A Prophet Named Huldah

This week’s reading marks five pivotal moments in the history of the House of Israel. Several of these moments are well known, but the central one is almost always passed over in silence or with scant mention. In this post, I propose to linger without apology over the consequential ministry of one of the Bible’s most unheralded figures, the prophet Huldah.

Of the five pivotal moments that structure our story, the first two and the last two are relatively well-known:

1. Moment 1: Israel (the northern kingdom) is conquered by Assyria and depopulated, its inhabitants either killed or taken into cities of exile (2 Kings 17:5–6).
2. Moment 2: The book of the law is rediscovered in the temple at Jerusalem and presented to Josiah, the penultimate king of the remaining southern kingdom of Judah (2 Kings 22:8–11).
3. Moment 3: To be addressed below.
4. Moment 4: In accordance with the law reiterated in the scroll, Josiah institutes earnest reforms in the worship of Jehovah throughout the kingdom of Judah (2 Kings 23:1–27).
5. Moment 5: Under Josiah’s rebellious successors, culminating with King Zedekiah, Babylon besieges and destroys Jerusalem and carries the remaining population away into captivity (2 Kings 24).

To appreciate the significance of the third and central moment, we return to the reaction that King Josiah had to the law being discovered and read to him (moment 2): “When the king heard the words of the book of the law, he tore his clothes,” a sign of extreme distress and mourning (2 Kings 22:11 NRSV). The reason, of course, is that, as recorded in the book, Jehovah had offered blessings for obedience to the law but also dire curses for disobedience, and Josiah immediately recognized that if this book was correct, Judah was in very serious trouble.

Shaken by the yawning gap between their current practices and what God prescribed in the law of Moses, King Josiah wanted to make sure there wasn’t a mistake in what he was hearing. So, “the king commanded the priest Hilkiah [and others], saying, ‘Go, inquire of the LORD for me, for the people, and for all Judah, concerning the words of this book that has been found; for great is the wrath of the LORD that is kindled against us, because our ancestors did not obey the words of this book, to do according to all that is written concerning us’” (2 Kings 22:13).

Obediently, the king’s delegation sought out a prophet with recognized authority to speak in the name of Jehovah. They had a number of options here: Jeremiah was well known in Jerusalem for his dire warnings to the people, and the prophet Zephaniah was also active during this period. But on this occasion, they “went to the prophetess Huldah, the wife of Shallum,” who “resided in Jerusalem in the Second Quarter, where they consulted her” (2 Kings 22:14). What the prophet Huldah had to say was as blunt and powerful as anything her well-known contemporary prophets may have uttered. It was couched in a fourfold use of the oracular formula “thus says the LORD,” and should be quoted in full:

She declared to them, “Thus says the LORD, the God of Israel: Tell the man who sent you to me, Thus says the LORD, I will indeed bring disaster on this place and on its inhabitants—all the words of the book that the king of Judah has read. Because they have abandoned me and have made offerings to other gods, so that they have provoked me to anger with all the work of their hands, therefore my wrath will be kindled against this place, and it will not be quenched. But as to the king of Judah, who sent you to inquire of the LORD, thus shall you say to him, Thus says the LORD, the God of Israel: Regarding the words that you have heard, because your heart was penitent, and you humbled yourself before the LORD, when you heard how I spoke against this place, and against its inhabitants, that they should become a desolation and a curse, and because you have torn your clothes and wept before me, I also have heard you, says the LORD. Therefore, I will gather you to your ancestors, and you shall be gathered to your grave in peace; your eyes shall not see all the disaster that I will bring on this place” (2 Kings 22:15–20; see also 2 Chronicles 34:22–28).

The king’s messengers brought this very sobering oracle back to him from Huldah, and over time, it all happened as she said it would. The chroniclers report that Josiah did his best to show Judah’s repentance. He abolished idolatrous equipment and practices from the temple and other sites and instituted an observance of Passover such as had not been seen “since the days of the judges who judged Israel” (2 Kings 23:22). Though he died in battle with Egypt, Josiah died a free man before he or his people could be brought under the violent oppression of Babylon. During his life, his people remained settled at Jerusalem, and he died “in peace,” having left his kingdom more in harmony with the Lord than it had been when he came to the throne. Nevertheless, though the Lord, through Huldah, had conceded to delay Judah’s fate until after the righteous king was dead, the doom of the nation as a whole was certain because of decades of unrepentant idolatry and neglect of the law of the Lord.

Huldah is referred to as “the prophetess” (emphasis added), suggesting that, in the author’s mind, she was a well-known figure with a stable reputation as a spokesperson for the Lord. As Jewish commentators have long recognized, she not only reiterated the consequences for idolatry spelled out in the law but, in doing so, she “authenticated the divine source of its teaching.”¹ Robert Alter has pointed out that she apparently did all of this without even reading the text of the book in question,² a seeric function that recalls how Joseph Smith himself operated when establishing scripture (for example, translating the Book of Mormon without reading directly from the plates, and delivering the contents of the lost revelation of John the Beloved in D&C 7 without recourse to any textual artifact at all).

Perhaps most significantly, according to multiple scholars, Huldah’s confirmation of the validity of the book of the law of the Lord makes her “the first figure in Scripture, male or female, whose contribution to biblical history centered on verifying a written document as sacred and holy writ.”³ In other words, Huldah’s prophetic witness was a significant milestone in the formation of the Bible itself and in the emergence of a Jewish culture of respect for and diligent attention to the words of Torah that persists to this day. The practical reforms that took place under Josiah as a result of Huldah’s confirmation also sharpened the focus on the temple at Jerusalem as the exclusive ritual site for the worship of Jehovah, another defining element of Jewish belief and practice.

The female prophets of scripture seem too often to draw only the fleeting focus of modern commentators, but their presence in the ancient world was regarded as expected. Women as prophets are common in the archaeological record of the Ancient Near East generally, and the Israelite example is no exception.⁴ The Bible names four women who unambiguously acted or spoke with prophetic authority: Miriam (Exodus 15:20), Deborah (Judges 4:4), Huldah, and Anna (Luke 2:36–38). As Rabbi Neal Gold has written of these figures, “The Bible does not doubt their authenticity nor find their presence remarkable; it seems clear that female as well as male prophets abounded in Israel.”⁵ It is the modern era that appears to be more ill at ease with the idea of female prophets.⁶ But her contribution to the sacred history of the Bible is nevertheless well-documented in both 2 Kings and 2 Chronicles.

Today, Huldah is most visibly remembered by a pair of gates—of double and triple arches, respectively—in the southern wall of the second temple complex at Jerusalem. These were the portals through which most worshippers passed into and out of the sacred site during the time of Jesus. The Lord himself would have used them on some of the most significant occasions of his mortal ministry. Tradition came to call them after her name to reflect that she had lived and prophesied in Jerusalem. Today, both gates have been partially obscured by later additions to the wall, and their arches sealed up with stone so that, to the eyes of the casual observer, the presence of Huldah’s gates, like her impact on sacred history itself, can be easy to miss. But for those with eyes to see, Huldah’s aperture onto the sacred can still be discerned. Just as the gates are structurally part of the edifice of the sacred precinct, Huldah’s prophetic legacy remains precious for the authoritative place it holds in the establishment of the word of the Lord and the building up of the kingdom of God.

Notes

1. Jewish Study Bible, note at 2 Kings 23:16.

2. Alter, The Hebrew Bible, 2 Kings 22 n. 16.

3. Renita J. Weems, “Huldah, the Prophet: Reading a (Deuteronomistic) Woman’s Identity,” in A God So Near, ed. Brent A. Strawn and Nancy R. Bowen (Penn State University Press, 2003), https://doi.org/10.1515/9781575065366-024.

4. “Mesopotamian parallels suggest this story fits a type of account in which a king ostensibly receives a divine directive for cult reform and then validates it through temple personnel. Such parallels confirm Huldah’s role as typical.” Claudia Van Camp, “Huldah: Bible | Jewish Women’s Archive,” accessed April 19, 2026, https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/huldah-bible; see also ibid., “Female Voice, Written Word: Women and Authority in Hebrew Scripture,” in Embodied Love (San Francisco, 1987), 97–113.

5. Rabbi Neal Gold, “Huldah the Prophetess,” in Personalities of the Bible, a blog series at myjewishlearning.com.

6. Huldah, in particular, has received scant attention from modern Jewish and Christian commentators, despite her importance for the history of the Bible. The Latter-day Saints are no exception to this trend. There is no mention of her, for example, in the Come, Follow Me curriculum (including a video dramatizing Josiah’s reign), and no individual entry for her in the Bible Dictionary (though there is one for her husband). She does make the list in the Topical Guide under “Prophetess.”