II Kings 22:8

Hilkiah the high priest (cf. Ch2 34:15) said, "I have found the book of the law in the house of Jehovah." התּורה ספר, the book of the law (not a law-book or a roll of laws), cannot mean anything else, either grammatically or historically, than the Mosaic book of the law (the Pentateuch), which is so designated, as is generally admitted, in the Chronicles, and the books of Ezra and Nehemiah. (Note: Thenius has correctly observed, that "the expression shows very clearly, that the allusion is to something already known, not to anything that had come to light for the first time;" but is he greatly mistaken when, notwithstanding this, he supposes that what we are to understand by this is merely a collection of the commandments and ordinances of Moses, which had been worked up in the Pentateuch, and more especially in Deuteronomy. For there is not the smallest proof whatever that any such collection of commandments and ordinances of Moses, or, as Bertheau supposes, the collection of Mosaic law contained in the three middle books of the Pentateuch, or Deuteronomy 1-28 (according to Vaihinger, Reuss, and others), was ever called התורה ספר, or that any such portions had had an independent existence, and had been deposited in the temple. These hypotheses are simply bound up with the attacks made upon the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, and ought to be given up, since De Wette, the great leader of the attack upon the genuineness of the Pentateuch, in 162a of the later editions of his Introduction to the Old Testament, admits that the account before us contains the first certain trace of the existence of our present Pentateuch. The only loophole left to modern criticism, therefore, is that Hilkiah forged the book of the law discovered by him under the name of Moses, - a conclu…

This chapter begins the story of the reign of good king Josiah, whose goodness shines the brighter because it came just after so much wickedness, which he had the honour to reform, and just before so great a destruction, which yet he had not the honour to prevent. Here, after his general character (Kg2 22:1, Kg2 22:2), we have a particular account of the respect he paid I. To God's house, which he repaired (Kg2 22:3-7). II. To God's book, which he was much affected with the reading of (Kg2 22:8-11). III. To God's messengers, whom he thereupon consulted (Kg2 22:12-14). And by whom he received from God an answer threatening Jerusalem's destruction (Kg2 22:15-17), but promising favour to him (Kg2 22:18-20), upon which he set about that glorious work of reformation which we have an account of in the next chapter.

22:8-10 The scroll known as the Book of the Law might have contained all or part of Deuteronomy or even the entire Pentateuch (cp. Deut 31:26). How it had become lost or where it was found in the Temple is unknown. Shaphan reported the momentous discovery immediately and read it to the king.