And Hilkiah the high priest said unto Shaphan the scribe, I have found the book of the law in the house of the LORD. And Hilkiah gave the book to Shaphan, and he read it.
Hilkiah ... said ... I have found the book of the law ... - i:e., the law of Moses-the Pentateuch. It was the temple copy, which having been laid (Deuteronomy 31:25-26 beside the ark in the most holy place and during the ungodily reins of Manasseh and Amon-perhaps under Ahaz, when the temple itself had been profaned by idols, and the ark also (2 Chronicles 35:3) removed from its site-was somehow lost, and was now found again during the repair of the temple (Keil, in loco). The Gemara says that it had been probably deposited in a secret recess of the house of God, by some faithful priest, in those times of abounding iniquity, when its publicity might have endangered the very existence of that best treasure of the sanctuary. Delivered by Hilkiah, the discoverer to Shaphan, the scribe, it was by the latter shown and read to the king. It is thought, with great probability, that the passage read to the king, and by which the royal mind was so greatly excited, was a portion of Deuteronomy-the 28th, 29th, and 30th chapters-in which is recorded a renewal of the national covenant, and an enumeration of the terrible threats and curses denounced against all who violated the law, whether prince or people.
The impressions of grief and terror which the reading produced on the mind of Josiah have seemed to many unaccountable. And as it is certain, from the extensive and familiar knowledge displayed by the prophets, that there were numbers of other copies in popular circulation, the king must have known its sacred contents in some degree. But he might have been a stranger to the passage read to him; or the reading of it might, in the special circumstances, have found a way to his heart in a manner that he never felt before. His strong faith in the Divine Word, and his painful consciousness that the woeful and long-continued apostasies of the people had exposed them to the infliction of the judgment denounced, must have come with overwhelming force on the heart of so pious a prince.