Women in Scripture #2--Huldah

As I study this topic of women found in our Scripture, I am astounded at the leadership roles I find in the Old Testament and how the gender of the person delivering the word from God is never an issue. They receive it as authoritative because it comes from God, not because it comes from a man or woman.

Today I want to look briefly at Huldah. Reason being, I simply find the account of Huldah fascinating. Her story can be found in 2 Kgs 22:14-20 and 2 Chr 34:11-28. I would recommend reading it when you get the chance. Basically Huldah is summoned after Josiah's servants find a document during his temple renovations.

Huldah is summoned to validate whether or not the document is authentic. Huldah is a temple prophet, which as we have discussed before functions in the same role a pastor would today. She is not the only prophet during this time, however. Jeremiah is prophesying during this time as well. In fact, Jeremiah is probably closer in distance to Josiah than Huldah (according to some commentators), yet Huldah is summoned. This should put to rest the whole "women can serve if there is no man to step up" argument.

The story ends with Huldah declaring that the document found during the Temple renovations is authentic. Most people think that this document found is what we refer to in our Scriptures as the book of Deuteronomy. There is some debate about this, but the internal evidence seems to point to this conclusion.

So the story is basically about a WOMAN authenticating a document that is central to both Judaism and Christianity. Jesus quotes this book more than any other. So it could be said that God used a woman to start the canonization process by using her position as prophet to authenticate the writing as being from God.

Further, Huldah functions in the role of pastor more than Deborah. She takes a written text and interprets it, and then her prophetic words of judgment are based on a written text. Isn't this what pastors do every Sunday? Not the judgment part, but take a text and discern how the text applies to their congregation, and then speak prophetically from the pulpit on Sunday mornings?

Note also Josiah's reaction. It wasn't a "I can't listen to this, she is a woman" attitude. Rather he recognizes the authority with which this prophet is speaking, and quickly makes changes (tears his clothes because he realizes that they haven't been doing what is pleasing to God).

Isn't it ironic that the first person to authenticate a written text that is in our sacred literature was a woman. Yet, today they are not seen (in most churches) as having the right criteria to preach. Weird...Women are good enough to be used by God, but we have a problem with women in certain roles...