Charles Ellicott Commentary 2 Kings 22:3

"And it came to pass in the eighteenth year of king Josiah, that the king sent Shaphan, the son of Azaliah the son of Meshullam, the scribe, to the house of Jehovah, saying," — 2 Kings 22:3 (ASV)

In the eighteenth year. — See the Notes on 2 Chronicles 34:3 and following. The discourses of Jeremiah, who began his prophetic ministry in the thirteenth year of Josiah, to which Thenius refers as incomprehensible on the assumption that idolatry was extirpated throughout the country in the twelfth year of this king, would be quite reconcilable even with that assumption, which, however, it is not necessary to make, as is shown in the Notes on Chronicles.

Josiah did not succeed, any more than Hezekiah, in rooting out the spirit of apostasy (Jeremiah 4:2). The young king was, no doubt, influenced for good by the discourses of Jeremiah and Zephaniah; but it is not easy to account for his heeding the prophetic teachings, considering that, as the grandson of Manasseh and the son of Amon, he must have been brought up under precisely opposite influences (Thenius).

The king sent Shaphan ... the scribe. — Chronicles mentions, besides Maaseiah, the governor of the city, and Joah the recorder.

Thenius pronounces these personages fictitious for the following reasons:

1. Only the scribe is mentioned in 2 Kings 12:10 (?).
2. Joshua was the governor of the city at that time (but this is not quite clear: the Joshua of 2 Kings 23:8 may have been a former governor; or, as Maaseiah and Joshua are very much alike in Hebrew, one name may be a corruption of the other).
3. Maaseiah seems to have been manufactured out of the Asahiah of 2 Kings 22:12 (but Asahiah is mentioned as a distinct person in 2 Chronicles 34:20).
4. Joah the recorder seems to have been borrowed from 2 Kings 18:18 (as if anything could be inferred from a recurrence of the same name, and that probably in the same family!).

Upon such a basis of mere conjecture, the inference is raised that the chronicler invented these names in order “to give a colour of genuine history to his narrative.”

It is obvious to reply that Shaphan only is mentioned here, as the chief man in the business (Compare also 2 Kings 18:17; 2 Kings 19:8).

Go up to Hilkiah the priest. — The account of the repair of the Temple under Josiah naturally resembles that of the same proceeding under Joash (2 Kings 12:10 and following). More than 200 years had elapsed since then, so that the fabric might well stand in need of repair, apart from the defacements it had undergone at the hands of heathenish princes (2 Chronicles 34:2). The text does not say that the repair of the Temple had been “longtemps négligée par l’incurie des prêtres” (Reuss).

Hilkiah. — See 1 Chronicles 6:13 for this high priest. He is a different person from Hilkiah, the father of Jeremiah, who was a priest, but not high priest (Jeremiah 1:1).

That he may sum — i.e., make up, ascertain the amount of... The Septuagint reads, seal up (σφράγισον), which implies a Hebrew verb, of which the one in the present Hebrew text might be a corruption.

Which the keepers of the door. — See the Notes on 2 Kings 12:9; 2 Kings 12:11–12, as to the contents of this and the next verse.