Huldah Prophesies (a Premature but Peaceful Death for the Beloved King of Judah)
~II Kings 22:14–20 & II Chronicles 34: 22-28
My name is nothing to brag about—
its origin akin to vermin,
weasel or mole—imagine naming
your daughter that!—though I do dig
beneath the meanings of things.
Messengers and priests visit me often
here in the Mishneh, the new quarter
where business booms and the western wall
rises. I’ve grown accustomed to their nagging
questions, their desire to hear from on high
arduous answers. And today, four men—
Hilkiah, the high priest,
Shaphan, the scribe,
Asaiah, the king’s servant,
Ahikam, and Akbor—
like horses in the future apocalypse—
came to me (not my cousin
Jeremiah), the wife of the royal
wardrobe’s keeper, I, who sift serial facts
from fictional chaff, who can offer
mercy for the king who’s just discovered
his nation’s sins.
What can I say?
Amid my lesson to the young
women in my house, the men galloped in,
breathless, their voices braying,
brows caked with dust and the sweat
of urgency. They’d found a book
buried beneath precious metal
hidden in the temple. I tell you
it doesn’t get any better than this.
And I was the one who knew
whether it was the word of G-d.
I sent the women home,
then took a look.
Sh'ma Yisrael,
yes, listen, my tongue intoned,
eyeing these men who studied Hebrew texts
incomplete until today. They were obeying
orders, pulverizing idols, repairing the breaches
of the temple, the couplings and roof-beams
desecrated, when they found the terrifying treasure.
Tell this man, I said, for I knew Josiah was
created from clay like me. Mine was the voice
of Yahweh that rose above the masculine crowd.
I sometimes didn’t recognize its commanding
pitch and tenor, its throaty insistence on decrees
and divinations. No one could keep it
down.
Tell him the nation will fall.
Eleh haDevarim, these are His words. Curses!
Curses. You and I will see it all
before we die. The men’s necks
tightened, their mouths filled with speech-
less fear. An owl on the roof howled.
I who am chosen of Adonai
to speak these hard truths
took one necessary breath.
Then, beyond anyone’s imagination,
came the rest.
A Best of the Net and six-time Pushcart Prize nominee, Julie L. Moore is the author of four poetry collections, including, most recently, Full Worm Moon, which won a 2018 Woodrow Hall Top Shelf Award and received honorable mention for the Conference on Christianity and Literature’s 2018 Book of the Year Award. She has also had poetry appear in African American Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, Image, New Ohio Review, Prairie Schooner, and The Southern Review. Moore is the Writing Center Director at Taylor University in Indiana, where she is the poetry editor for Relief Journal. Learn more about her work at julielmoore.com.