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| Josiah: When the Book Was Found |
The chamber smelled of dust and old oil the day we found it.
For months we had repaired the House.
We scraped soot from stones that had watched generations forget.
The old men spoke of the Law as something once read aloud to kings.
I did not know it was still within our walls.
My name is Neriah, son of Mattithiah, a servant in the House of the Lord.
I was there when the Book was found.
King Josiah had ordered the House restored in the eighteenth year of his reign.. We repaired beams and counted silver. We hauled away broken vessels and cleared rooms long sealed.
It was ordinary work.
Holy, perhaps — but ordinary.
The chamber was narrow and poorly lit. A cracked chest leaned against the back wall, its hinges rusted stiff. I knelt to drag it forward and felt something shift behind it.
My fingers brushed linen.
I nearly left it there.
We had uncovered dozens of discarded wrappings and cracked jars in recent weeks. But this cloth was tied, not torn. Wrapped carefully, as though someone had meant for it to be preserved.
I pulled it free.
Dust rose around me.
“Another ledger?” one of the older workers muttered without looking up.
“Perhaps,” I said.
The linen flaked when I untied it. Inside lay a scroll, darkened with age, the edges stiff but intact.
I did not recognize its script at first glance. I only knew it did not belong among broken vessels.
I carried it to Hilkiah the priest.
He unrolled it slowly.
The room quieted.
His eyes moved across the first lines. Then they stilled. He drew in a breath that seemed to catch somewhere deep in his chest.
“Send for Shaphan,” he said.
His voice was calm.
But it carried weight.
___By afternoon, word spread through the courts.
The scroll had been brought before King Josiah.
I was near the doorway when Shaphan’s voice carried through the chamber.
“It was found in the House, my lord.”
Silence followed — long enough to feel its weight.
“Found?” King Josiah said at last.
“Yes, my lord. The Book of the Law.”
Another pause.
“Read,” Josiah said quietly.
I could not hear every word that followed — only fragments that struck like flint against stone. Commands. Warnings. Covenant.
Then the sound of fabric tearing.
I had heard the old storytellers say that once, kings trembled at the Law.
I had thought it memory embroidered by longing.
It was not.
___That evening I found Azor near the outer steps of the Temple.
He was among the oldest of those who remembered the old words. Many dismissed him gently. Some not so gently.
“They belonged to another age,” I had heard men say. “The Law is severe. The times have changed.”
Azor had stopped arguing years ago.
“You were in the House today,” he said as I approached. “They say something was discovered.”
“Yes,” I said.
He studied my face.
“What was it?”
“A scroll. Wrapped and hidden behind an old chest.”
He leaned forward.
“And?”
“It was read to the king.”
Azor’s eyes sharpened.
“And?”
“The king tore his robes.”
The old man inhaled sharply, as though the air had grown thin.
“He tore them?”
“Yes.”
For a long moment, he said nothing. Then he closed his eyes.
“I feared,” he murmured, “that no king would ever do that again.”
“They say it is the Book of the Law,” I said.
Azor’s hand gripped the edge of the bench.
“I told them it had not vanished,” he whispered. “They said I clung to ashes.”
He looked at me, not with triumph, but with something like fragile hope.
“Is it truly so?”
“It is,” I said. “The king has sent to inquire of the Lord.”
Azor nodded slowly.
“Then perhaps,” he said, “we are not beyond remembering.”
___Days later, the king gathered us all.
Elders. Priests. Prophets. Craftsmen. Women with infants on their hips. Boys who had never heard the covenant spoken aloud.
The court filled until there was no empty stone.
Azor stood beside me.
King Josiah ascended before the people and unrolled the scroll.
The murmur stilled.
He began to read.
His voice carried steady across the courtyard — not embellished, not hurried.
Blessings for obedience.
Warnings for turning aside.
Words of covenant — ancient and unyielding.
I recognized phrases I had heard Azor speak in fragments at dusk. Words he had recited when few listened.
Beside me, his lips began to move.
Not ahead of the king.
With him.
As though the words had been resting in his memory, waiting to be summoned.
His hand found my arm.
It trembled.
Not with weakness.
With reverence.
“I learned these at my grandfather’s knee,” he whispered.
The king continued.
When he reached the warnings — the cost of forgetting — a hush fell heavier than silence. I felt heat rise behind my eyes.
We had repaired beams and swept stones.
But we had not known what we were rebuilding.
When the king finished, he stood before the people and pledged himself to the covenant — to walk after the Lord, to keep His commandments with all his heart and soul.
And the people answered.
Not loudly.
But firmly.
Azor’s fingers tightened around my sleeve once more.
“The covenant still stands,” he said.
He did not lift his voice.
He did not weep.
He only breathed the words, as though testing whether they would endure the air.
And I understood.
The covenant had not crumbled when idols were raised.
It had not dissolved when the scroll lay hidden in dust.
It had endured.
We had forgotten.
But it had remained.
___I had thought the Law belonged to stories told by men who missed their youth. I had thought it something lost to years of neglect.
But when the king read, and when Azor’s hand trembled against my arm, I felt something return that I had never fully known.
Not fire.
Not spectacle.
But steadiness.
The covenant still stands.
And I was there when we remembered it.
🕊️ An Echoes of Scripture Story
