Hilkiah () was a

Kohen Kohen (, ; , ، Arabic كاهن , Kahen) is the Hebrew word for "priest", used in reference to the Aaronic Priest#Judaism, priesthood, also called Aaronites or Aaronides. They are traditionally believed, and halakha, halakhically required, to ...

Israelite Israelites were a Hebrew language, Hebrew-speaking ethnoreligious group, consisting of tribes that lived in Canaan during the Iron Age. Modern scholarship describes the Israelites as emerging from indigenous Canaanites, Canaanite populations ...

priest at the time of King Josiah (reigned c. 641–609 BCE).

Biblical account

His name is mentioned in II Kings. He was the

High Priest The term "high priest" usually refers either to an individual who holds the office of ruler-priest, or to one who is the head of a religious organisation. Ancient Egypt In ancient Egypt, a high priest was the chief priest of any of the many god ...

and is known for finding a lost copy of the Book of the Law at the

Temple in Jerusalem The Temple in Jerusalem, or alternatively the Holy Temple (; , ), refers to the two religious structures that served as the central places of worship for Israelites and Jews on the modern-day Temple Mount in the Old City of Jerusalem. Accord ...

at the time that King

Josiah Josiah () or Yoshiyahu was the 16th king of Judah (–609 BCE). According to the Hebrew Bible, he instituted major religious reforms by removing official worship of gods other than Yahweh. Until the 1990s, the biblical description of Josiah’s ...

commanded that

Solomon's Temple Solomon's Temple, also known as the First Temple (), was a biblical Temple in Jerusalem believed to have existed between the 10th and 6th centuries Common Era, BCE. Its description is largely based on narratives in the Hebrew Bible, in which it ...

be refurbished according to

2 Kings 22 2 Kings 22 is the twenty-second chapter of the second part of the Books of Kings in the Hebrew Bible or the Second Book of Kings in the Old Testament of the Christian Bible. The book is a compilation of various annals recording the acts of the ...

:8. His preaching may have helped spur Josiah to return Judah to the worship of

Yahweh Yahweh was an Ancient Semitic religion, ancient Semitic deity of Weather god, weather and List of war deities, war in the History of the ancient Levant, ancient Levant, the national god of the kingdoms of Kingdom of Judah, Judah and Kingdom ...

, God of Israel. Hilkiah may have been the same Hilkiah who was the father of

Jeremiah Jeremiah ( – ), also called Jeremias, was one of the major prophets of the Hebrew Bible. According to Jewish tradition, Jeremiah authored the Book of Jeremiah, book that bears his name, the Books of Kings, and the Book of Lamentations, with t ...

of Libnah. As such, he would have lived in Anathoth in the land of

Benjamin Benjamin ( ''Bīnyāmīn''; "Son of (the) right") blue letter bible: https://www.blueletterbible.org/lexicon/h3225/kjv/wlc/0-1/ H3225 - yāmîn - Strong's Hebrew Lexicon (kjv) was the younger of the two sons of Jacob and Rachel, and Jacob's twe ...

, and was the father of an influential family in the

Kingdom of Judah The Kingdom of Judah was an Israelites, Israelite kingdom of the Southern Levant during the Iron Age. Centered in the highlands to the west of the Dead Sea, the kingdom's capital was Jerusalem. It was ruled by the Davidic line for four centuries ...

. However, it is possible that Jeremiah was the son of a different man named Hilkiah because this is not mentioned in genealogies recorded in the Book of Chronicles. Hilkiah is attested in extrabiblical sources by the clay bulla naming a Hilkiah as the father of an Azariah and by the seal reading "Hanan son of Hilkiah the priest."

The Book of the Law

According to an account in 2 Kings (chapter 22) and

2 Chronicles The Book of Chronicles ( , "words of the days") is a book in the Hebrew Bible, found as two books (1–2 Chronicles) in the Christian Old Testament. Chronicles is the final book of the Hebrew Bible, concluding the third section of the Jewish Tan ...

(chapter 34), Hilkiah was High Priest at the Temple in Jerusalem during the reign of King Josiah of Judah (639–609 BC) and the discoverer of "the Book of the Law" in the Temple in the 18th year of Josiah's reign (622 BC). Scholars almost universally agree that the book Hilkiah found was the

Book of Deuteronomy Deuteronomy (; ) is the fifth book of the Torah (in Judaism), where it is called () which makes it the fifth book of the Hebrew Bible and Christian Old Testament. Chapters 1–30 of the book consist of three sermons or speeches delivered to ...

Extra-biblical sources

Hilkiah's name is mentioned on a seal ring and a bulla. The first object where his name is mentioned is a seal ring found in 1980. On the seal is a three-line inscription, in reverse letters, as is usual, so that the letters will read properly when impressed in a lump of clay. The script incised in the seal is what scholars call

paleo-Hebrew The Paleo-Hebrew script (), also Palaeo-Hebrew, Proto-Hebrew or Old Hebrew, is the writing system found in Canaanite and Aramaic inscriptions, including pre-Biblical and Biblical Hebrew, from southern Canaan, also known as the biblical kingdoms o ...

, used by the Israelites before the

Babylonian captivity The Babylonian captivity or Babylonian exile was the period in Jewish history during which a large number of Judeans from the ancient Kingdom of Judah were forcibly relocated to Babylonia by the Neo-Babylonian Empire. The deportations occurred ...

, before the destruction of Jerusalem in 586 BC. The inscription reads: "(Belonging) to Hanan, son (of) Hilkiah the priest". It begins with the Hebrew letter '' lamed'', meaning "belonging to", indicating the seal's ownership. Then the name of the seal's owner, the name of his father and the function of the seal's owner. The second object is a bulla found in Jerusalem in 1982. A bulla was used to seal a document. The document's owner took a lump of soft clay; he affixed the clay to the string binding the document and then stamped it with his seal. This bulla was one of the fifty-one bullae discovered during excavations in the eastern slope of Jerusalem in a dated archaeological context. This collection of bullae was found in level 10, dated between Josiah's rule and the destruction of the city by the Babylonian king

Nebuchadnezzar II Nebuchadnezzar II, also Nebuchadrezzar II, meaning "Nabu, watch over my heir", was the second king of the Neo-Babylonian Empire, ruling from the death of his father Nabopolassar in 605 BC to his own death in 562 BC. Often titled Nebuchadnezzar ...

in 586 BC, and more precisely from the highest ground of the building (level 10B). This level was destroyed by the final burning which baked the bullae and provided a better conservation. On one bulla is a two-line inscription, in paleo-Hebrew script as on the seal. The inscription reads: "(Belonging) to Azaryah, son (of) Hilkiah". The inscription indicates the name of the seal's owner and the name of his father, but not his function.

Azariah and Hanan, sons of Hilkiah

Azaryah and Hanan, sons of Hilkiah, both held a sacerdotal function in the Temple of Jerusalem.Josette Elayi, "New Light on the Identification of the Seal of Priest Hanan, Son of Hilqiyahu" (2 Kings 22), ''Bibliotheca Orientalis'', 5/6, September–November 1992, 680–685. In the late roster of high priests referred to in 1 Chronicles (6:13, 9:11), Azaryah IV was the successor of Hilkiah in this function and probably his eldest son, while his other son, Hanan, served by his side as a priest. The seals of the two brothers Hanan and Azaryah, engraved by the same master engraver, belong to what has been called the "generation of sons" and date, not from Josiah's reign but from one of his successors' (before 586). The seal of Azaryah was made before he became high priest because his function is not mentioned on it. The seal of Hanan and the bulla of Azaryah, two sons of the high priest Hilkiah, represent testimonies of the last years of Solomon's Temple, the first Temple of Jerusalem, before its destruction by Nebuchadnezzar II in 586.

Patrilineal Ancestry

As per 1 Chronicles chapter 6

References

External links

Biblical Archaeology Society Online Archive
{{High Priests of Judaism 7th-century BCE high priests of Israel Jeremiah Books of Kings people