Reflection
Ordinary Time
Tuesday 20 October 2026
‘… when you heard how I spoke’ (22.19)
We don’t hear many women’s voices in 1 and 2 Kings. One of the most prominent – Jezebel – is one of its most memorable villains. Among the prophets it mentions, Huldah is the only woman. While this might seem remarkable to us, the narrator makes no remark about it, implying that female prophets were normal.
Huldah has a critical role in the narrative. Given the gravity and sensitivity of the mission entrusted to the king’s senior officials, she must have commanded great respect to be the person they chose. What she says to them then brings into sudden and sharp focus the theological interpretation of history that shapes these two books of the Bible.
Huldah is a pivotal figure in another respect. She enacts the relationship between law and prophecy, God’s word as written text and as living speech. Consulted to learn what the Lord is saying, her message is that God speaks here and now through the reading of an already ancient book – ‘the book of the law’ (22.11), also ‘the book of the covenant’ (23.2). Her part is a necessary one, to articulate the relationship between what God ‘spoke’ then and what God ‘says’ today, but it points to what God has once and for all proclaimed, and never away from it.
Whom do we turn to, and whom do we trust, to ‘inquire of the Lord’ for us concerning the words that strike our hearts from Holy Scripture?
COLLECT
God, our light and our salvation:
illuminate our lives,
that we may see your goodness in the land of the living,
and looking on your beauty
may be changed into the likeness of Jesus Christ our Lord.