
and grandson of Levi (Numbers
3:19,27). In David's reign some of these were
"over the treasures of the house of Yahweh" (1 Chronicles
26:23), others "were for the outward business
over Israel, for officers and judges" (ibid., 26:29)”.
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