Huldah

Based on Wikipedia: Huldah

When the most powerful men in ancient Judah needed to know whether a mysterious scroll was truly the word of God, they didn't consult the high priest. They didn't seek out the famous prophet Jeremiah. They went to a woman named Huldah.

This is remarkable.

In a world where women rarely appear in historical records except as wives or mothers of important men, Huldah commanded such authority that kings sent delegations to her door. She didn't soften her words or defer to royal sensibilities. When the messengers arrived, she didn't say "Tell the great King Josiah" or even "Tell His Majesty." She said, bluntly, "Tell the man who sent you."

The Discovery That Changed Everything

The year was around 622 BCE, during the reign of King Josiah of Judah. Workers were renovating Solomon's Temple—that grand structure built centuries earlier, which had fallen into disrepair under kings who had turned away from the worship of Yahweh to embrace foreign gods.

During the construction work, the high priest Hilkiah found something. Hidden away, perhaps deliberately concealed, was a scroll. Not just any scroll—this one claimed to contain the Law of God. The book that was found is widely believed by scholars to have been an early version of Deuteronomy, or at least significant portions of it.

When the scroll was read to King Josiah, he tore his clothes in grief and terror. This was the ancient Near Eastern equivalent of a complete breakdown. The book described blessings for those who followed God's commands and devastating curses for those who didn't. Looking around at his kingdom—at the foreign altars, the idol worship, the abandoned covenant—Josiah could see which category his people fell into.

But was the scroll authentic?

This was no small question. Anyone could write words on parchment and claim divine authority. The fate of a nation hung on determining whether this document was genuinely sacred scripture or an elaborate forgery. Josiah assembled a team of his most trusted officials: Hilkiah the high priest, Ahikam, Acbor, Shaphan the royal secretary, and Asaiah the king's personal attendant.

He sent them to Huldah.

The Woman in the Second Quarter

Huldah lived in Jerusalem, in an area called the Mishneh—translated variously as the "Second Quarter," the "New Quarter," or in the old King James Version, rather confusingly, "the college." This was probably a newer section of the city that had been developed as Jerusalem expanded beyond its original walls.

Her husband was a man named Shallum, whose job was "keeper of the wardrobe"—likely referring to the sacred vestments worn by priests in Temple worship. This was a position of some prestige, suggesting the family had connections to the religious establishment. Yet it's telling that when introducing Huldah, the biblical text gives us more information about her husband's genealogy than about her own background. We learn that Shallum was the son of Tokhath (or Tikvah, depending on which biblical book you're reading), who was the son of Harhas (or Hasrah).

About Huldah herself—her family, her upbringing, how she came to be recognized as a prophet—we know almost nothing.

Her name, though, carries meaning. "Huldah" derives from a Hebrew root that means "to abide" or "to continue." Some have connected this etymologically to the word for a weasel or mole, burrowing creatures that persist in hidden places. Whether her parents intended this association or the name carried other connotations in ancient Hebrew that we've lost is impossible to say.

Speaking for God

What happened when the delegation arrived at Huldah's home reveals the extraordinary nature of her authority.

She didn't examine the scroll for signs of authenticity. She didn't test the parchment or analyze the handwriting. Instead, she spoke directly as the voice of God: "This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says..."

Her message was devastating. Yes, the scroll was authentic. Yes, all those curses were genuine. And yes, they were coming. Disaster would fall upon Jerusalem and its people because generations had abandoned the covenant, burned incense to other gods, and provoked the Lord to anger with their idols.

But then came a twist of mercy.

For Josiah himself, there would be grace. Because he had responded to the words of the scroll with genuine repentance—tearing his clothes, humbling himself before God—he would be spared the worst. "You will be gathered to your grave in peace," Huldah prophesied. "Your eyes will not see all the disaster I am going to bring on this place."

This prophecy raises a historical puzzle. Josiah did not, in fact, die peacefully. In 609 BCE, he was killed in battle at Megiddo when he unwisely tried to stop the Egyptian Pharaoh Necho II from marching through his territory. Some interpreters resolve this by noting that Huldah promised he wouldn't see the destruction of Jerusalem—and indeed, that catastrophe came decades after his death, when the Babylonians sacked the city in 586 BCE. Others suggest "peace" meant something different than we assume, or that Josiah's death, while violent, was "peaceful" in the sense of coming before the true horrors began.

Why Huldah and Not Jeremiah?

Here's a question that puzzled ancient rabbis: Why did Josiah send his officials to Huldah when the prophet Jeremiah was active at the same time?

Jeremiah is one of the most famous prophets in the Hebrew Bible. He has an entire book named after him. His prophecies fill chapter after chapter with poetry and proclamation. Yet when the king needed divine guidance on the most important religious question of his reign, he bypassed Jeremiah entirely.

The rabbis of the Talmud—the vast compilation of Jewish legal and theological commentary completed around 500 CE—offered several explanations. One tradition, recorded in the tractate Megillah, suggests that Josiah chose Huldah precisely because she was a woman. Women, the reasoning went, are more easily moved to compassion. Perhaps she would be more likely than Jeremiah to intercede with God on behalf of the king and plead for mercy.

Another tradition proposed a practical division of labor: while Jeremiah preached repentance to the men, Huldah addressed the women. This would have allowed both prophets to work simultaneously without competition or conflict.

A third tradition, found in the Targum—ancient Aramaic translations and paraphrases of biblical texts—states that Huldah was not only a prophet but also a teacher who lectured publicly. One tradition specifically says she taught "the oral doctrine," suggesting she had a role in religious education that went beyond prophecy.

The rabbis also connected Huldah and Jeremiah through genealogy, claiming both were descendants of Rahab—the Canaanite woman who helped the Israelite spies at Jericho and was rewarded by being incorporated into the people of Israel. According to this tradition, Rahab married Joshua himself, and from that union eventually came both prophets.

The First Canon-Maker

Some scholars have made a striking claim about Huldah's significance: she may have been the first person in recorded history to declare a written text to be Holy Scripture.

Think about what that means. Before Huldah's pronouncement, there was no Bible as we know it. There were traditions, oral stories, perhaps written records kept by priests and scribes. But the idea that a specific written document carried divine authority—that it was the very word of God in material form—seems to have crystallized in that moment in Josiah's Jerusalem.

Huldah's oracle, as scholars call her prophetic speech, does something linguistically significant. It identifies "the words the King of Judah heard" with "what Yahweh had spoken." The scroll and the divine voice are equated. The text becomes scripture.

This is the foundation upon which the entire concept of biblical canon rests. Christians, Jews, and Muslims—religions that collectively count billions of adherents—all trace their scriptural traditions to texts that were validated in the way Huldah validated the book found in the Temple.

A woman standing in the Second Quarter of ancient Jerusalem, speaking words that would echo through three thousand years of human history.

Female Prophets in Ancient Israel

Huldah was not the only woman to prophesy in the Hebrew Bible, but she belongs to a very small circle.

The most famous is probably Miriam, the sister of Moses, who is called a prophet in the book of Exodus. After the crossing of the Red Sea, she led the women of Israel in a song of celebration. The book of Numbers also records a troubling story in which she and Aaron challenged Moses's authority and she was struck with a skin disease as punishment—though she was later healed.

Then there's Deborah, who appears in the book of Judges. She served as both a prophet and a judge over Israel, sitting under a palm tree to decide disputes and eventually leading the nation in a war against the Canaanite general Sisera. Her story is one of the longest and most detailed accounts of a woman's leadership in the Hebrew Bible.

The prophet Isaiah mentions an unnamed "prophetess" in Isaiah chapter 8. Some scholars believe this was simply Isaiah's wife, and the title reflected his own prophetic status rather than hers. Others argue she had her own prophetic calling. The text doesn't say enough for certainty.

Much later, in the New Testament, an elderly widow named Anna is identified as a prophet who recognized the infant Jesus when his parents brought him to the Temple.

What distinguishes Huldah is the nature of her authority. Miriam's prophetic role is mentioned almost in passing. Deborah's prophecy is intertwined with her political and military leadership. But Huldah's brief appearance in the biblical narrative shows her exercising purely prophetic authority at the highest level, consulted by kings and high priests, validating scripture, pronouncing judgment on nations.

The Gates That Bear Her Name

If you visit Jerusalem today and walk along the southern wall of the Temple Mount—that vast platform where the Second Temple once stood and where the Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa Mosque now stand—you'll find ancient gates that have been sealed for centuries.

These are the Huldah Gates.

The name appears in Jewish sources from the Mishnah, compiled around 200 CE, though scholars debate whether the gates were named for the prophet Huldah or whether the name has some other derivation. The Hebrew word that became her name could theoretically have other applications.

Two sets of gates are visible in the southern wall. The eastern set is a triple gate—three arched openings that once led through a tunnel and up a stairway to the Temple platform above. The western set, the double gate, functioned similarly. During the Second Temple period, these would have been the main entrance for ordinary worshippers approaching the Temple from the south.

The gates were sealed during the medieval period, and the original structures are now largely hidden behind later construction. But they remain, silent monuments—if indeed they carry her name—to the woman who spoke God's word to a trembling king.

Where Lies the Prophet?

Two traditions claim to know where Huldah was buried, and they point to completely different places.

The older tradition comes from the Tosefta, an early collection of Jewish legal teachings compiled around the same time as the Mishnah. It states that Huldah was buried between the walls of Jerusalem. This might mean within the city walls, perhaps in some location that was honored as a prophet's resting place. Or it might refer to a spot in the space between the old walls and newer fortifications, in a kind of intermediate zone.

During the Middle Ages, a different tradition emerged. This one identified Huldah's tomb with a cave carved into the rock beneath a mosque on the Mount of Olives, near the Church of the Ascension. The Mount of Olives, rising east of the old city across the Kidron Valley, has been used as a burial site for millennia and holds profound significance in Jewish, Christian, and Muslim traditions.

The confusion arises because the same site has been associated with different holy women by different religious traditions. Christians connected it to the Virgin Mary or to a woman mentioned in their scriptures. Muslims identified it with figures from their tradition. And Jews, at some point, claimed it for Huldah.

Whether either tradition preserves genuine historical memory—whether anyone in the sixth century BCE would have thought to mark and remember the grave of a prophet, and whether that memory could have survived through the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem, the subsequent exile, the rebuilding, the Roman conquest, and countless other upheavals—is impossible to verify.

A Prophet in Nine Verses

Huldah's entire biblical appearance consists of nine verses. That's it. In a text that devotes chapters to the exploits of kings and the oracles of prophets, she appears for a brief, brilliant moment and then vanishes from the narrative.

We don't know when she began prophesying or how she was recognized as having this gift. We don't know what she thought about Josiah's reforms—though presumably she approved, given her message. We don't know what happened to her after this consultation, whether she lived to see the king's death at Megiddo, whether she prophesied again.

What we know is this: at a pivotal moment in the religious history of Israel—perhaps the pivotal moment, when the concept of scripture as we understand it was born—a woman spoke with authority that kings obeyed. She validated a text that would become sacred to billions. She pronounced judgment and mercy in God's name.

And then silence.

The brevity of her appearance makes her significance all the more striking. She didn't need a long narrative to establish her importance. She didn't need biographical details or character development. She appeared, she spoke the word of the Lord, and that was enough.

The Enduring Question

Scholars continue to study Huldah, asking questions that the biblical text doesn't answer. How did a woman achieve such prominence in a patriarchal society? Was there a tradition of female prophets in Israel that the male-authored texts have largely obscured? What was the relationship between her prophetic activity and the religious reforms that Josiah undertook?

Some feminist scholars have argued that Huldah's brief appearance in the Bible is itself evidence of suppression—that her story was minimized by editors who were uncomfortable with female religious authority. Others have pointed out that the story as it stands is remarkably positive about her role, showing no embarrassment about consulting a woman prophet.

The truth is we simply don't have enough evidence to know. The biblical writers included her story because it was apparently integral to the narrative of Josiah's reforms and the discovery of the law book. Whether there were other stories about her that were left out, or whether the nine verses we have represent everything that was remembered, is lost to history.

What remains is her voice, speaking across millennia.

"This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says..."

In a world where women were rarely heard in public life, where their words were seldom recorded, where their authority was constantly questioned, Huldah spoke—and kings listened, priests obeyed, and scripture was born.