The Revolution of King Yosheyahu—Then and Now
A Bulla Discovered in Jerusalem
- April 12, 2019
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- 7 Nisan 5779
Rabbi YY Jacobson
59 viewsThe Revolution of King Yosheyahu—Then and Now
A Bulla Discovered in Jerusalem
Rabbi YY Jacobson
- April 12, 2019
Mentality
An old Jerusalem Jew spent his life as a collector for a Yeshiva. He would walk around the city of Jerusalem every day asking for money. He would wake up every morning at the crack of dawn, immerse in the mikvah and pray. He would then start his daily rounds of collecting. From building to building he would drag his weary feet, trudge up and down the winding staircases of the old city’s archaic buildings. “If only,” he would sometimes think to himself, “there were no buildings in the Jerusalem, just single story homes. How much easier my job would be!”
One day, one of his steady customer’s asked him “Reb Meilach, what would you do if you won the Mega Million Lottery?”
Meilach thought for a moment and replied: “I would install elevators in all the buildings, that way I would not have to climb the steps anymore.”
Change
A man saw a friend across the road. He ran over and said:
“Mr. Jones! I’m so glad to see you!”
Then he said:
“What a change! You used to have a lot of hair, and now you are bald!
You used to be quite thin, and now you are fat!
You used to have good eyes, and now you wear glasses! What a change!”
The other man replied:
“But I’m not Mr. Jones.”
The first man looked surprised, and said:
“Why, you have even changed your name!”
A Bulla
Amidst the first ever picture of a Black Hole, turbulent Israeli elections, the crashing of its spacecraft before landing on the moon, Congresswoman Omer revealing her truest colors, the Muller report, the fire at Notre Dame, few of us noticed a small news story tucked away amidst far more tantalizing events.
But it should not go unnoticed.
Just in the weeks before Passover, a bulla—seal impression—and a 2,600-year-old stamp dating back to the First Temple and bearing Hebrew names were uncovered as part of the archaeological excavations in the ancient City of David, in Jerusalem, by archaeologists from the Israel Antiquities Authority and Tel Aviv University.
Bullae were small pieces of clay impressed by personal seals, used in ancient times to sign letters. While the parchment they sealed didn’t survive the fires that devastated ancient Jerusalem, the bullae, which are made of ceramic-like material, were preserved, leaving evidence of the correspondence and those behind them.
Private stamps were used to sign documents and were often set in signet rings carried by their owners. In ancient times these stamps noted the identity, lineage and status of their owners.
The extraordinary artifacts were found inside a large public building that was destroyed in the sixth century BCE.
The importance of this building can be discerned, among other things, from its size, the finely cut and dressed ashlar stones from which it was built and the quality of the architectural elements found in the layers of destruction, for example, remnants of a polished plaster floor, which had collapsed and caved into the floor below.
Large stone debris, burnt wooden beams, and numerous charred pottery shards were discovered in the building, all indications that they had survived an immense blaze. Since the fire happened in the six century BCE, it brought scholars to assume that this fire happened during the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem in 586 BCE, when the First Temple was burnt, and the Jews in Ancient Judea murdered or exiled by King Nebuchadnezzar.
The stamp and bulla, which are about one centimeter in size each, were deciphered (by Dr. Anat Mendel-Geberovich of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Center for the Study of Ancient Jerusalem) and dated—based on the script—to the middle of the seventh-to the beginning of the sixth-century BCE, just a few decades before the destruction of the First Temple.
Who Cares?
You are sitting and wondering who cares? Did our rabbi become an archeologist? Why is this important?
So let me tell you.
The seal impression, dated to end of the First Temple period, features the words: “LeNathan-Melech Eved HaMelech,” which means: “[Belonging to] Nathan-Melech, Servant of the King.”
So what?
Well here we go. The name Nathan-Melech appears only once in the entire Hebrew Bible. Where? You guessed it! In the Haftorah we recite on Pesach (on the second day)—in chapter 23 of the second book of Kings.
So we have, apparently, discovered the personal stamp of this person with a rare name mentioned once in Tanach, about whom we read about today.
To appreciate the significance of this, we need to appreciate the backdrop to the story described in this Haftorah of Passover—as it was one of the amazing moments in Jewish history.
The Story of Yosheyahu
King Yosheyahu, or Josiah, is described in the Tanach, in the Haftorah of today, as a singular personality—the like of whom never lived before and will never rise again:
מלכים ב כג, כה: וְכָמֹהוּ לֹא-הָיָה לְפָנָיו מֶלֶךְ, אֲשֶׁר-שָׁב אֶל-יְהוָה בְּכָל-לְבָבוֹ וּבְכָל-נַפְשׁוֹ וּבְכָל-מְאֹדוֹ--כְּכֹל, תּוֹרַת מֹשֶׁה; וְאַחֲרָיו, לֹא-קָם כָּמֹהוּ.
What made him so unique? What did he do that was never done?
His grandfather, Menasseh, who reigned for 55 years, was one of the worst of Judah’s kings. So was Josiah’s father. King Menashe’s (Manasseh) reign began in 533 BCE. During his rule, Menashe succeeded in destroying the moral fabric of Jewish life, reversing all the spiritual good his father, Chizkiyahu (Hezekiah) had introduced, leading the entire state into the depths of corruption and evil. He was a murderer (killing even his own grandfather, none-other than Isiah the prophet), and a grand Pagan, introducing horrific idolatry to Jewish life.
One of the most heinous crimes was the practice performed at a valley called “Gay-Henom,” the valley of Henom, where parents would sacrifice their children to the Molech god. This statue of the Molech deity was built with outstretched arms in which parents would place their baby. The child was then burnt alive, as the priests would drum loudly to eclipse the sounds of the screaming children.
It was horror that boggles the imagination.
Menashe’s son, Amon, was no improvement, and after Menashe’s death, Amon continued in his father's sinful path. Amon’s reign came to an end when he was assassinated by his own ministers. The heir to the throne was the eight-year-old son of Amon, Yoshiyahu (Josiah), who unlike his father and grandfather grew up to be a truly moral giant.
The Discovery
A turning point in his reign was the time when a great discovery was made in the Holy Temple in Jerusalem. The background to this discovery was as follows:
Achaz, Yoshiyahu’s great-great-grandfather (the father of Chizkiya, who was the father of Menaseh), had also been an exceedingly wicked individual. In his zeal to eradicate the Torah way of life from his kingdom, Achaz had ceremonially burned a Torah scroll.[1] The kohanim who managed the Temple feared that he would get his hands on the original Torah scroll written by Moses himself before his death in the desert and kept in the Holy of Holies, the innermost part of the sanctuary, by (or inside) the Ark, as the Torah instructs at the end of Deuteronomy. As a precaution, they took this Torah and hid it inside the stone walls of the Temple, so the king could not burn it!
Imagine what the Jews were up against…
Almost a century passed. After ascending the throne, Yoshiyahu instructed that extensive renovations be conducted on the Holy Temple. In the course of the renovation work, the sacred Torah scroll was discovered by Chilkiyahu (Hilkiah), the high priest at the time. Chilkiyahu related the news to Shaphan, the king’s scribe who had been commissioned by the king to oversee the renovation work. Shaphan took the scroll and opened it before the king.[2]
Now, usually the Torah that Moses wrote was rolled to the beginning. Here, however, the Torah was mysteriously rolled almost to the very end, to the potion of Ki Tavo, where Moses enumerates the frightful horrors which will befall the Jewish people if they abandon the covenant and betray the Torah. The top of the column to which the Torah scroll opened began with the verse: “G‑d will lead you and the king whom you will set up over yourself to a nation you never knew.”[3]
King Yoshiyahu was so deeply shaken that he tore his garments. He took this as a direct message from G-d to him.
He immediately dispatched Shaphan, Chilkiyahu and other delegates to seek a prophet and ask if he and his people indeed had to worry about. The delegation approached the great prophetess of the time, a Jewish woman by the name of Chuldah, and she indeed said that the lifestyle that Menashe and Amon had introduced to the land, filling it with bloodshed, violence, and hatred, still persisted, and its consequences were now on the horizon.
Covenant and Cleanup
It is at this moment the Hafotrah of the second day of Passover begins.
Upon receiving word of the prophetess Chuldah’s response, the king called for a national gathering in the Holy Temple. Everyone from old to young was to be present. He wanted every living Jew to come to the gathering.
The king ascended a platform and made a solemn covenant with the people that from that moment and on they would commit to living a life guided by the majestic moral principles of Torah.
“Then the king called together all the elders of Judah and Jerusalem. He went up to the temple of the Lord with the people of Judah, the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the priests and the prophets—all the people from youngest to the oldest. He read in their ears all the words of the Book of the Covenant, which had been found in the temple of the Lord. The king stood by the pillar and renewed the covenant in the presence of the Lord—to follow the Lord and keep His commands, statutes and decrees with all his heart and all his soul, thus confirming the words of the covenant written in this book. Then all the people pledged themselves to the covenant.” (2 Kings 23:1-3)
It was a watershed moment. A king gathered the entire nation and asked of them to reembrace their identity as Jews, to once again enter into a covenant with G-d. The king tried to create a second Sinai, as it were, a rededication of the entire people to G-d and His blueprint for life.
The Haftorah goes on to describe how Yoshiyahu spearheaded a major cleanup campaign of all the spiritual filth his predecessors had brought into the Temple and the rest of the Holy Land. The Temple and land were filled with Pagan altars, statues, symbols and altars. He had it all removed as the state was saturated with pagan promiscuity.
Within the precincts of the Temple itself there were many artifacts and images for the Baal and Asherah deities. There were lodgings for prostitutes who were part and parcel of the worship of these gods. Many pagan priests were active throughout the kingdom, available for offering tribute to any of the celestial spirits, with disgusting orgies, and all types of immoral promiscuity.
Yoshiyahu had all the idolatrous artifacts burned outside Jerusalem. Thus went the extensive campaign of ridicule, belittlement and obliteration of all aspects and artifacts of the pagan culture in which the land was so steeped.
The Great Passover
The time was just before the Passover holiday. After the land had been entirely purified, the king sent word to the entire kingdom, initiating the greatest national Passover celebration in centuries.
The Haftorah states:
כא וַיְצַו הַמֶּלֶךְ, אֶת-כָּל-הָעָם לֵאמֹר, עֲשׂוּ פֶסַח, לַיהוָה אֱלֹהֵיכֶם--כַּכָּתוּב, עַל סֵפֶר הַבְּרִית הַזֶּה. כב כִּי לֹא נַעֲשָׂה, כַּפֶּסַח הַזֶּה, מִימֵי הַשֹּׁפְטִים, אֲשֶׁר שָׁפְטוּ אֶת-יִשְׂרָאֵל; וְכֹל, יְמֵי מַלְכֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל--וּמַלְכֵי יְהוּדָה. כג כִּי, אִם-בִּשְׁמֹנֶה עֶשְׂרֵה שָׁנָה, לַמֶּלֶךְ, יֹאשִׁיָּהוּ: נַעֲשָׂה הַפֶּסַח הַזֶּה, לַיהוָה--בִּירוּשָׁלִָם. כד וְגַם אֶת-הָאֹבוֹת וְאֶת-הַיִּדְּעֹנִים וְאֶת-הַתְּרָפִים וְאֶת-הַגִּלֻּלִים וְאֵת כָּל-הַשִּׁקֻּצִים, אֲשֶׁר נִרְאוּ בְּאֶרֶץ יְהוּדָה וּבִירוּשָׁלִַם--בִּעֵר, יֹאשִׁיָּהוּ: לְמַעַן הָקִים אֶת-דִּבְרֵי הַתּוֹרָה, הַכְּתֻבִים עַל-הַסֵּפֶר, אֲשֶׁר מָצָא חִלְקִיָּהוּ הַכֹּהֵן, בֵּית יְהוָה. כה וְכָמֹהוּ לֹא-הָיָה לְפָנָיו מֶלֶךְ, אֲשֶׁר-שָׁב אֶל-יְהוָה בְּכָל-לְבָבוֹ וּבְכָל-נַפְשׁוֹ וּבְכָל-מְאֹדוֹ--כְּכֹל, תּוֹרַת מֹשֶׁה; וְאַחֲרָיו, לֹא-קָם כָּמֹהוּ.
Such a Passover sacrifice had not been performed since the time of the judges who judged Israel, and all the days of the kings of Israel and the kings of Judah.
Who Was Nathan Melech?
At last, we return to the seal impression recently discovered in Jerusalem, a bulla “Belonging to Nathan-Melech, Servant of the King.”
Here is what the haftorah says about this man:
מלכים ב כג, י: וְטִמֵּא אֶת-הַתֹּפֶת, אֲשֶׁר בְּגֵי בֶן הִנֹּם לְבִלְתִּי לְהַעֲבִיר אִישׁ אֶת-בְּנוֹ וְאֶת-בִּתּוֹ בָּאֵשׁ—לַמֹּלֶך. יא וַיַּשְׁבֵּת אֶת-הַסּוּסִים, אֲשֶׁר נָתְנוּ מַלְכֵי יְהוּדָה לַשֶּׁמֶשׁ מִבֹּא בֵית-יְהוָה, אֶל-לִשְׁכַּת נְתַן-מֶלֶךְ הַסָּרִיס, אֲשֶׁר בַּפַּרְוָרִים; וְאֶת-מַרְכְּבוֹת הַשֶּׁמֶשׁ, שָׂרַף בָּאֵש.
And he abolished the horses that the kings of Judah had dedicated to the sun, from the entrance of the house of the Lord until the chamber of Nethan-melech the servant, who was in the outskirts, and he burnt the sun chariots with fire.
This man, Nathan Melech, was a servant of King Yosheyhu, assisting the king in cleansing the entire Temple area from the scores of idols and deities placed there by previous kings. These horses were used for idol worship; the pagans would to go out with their horses and welcome the sunrise as part of their worship of the sun. So the king eliminated the horses situated between the Temple until the home of Nathan-Melech
This man, Nathan Melech, is never mention again in the Tanach.
Now, most people in the Tanach exist only in the text. We have no external archeological evidence of their existence or their stories, save a few exceptions.
Not so with Nathan Melech. Mentioned only ones, we discovered him outside of the text!
Just a few weeks before we read about his man in the Haftorah of Passover, we have found for the first time in history archaeological evidence of this person outside the text itself, found in a home from the era of Yosheyahu, a residence which we can see today was large and belonged to a very rich and influential man!
We discovered the home, and the bulla and stamp used by this man, the very home described by the Tanach as the location from which the Pagan horses were eliminated.
[Further proof comes from the fact that usually a seal had the name of the father or the tribe etc. The fact that this official’s seal had his first name alone, without any other family name, demonstrated that he was known to all, and there was no need to add his family lineage. This fits well with the grand nature of the home where the seal was discovered, and the fact that he was a prominent officer of Yosheyahu.]
Of course, it is not possible to determine with complete certainty that the Nathan-Melech who is mentioned in the Bible was in fact the owner of the stamp, yet it is impossible to ignore the extraordinary facts that link them together.
And, by the way, the ongoing archaeological excavations at the City of David continue to prove that ancient Jerusalem is no longer just a matter of faith, as it was for a long time, but also a matter of fact. We can see that every single name mentioned in the Tanach, down to the last servant of a king, is authentic.
The Lesson
What’s the message for us?
Many people look at the Jewish world today, and they note how profoundly is the impact of assimilation, alienation, intermarriage, and the estrangement of much of our people from our heritage and Jewish life.
It is easy to despair and resign. Comes the Haftorah and says: Never ever give up hope. King Yosheyahu inherited a situation far bleaker. Yet this great man was determined to make a revolution—and he succeeded. The heart of G-d’s children is awake even if they claim they are sleeping.
Never ever give up on the Jewish people. We today have the power to reinvent our nation, individually and collectively, from its slumber. Like King Yosheyahu of old we must gather our brothers and sisters and remind them who they are, where they come from, and what their destiny is.
The bulla discovered just a short while before Pesach is a powerful reminder, perhaps, for each of us to discover our own ability to cleanse ourselves—like Natham Melach and Yosheyahu of old—from all foreign influence, from all which obstructs our deep and true relationship with our souls, our G-d, and our Torah.
I Am Free
Rabbi Yaakov Galinsky was a famous Maggid (preacher) living in Benei Berak, but as a 20-year-old he was a slave laborer in the Soviet gulag. One night he woke up and saw a fellow prisoner get up from his bunk and look around to be sure no one was watching. He took out a hidden package, removed a uniform, and changed into it. It was the uniform of a high military officer, complete with ribbons and medals. As quickly as he had donned it, he took it off, returned it to its hiding place, and changed back into his prison garb.
Later that day the curious Rabbi Galinsky asked his barracks-mate what he was doing. The man, a non-Jew, said defiantly, “I was a general in the Lithuanian Army. The Soviets arrested me and sent me here. They treat me as a slave – but I am not a slave! I am a general! Someday Lithuania will be free, and I will be a general again! The Soviets want to humiliate me, but I will always remember what I really am!”
Rabbi Galinsky said that this experience gave him perspective into life. Here was a man slaving away in Siberia. But he had his nightly reminder that this is not who he is! He belongs elsewhere. He is not a prisoner in essence; he is a free man!
This, he said, is what we need as Jews. Despite any challenge or difficulty, never forget who we are and G-d’s investment in us.
That’s why we have a mitzvah every day of the year to mention the Exodus of Egypt and on Passover we tell the story in detail. What’s the point?!
It is a statement, a protest, against the forces that enslave us. Once or twice a day we have to don the uniform of the military general and declare to ourselves: We are not slaves. We are not meant to be confined. We are meant to be truly free, to serve G-d with all our heart, to liberate ourselves from all the blockages which do not allow us to live every moment our eternal covenant with G-d.
[1] The commentaries to the verse attribute the burning of the Torah to Achaz. As some have pointed out, though, our version of the Talmud (Sanhedrin 103b) indicates that it was Amon, Yoshiyahu’s father, who did this. See also Sefer Haikkarim 3:22.
[2] This is the interpretation of Abarbenel. Radak and Ralbag’s understanding of the event is that an ordinary Torah was discovered. Abarbanel finds it difficult to believe that there were no other copies of the Torah preserved even during the idolatrous periods of the nation’s history and suggests that what was discovered sealed in the Temple was Moses’ own Torah, written by his hand.
[3] Deuteronomy 28:36.
- Comment
Class Summary:
Amidst the first ever picture of a Black Hole, turbulent Israeli elections, the crashing of its spacecraft before landing on the moon, Congresswoman Omer revealing her truest colors, the Muller report, the fire at Notre Dame, few of us noticed a small news story tucked away amidst far more tantalizing events. But it should not go unnoticed.
Just in the weeks before Passover, a bulla—seal impression—and a 2,600-year-old stamp dating back to the First Temple and bearing Hebrew names were uncovered as part of the archaeological excavations in the ancient City of David, in Jerusalem.
You are sitting and wondering who cares? So let me tell you. The seal impression, dated to end of the First Temple period, features the words: “LeNathan-Melech Eved HaMelech,” which means: “[Belonging to] Nathan-Melech, Servant of the King.”
The name Nathan-Melech appears only once in the entire Hebrew Bible. Where? You guessed it! In the Haftorah we recite on Pesach (on the second day)—in chapter 23 of the second book of Kings.
So we have, apparently, discovered the personal stamp of this person with a rare name mentioned once in Tanach, about whom we read about today.
To appreciate the significance of this, we need to appreciate the backdrop to the story described in this Haftorah of Passover—as it was one of the amazing moments in Jewish history, and contains powerful lessons for today.
Rabbi Yaakov Galinsky was a famous Maggid (preacher) living in Benei Berak, but as a 20-year-old he was a slave laborer in the Soviet gulag. One night he woke up and saw a fellow prisoner get up from his bunk and look around to be sure no one was watching. He took out a hidden package, removed a uniform, and changed into it. It was the uniform of a high military officer, complete with ribbons and medals. As quickly as he had donned it, he took it off, returned it to its hiding place, and changed back into his prison garb.
Mentality
An old Jerusalem Jew spent his life as a collector for a Yeshiva. He would walk around the city of Jerusalem every day asking for money. He would wake up every morning at the crack of dawn, immerse in the mikvah and pray. He would then start his daily rounds of collecting. From building to building he would drag his weary feet, trudge up and down the winding staircases of the old city’s archaic buildings. “If only,” he would sometimes think to himself, “there were no buildings in the Jerusalem, just single story homes. How much easier my job would be!”
One day, one of his steady customer’s asked him “Reb Meilach, what would you do if you won the Mega Million Lottery?”
Meilach thought for a moment and replied: “I would install elevators in all the buildings, that way I would not have to climb the steps anymore.”
Change
A man saw a friend across the road. He ran over and said:
“Mr. Jones! I’m so glad to see you!”
Then he said:
“What a change! You used to have a lot of hair, and now you are bald!
You used to be quite thin, and now you are fat!
You used to have good eyes, and now you wear glasses! What a change!”
The other man replied:
“But I’m not Mr. Jones.”
The first man looked surprised, and said:
“Why, you have even changed your name!”
A Bulla
Amidst the first ever picture of a Black Hole, turbulent Israeli elections, the crashing of its spacecraft before landing on the moon, Congresswoman Omer revealing her truest colors, the Muller report, the fire at Notre Dame, few of us noticed a small news story tucked away amidst far more tantalizing events.
But it should not go unnoticed.
Just in the weeks before Passover, a bulla—seal impression—and a 2,600-year-old stamp dating back to the First Temple and bearing Hebrew names were uncovered as part of the archaeological excavations in the ancient City of David, in Jerusalem, by archaeologists from the Israel Antiquities Authority and Tel Aviv University.
Bullae were small pieces of clay impressed by personal seals, used in ancient times to sign letters. While the parchment they sealed didn’t survive the fires that devastated ancient Jerusalem, the bullae, which are made of ceramic-like material, were preserved, leaving evidence of the correspondence and those behind them.
Private stamps were used to sign documents and were often set in signet rings carried by their owners. In ancient times these stamps noted the identity, lineage and status of their owners.
The extraordinary artifacts were found inside a large public building that was destroyed in the sixth century BCE.
The importance of this building can be discerned, among other things, from its size, the finely cut and dressed ashlar stones from which it was built and the quality of the architectural elements found in the layers of destruction, for example, remnants of a polished plaster floor, which had collapsed and caved into the floor below.
Large stone debris, burnt wooden beams, and numerous charred pottery shards were discovered in the building, all indications that they had survived an immense blaze. Since the fire happened in the six century BCE, it brought scholars to assume that this fire happened during the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem in 586 BCE, when the First Temple was burnt, and the Jews in Ancient Judea murdered or exiled by King Nebuchadnezzar.
The stamp and bulla, which are about one centimeter in size each, were deciphered (by Dr. Anat Mendel-Geberovich of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Center for the Study of Ancient Jerusalem) and dated—based on the script—to the middle of the seventh-to the beginning of the sixth-century BCE, just a few decades before the destruction of the First Temple.
Who Cares?
You are sitting and wondering who cares? Did our rabbi become an archeologist? Why is this important?
So let me tell you.
The seal impression, dated to end of the First Temple period, features the words: “LeNathan-Melech Eved HaMelech,” which means: “[Belonging to] Nathan-Melech, Servant of the King.”
So what?
Well here we go. The name Nathan-Melech appears only once in the entire Hebrew Bible. Where? You guessed it! In the Haftorah we recite on Pesach (on the second day)—in chapter 23 of the second book of Kings.
So we have, apparently, discovered the personal stamp of this person with a rare name mentioned once in Tanach, about whom we read about today.
To appreciate the significance of this, we need to appreciate the backdrop to the story described in this Haftorah of Passover—as it was one of the amazing moments in Jewish history.
The Story of Yosheyahu
King Yosheyahu, or Josiah, is described in the Tanach, in the Haftorah of today, as a singular personality—the like of whom never lived before and will never rise again:
מלכים ב כג, כה: וְכָמֹהוּ לֹא-הָיָה לְפָנָיו מֶלֶךְ, אֲשֶׁר-שָׁב אֶל-יְהוָה בְּכָל-לְבָבוֹ וּבְכָל-נַפְשׁוֹ וּבְכָל-מְאֹדוֹ--כְּכֹל, תּוֹרַת מֹשֶׁה; וְאַחֲרָיו, לֹא-קָם כָּמֹהוּ.
What made him so unique? What did he do that was never done?
His grandfather, Menasseh, who reigned for 55 years, was one of the worst of Judah’s kings. So was Josiah’s father. King Menashe’s (Manasseh) reign began in 533 BCE. During his rule, Menashe succeeded in destroying the moral fabric of Jewish life, reversing all the spiritual good his father, Chizkiyahu (Hezekiah) had introduced, leading the entire state into the depths of corruption and evil. He was a murderer (killing even his own grandfather, none-other than Isiah the prophet), and a grand Pagan, introducing horrific idolatry to Jewish life.
One of the most heinous crimes was the practice performed at a valley called “Gay-Henom,” the valley of Henom, where parents would sacrifice their children to the Molech god. This statue of the Molech deity was built with outstretched arms in which parents would place their baby. The child was then burnt alive, as the priests would drum loudly to eclipse the sounds of the screaming children.
It was horror that boggles the imagination.
Menashe’s son, Amon, was no improvement, and after Menashe’s death, Amon continued in his father's sinful path. Amon’s reign came to an end when he was assassinated by his own ministers. The heir to the throne was the eight-year-old son of Amon, Yoshiyahu (Josiah), who unlike his father and grandfather grew up to be a truly moral giant.
The Discovery
A turning point in his reign was the time when a great discovery was made in the Holy Temple in Jerusalem. The background to this discovery was as follows:
Achaz, Yoshiyahu’s great-great-grandfather (the father of Chizkiya, who was the father of Menaseh), had also been an exceedingly wicked individual. In his zeal to eradicate the Torah way of life from his kingdom, Achaz had ceremonially burned a Torah scroll.[1] The kohanim who managed the Temple feared that he would get his hands on the original Torah scroll written by Moses himself before his death in the desert and kept in the Holy of Holies, the innermost part of the sanctuary, by (or inside) the Ark, as the Torah instructs at the end of Deuteronomy. As a precaution, they took this Torah and hid it inside the stone walls of the Temple, so the king could not burn it!
Imagine what the Jews were up against…
Almost a century passed. After ascending the throne, Yoshiyahu instructed that extensive renovations be conducted on the Holy Temple. In the course of the renovation work, the sacred Torah scroll was discovered by Chilkiyahu (Hilkiah), the high priest at the time. Chilkiyahu related the news to Shaphan, the king’s scribe who had been commissioned by the king to oversee the renovation work. Shaphan took the scroll and opened it before the king.[2]
Now, usually the Torah that Moses wrote was rolled to the beginning. Here, however, the Torah was mysteriously rolled almost to the very end, to the potion of Ki Tavo, where Moses enumerates the frightful horrors which will befall the Jewish people if they abandon the covenant and betray the Torah. The top of the column to which the Torah scroll opened began with the verse: “G‑d will lead you and the king whom you will set up over yourself to a nation you never knew.”[3]
King Yoshiyahu was so deeply shaken that he tore his garments. He took this as a direct message from G-d to him.
He immediately dispatched Shaphan, Chilkiyahu and other delegates to seek a prophet and ask if he and his people indeed had to worry about. The delegation approached the great prophetess of the time, a Jewish woman by the name of Chuldah, and she indeed said that the lifestyle that Menashe and Amon had introduced to the land, filling it with bloodshed, violence, and hatred, still persisted, and its consequences were now on the horizon.
Covenant and Cleanup
It is at this moment the Hafotrah of the second day of Passover begins.
Upon receiving word of the prophetess Chuldah’s response, the king called for a national gathering in the Holy Temple. Everyone from old to young was to be present. He wanted every living Jew to come to the gathering.
The king ascended a platform and made a solemn covenant with the people that from that moment and on they would commit to living a life guided by the majestic moral principles of Torah.
“Then the king called together all the elders of Judah and Jerusalem. He went up to the temple of the Lord with the people of Judah, the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the priests and the prophets—all the people from youngest to the oldest. He read in their ears all the words of the Book of the Covenant, which had been found in the temple of the Lord. The king stood by the pillar and renewed the covenant in the presence of the Lord—to follow the Lord and keep His commands, statutes and decrees with all his heart and all his soul, thus confirming the words of the covenant written in this book. Then all the people pledged themselves to the covenant.” (2 Kings 23:1-3)
It was a watershed moment. A king gathered the entire nation and asked of them to reembrace their identity as Jews, to once again enter into a covenant with G-d. The king tried to create a second Sinai, as it were, a rededication of the entire people to G-d and His blueprint for life.
The Haftorah goes on to describe how Yoshiyahu spearheaded a major cleanup campaign of all the spiritual filth his predecessors had brought into the Temple and the rest of the Holy Land. The Temple and land were filled with Pagan altars, statues, symbols and altars. He had it all removed as the state was saturated with pagan promiscuity.
Within the precincts of the Temple itself there were many artifacts and images for the Baal and Asherah deities. There were lodgings for prostitutes who were part and parcel of the worship of these gods. Many pagan priests were active throughout the kingdom, available for offering tribute to any of the celestial spirits, with disgusting orgies, and all types of immoral promiscuity.
Yoshiyahu had all the idolatrous artifacts burned outside Jerusalem. Thus went the extensive campaign of ridicule, belittlement and obliteration of all aspects and artifacts of the pagan culture in which the land was so steeped.
The Great Passover
The time was just before the Passover holiday. After the land had been entirely purified, the king sent word to the entire kingdom, initiating the greatest national Passover celebration in centuries.
The Haftorah states:
כא וַיְצַו הַמֶּלֶךְ, אֶת-כָּל-הָעָם לֵאמֹר, עֲשׂוּ פֶסַח, לַיהוָה אֱלֹהֵיכֶם--כַּכָּתוּב, עַל סֵפֶר הַבְּרִית הַזֶּה. כב כִּי לֹא נַעֲשָׂה, כַּפֶּסַח הַזֶּה, מִימֵי הַשֹּׁפְטִים, אֲשֶׁר שָׁפְטוּ אֶת-יִשְׂרָאֵל; וְכֹל, יְמֵי מַלְכֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל--וּמַלְכֵי יְהוּדָה. כג כִּי, אִם-בִּשְׁמֹנֶה עֶשְׂרֵה שָׁנָה, לַמֶּלֶךְ, יֹאשִׁיָּהוּ: נַעֲשָׂה הַפֶּסַח הַזֶּה, לַיהוָה--בִּירוּשָׁלִָם. כד וְגַם אֶת-הָאֹבוֹת וְאֶת-הַיִּדְּעֹנִים וְאֶת-הַתְּרָפִים וְאֶת-הַגִּלֻּלִים וְאֵת כָּל-הַשִּׁקֻּצִים, אֲשֶׁר נִרְאוּ בְּאֶרֶץ יְהוּדָה וּבִירוּשָׁלִַם--בִּעֵר, יֹאשִׁיָּהוּ: לְמַעַן הָקִים אֶת-דִּבְרֵי הַתּוֹרָה, הַכְּתֻבִים עַל-הַסֵּפֶר, אֲשֶׁר מָצָא חִלְקִיָּהוּ הַכֹּהֵן, בֵּית יְהוָה. כה וְכָמֹהוּ לֹא-הָיָה לְפָנָיו מֶלֶךְ, אֲשֶׁר-שָׁב אֶל-יְהוָה בְּכָל-לְבָבוֹ וּבְכָל-נַפְשׁוֹ וּבְכָל-מְאֹדוֹ--כְּכֹל, תּוֹרַת מֹשֶׁה; וְאַחֲרָיו, לֹא-קָם כָּמֹהוּ.
Such a Passover sacrifice had not been performed since the time of the judges who judged Israel, and all the days of the kings of Israel and the kings of Judah.
Who Was Nathan Melech?
At last, we return to the seal impression recently discovered in Jerusalem, a bulla “Belonging to Nathan-Melech, Servant of the King.”
Here is what the haftorah says about this man:
מלכים ב כג, י: וְטִמֵּא אֶת-הַתֹּפֶת, אֲשֶׁר בְּגֵי בֶן הִנֹּם לְבִלְתִּי לְהַעֲבִיר אִישׁ אֶת-בְּנוֹ וְאֶת-בִּתּוֹ בָּאֵשׁ—לַמֹּלֶך. יא וַיַּשְׁבֵּת אֶת-הַסּוּסִים, אֲשֶׁר נָתְנוּ מַלְכֵי יְהוּדָה לַשֶּׁמֶשׁ מִבֹּא בֵית-יְהוָה, אֶל-לִשְׁכַּת נְתַן-מֶלֶךְ הַסָּרִיס, אֲשֶׁר בַּפַּרְוָרִים; וְאֶת-מַרְכְּבוֹת הַשֶּׁמֶשׁ, שָׂרַף בָּאֵש.
And he abolished the horses that the kings of Judah had dedicated to the sun, from the entrance of the house of the Lord until the chamber of Nethan-melech the servant, who was in the outskirts, and he burnt the sun chariots with fire.
This man, Nathan Melech, was a servant of King Yosheyhu, assisting the king in cleansing the entire Temple area from the scores of idols and deities placed there by previous kings. These horses were used for idol worship; the pagans would to go out with their horses and welcome the sunrise as part of their worship of the sun. So the king eliminated the horses situated between the Temple until the home of Nathan-Melech
This man, Nathan Melech, is never mention again in the Tanach.
Now, most people in the Tanach exist only in the text. We have no external archeological evidence of their existence or their stories, save a few exceptions.
Not so with Nathan Melech. Mentioned only ones, we discovered him outside of the text!
Just a few weeks before we read about his man in the Haftorah of Passover, we have found for the first time in history archaeological evidence of this person outside the text itself, found in a home from the era of Yosheyahu, a residence which we can see today was large and belonged to a very rich and influential man!
We discovered the home, and the bulla and stamp used by this man, the very home described by the Tanach as the location from which the Pagan horses were eliminated.
[Further proof comes from the fact that usually a seal had the name of the father or the tribe etc. The fact that this official’s seal had his first name alone, without any other family name, demonstrated that he was known to all, and there was no need to add his family lineage. This fits well with the grand nature of the home where the seal was discovered, and the fact that he was a prominent officer of Yosheyahu.]
Of course, it is not possible to determine with complete certainty that the Nathan-Melech who is mentioned in the Bible was in fact the owner of the stamp, yet it is impossible to ignore the extraordinary facts that link them together.
And, by the way, the ongoing archaeological excavations at the City of David continue to prove that ancient Jerusalem is no longer just a matter of faith, as it was for a long time, but also a matter of fact. We can see that every single name mentioned in the Tanach, down to the last servant of a king, is authentic.
The Lesson
What’s the message for us?
Many people look at the Jewish world today, and they note how profoundly is the impact of assimilation, alienation, intermarriage, and the estrangement of much of our people from our heritage and Jewish life.
It is easy to despair and resign. Comes the Haftorah and says: Never ever give up hope. King Yosheyahu inherited a situation far bleaker. Yet this great man was determined to make a revolution—and he succeeded. The heart of G-d’s children is awake even if they claim they are sleeping.
Never ever give up on the Jewish people. We today have the power to reinvent our nation, individually and collectively, from its slumber. Like King Yosheyahu of old we must gather our brothers and sisters and remind them who they are, where they come from, and what their destiny is.
The bulla discovered just a short while before Pesach is a powerful reminder, perhaps, for each of us to discover our own ability to cleanse ourselves—like Natham Melach and Yosheyahu of old—from all foreign influence, from all which obstructs our deep and true relationship with our souls, our G-d, and our Torah.
I Am Free
Rabbi Yaakov Galinsky was a famous Maggid (preacher) living in Benei Berak, but as a 20-year-old he was a slave laborer in the Soviet gulag. One night he woke up and saw a fellow prisoner get up from his bunk and look around to be sure no one was watching. He took out a hidden package, removed a uniform, and changed into it. It was the uniform of a high military officer, complete with ribbons and medals. As quickly as he had donned it, he took it off, returned it to its hiding place, and changed back into his prison garb.
Later that day the curious Rabbi Galinsky asked his barracks-mate what he was doing. The man, a non-Jew, said defiantly, “I was a general in the Lithuanian Army. The Soviets arrested me and sent me here. They treat me as a slave – but I am not a slave! I am a general! Someday Lithuania will be free, and I will be a general again! The Soviets want to humiliate me, but I will always remember what I really am!”
Rabbi Galinsky said that this experience gave him perspective into life. Here was a man slaving away in Siberia. But he had his nightly reminder that this is not who he is! He belongs elsewhere. He is not a prisoner in essence; he is a free man!
This, he said, is what we need as Jews. Despite any challenge or difficulty, never forget who we are and G-d’s investment in us.
That’s why we have a mitzvah every day of the year to mention the Exodus of Egypt and on Passover we tell the story in detail. What’s the point?!
It is a statement, a protest, against the forces that enslave us. Once or twice a day we have to don the uniform of the military general and declare to ourselves: We are not slaves. We are not meant to be confined. We are meant to be truly free, to serve G-d with all our heart, to liberate ourselves from all the blockages which do not allow us to live every moment our eternal covenant with G-d.
[1] The commentaries to the verse attribute the burning of the Torah to Achaz. As some have pointed out, though, our version of the Talmud (Sanhedrin 103b) indicates that it was Amon, Yoshiyahu’s father, who did this. See also Sefer Haikkarim 3:22.
[2] This is the interpretation of Abarbenel. Radak and Ralbag’s understanding of the event is that an ordinary Torah was discovered. Abarbanel finds it difficult to believe that there were no other copies of the Torah preserved even during the idolatrous periods of the nation’s history and suggests that what was discovered sealed in the Temple was Moses’ own Torah, written by his hand.
[3] Deuteronomy 28:36.
Categories
Pesach 5779
Rabbi YY Jacobson
- April 12, 2019
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- 7 Nisan 5779
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The Revolution of King Yosheyahu—Then and Now
A Bulla Discovered in Jerusalem
Rabbi YY Jacobson
- April 12, 2019
Mentality
An old Jerusalem Jew spent his life as a collector for a Yeshiva. He would walk around the city of Jerusalem every day asking for money. He would wake up every morning at the crack of dawn, immerse in the mikvah and pray. He would then start his daily rounds of collecting. From building to building he would drag his weary feet, trudge up and down the winding staircases of the old city’s archaic buildings. “If only,” he would sometimes think to himself, “there were no buildings in the Jerusalem, just single story homes. How much easier my job would be!”
One day, one of his steady customer’s asked him “Reb Meilach, what would you do if you won the Mega Million Lottery?”
Meilach thought for a moment and replied: “I would install elevators in all the buildings, that way I would not have to climb the steps anymore.”
Change
A man saw a friend across the road. He ran over and said:
“Mr. Jones! I’m so glad to see you!”
Then he said:
“What a change! You used to have a lot of hair, and now you are bald!
You used to be quite thin, and now you are fat!
You used to have good eyes, and now you wear glasses! What a change!”
The other man replied:
“But I’m not Mr. Jones.”
The first man looked surprised, and said:
“Why, you have even changed your name!”
A Bulla
Amidst the first ever picture of a Black Hole, turbulent Israeli elections, the crashing of its spacecraft before landing on the moon, Congresswoman Omer revealing her truest colors, the Muller report, the fire at Notre Dame, few of us noticed a small news story tucked away amidst far more tantalizing events.
But it should not go unnoticed.
Just in the weeks before Passover, a bulla—seal impression—and a 2,600-year-old stamp dating back to the First Temple and bearing Hebrew names were uncovered as part of the archaeological excavations in the ancient City of David, in Jerusalem, by archaeologists from the Israel Antiquities Authority and Tel Aviv University.
Bullae were small pieces of clay impressed by personal seals, used in ancient times to sign letters. While the parchment they sealed didn’t survive the fires that devastated ancient Jerusalem, the bullae, which are made of ceramic-like material, were preserved, leaving evidence of the correspondence and those behind them.
Private stamps were used to sign documents and were often set in signet rings carried by their owners. In ancient times these stamps noted the identity, lineage and status of their owners.
The extraordinary artifacts were found inside a large public building that was destroyed in the sixth century BCE.
The importance of this building can be discerned, among other things, from its size, the finely cut and dressed ashlar stones from which it was built and the quality of the architectural elements found in the layers of destruction, for example, remnants of a polished plaster floor, which had collapsed and caved into the floor below.
Large stone debris, burnt wooden beams, and numerous charred pottery shards were discovered in the building, all indications that they had survived an immense blaze. Since the fire happened in the six century BCE, it brought scholars to assume that this fire happened during the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem in 586 BCE, when the First Temple was burnt, and the Jews in Ancient Judea murdered or exiled by King Nebuchadnezzar.
The stamp and bulla, which are about one centimeter in size each, were deciphered (by Dr. Anat Mendel-Geberovich of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Center for the Study of Ancient Jerusalem) and dated—based on the script—to the middle of the seventh-to the beginning of the sixth-century BCE, just a few decades before the destruction of the First Temple.
Who Cares?
You are sitting and wondering who cares? Did our rabbi become an archeologist? Why is this important?
So let me tell you.
The seal impression, dated to end of the First Temple period, features the words: “LeNathan-Melech Eved HaMelech,” which means: “[Belonging to] Nathan-Melech, Servant of the King.”
So what?
Well here we go. The name Nathan-Melech appears only once in the entire Hebrew Bible. Where? You guessed it! In the Haftorah we recite on Pesach (on the second day)—in chapter 23 of the second book of Kings.
So we have, apparently, discovered the personal stamp of this person with a rare name mentioned once in Tanach, about whom we read about today.
To appreciate the significance of this, we need to appreciate the backdrop to the story described in this Haftorah of Passover—as it was one of the amazing moments in Jewish history.
The Story of Yosheyahu
King Yosheyahu, or Josiah, is described in the Tanach, in the Haftorah of today, as a singular personality—the like of whom never lived before and will never rise again:
מלכים ב כג, כה: וְכָמֹהוּ לֹא-הָיָה לְפָנָיו מֶלֶךְ, אֲשֶׁר-שָׁב אֶל-יְהוָה בְּכָל-לְבָבוֹ וּבְכָל-נַפְשׁוֹ וּבְכָל-מְאֹדוֹ--כְּכֹל, תּוֹרַת מֹשֶׁה; וְאַחֲרָיו, לֹא-קָם כָּמֹהוּ.
What made him so unique? What did he do that was never done?
His grandfather, Menasseh, who reigned for 55 years, was one of the worst of Judah’s kings. So was Josiah’s father. King Menashe’s (Manasseh) reign began in 533 BCE. During his rule, Menashe succeeded in destroying the moral fabric of Jewish life, reversing all the spiritual good his father, Chizkiyahu (Hezekiah) had introduced, leading the entire state into the depths of corruption and evil. He was a murderer (killing even his own grandfather, none-other than Isiah the prophet), and a grand Pagan, introducing horrific idolatry to Jewish life.
One of the most heinous crimes was the practice performed at a valley called “Gay-Henom,” the valley of Henom, where parents would sacrifice their children to the Molech god. This statue of the Molech deity was built with outstretched arms in which parents would place their baby. The child was then burnt alive, as the priests would drum loudly to eclipse the sounds of the screaming children.
It was horror that boggles the imagination.
Menashe’s son, Amon, was no improvement, and after Menashe’s death, Amon continued in his father's sinful path. Amon’s reign came to an end when he was assassinated by his own ministers. The heir to the throne was the eight-year-old son of Amon, Yoshiyahu (Josiah), who unlike his father and grandfather grew up to be a truly moral giant.
The Discovery
A turning point in his reign was the time when a great discovery was made in the Holy Temple in Jerusalem. The background to this discovery was as follows:
Achaz, Yoshiyahu’s great-great-grandfather (the father of Chizkiya, who was the father of Menaseh), had also been an exceedingly wicked individual. In his zeal to eradicate the Torah way of life from his kingdom, Achaz had ceremonially burned a Torah scroll.[1] The kohanim who managed the Temple feared that he would get his hands on the original Torah scroll written by Moses himself before his death in the desert and kept in the Holy of Holies, the innermost part of the sanctuary, by (or inside) the Ark, as the Torah instructs at the end of Deuteronomy. As a precaution, they took this Torah and hid it inside the stone walls of the Temple, so the king could not burn it!
Imagine what the Jews were up against…
Almost a century passed. After ascending the throne, Yoshiyahu instructed that extensive renovations be conducted on the Holy Temple. In the course of the renovation work, the sacred Torah scroll was discovered by Chilkiyahu (Hilkiah), the high priest at the time. Chilkiyahu related the news to Shaphan, the king’s scribe who had been commissioned by the king to oversee the renovation work. Shaphan took the scroll and opened it before the king.[2]
Now, usually the Torah that Moses wrote was rolled to the beginning. Here, however, the Torah was mysteriously rolled almost to the very end, to the potion of Ki Tavo, where Moses enumerates the frightful horrors which will befall the Jewish people if they abandon the covenant and betray the Torah. The top of the column to which the Torah scroll opened began with the verse: “G‑d will lead you and the king whom you will set up over yourself to a nation you never knew.”[3]
King Yoshiyahu was so deeply shaken that he tore his garments. He took this as a direct message from G-d to him.
He immediately dispatched Shaphan, Chilkiyahu and other delegates to seek a prophet and ask if he and his people indeed had to worry about. The delegation approached the great prophetess of the time, a Jewish woman by the name of Chuldah, and she indeed said that the lifestyle that Menashe and Amon had introduced to the land, filling it with bloodshed, violence, and hatred, still persisted, and its consequences were now on the horizon.
Covenant and Cleanup
It is at this moment the Hafotrah of the second day of Passover begins.
Upon receiving word of the prophetess Chuldah’s response, the king called for a national gathering in the Holy Temple. Everyone from old to young was to be present. He wanted every living Jew to come to the gathering.
The king ascended a platform and made a solemn covenant with the people that from that moment and on they would commit to living a life guided by the majestic moral principles of Torah.
“Then the king called together all the elders of Judah and Jerusalem. He went up to the temple of the Lord with the people of Judah, the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the priests and the prophets—all the people from youngest to the oldest. He read in their ears all the words of the Book of the Covenant, which had been found in the temple of the Lord. The king stood by the pillar and renewed the covenant in the presence of the Lord—to follow the Lord and keep His commands, statutes and decrees with all his heart and all his soul, thus confirming the words of the covenant written in this book. Then all the people pledged themselves to the covenant.” (2 Kings 23:1-3)
It was a watershed moment. A king gathered the entire nation and asked of them to reembrace their identity as Jews, to once again enter into a covenant with G-d. The king tried to create a second Sinai, as it were, a rededication of the entire people to G-d and His blueprint for life.
The Haftorah goes on to describe how Yoshiyahu spearheaded a major cleanup campaign of all the spiritual filth his predecessors had brought into the Temple and the rest of the Holy Land. The Temple and land were filled with Pagan altars, statues, symbols and altars. He had it all removed as the state was saturated with pagan promiscuity.
Within the precincts of the Temple itself there were many artifacts and images for the Baal and Asherah deities. There were lodgings for prostitutes who were part and parcel of the worship of these gods. Many pagan priests were active throughout the kingdom, available for offering tribute to any of the celestial spirits, with disgusting orgies, and all types of immoral promiscuity.
Yoshiyahu had all the idolatrous artifacts burned outside Jerusalem. Thus went the extensive campaign of ridicule, belittlement and obliteration of all aspects and artifacts of the pagan culture in which the land was so steeped.
The Great Passover
The time was just before the Passover holiday. After the land had been entirely purified, the king sent word to the entire kingdom, initiating the greatest national Passover celebration in centuries.
The Haftorah states:
כא וַיְצַו הַמֶּלֶךְ, אֶת-כָּל-הָעָם לֵאמֹר, עֲשׂוּ פֶסַח, לַיהוָה אֱלֹהֵיכֶם--כַּכָּתוּב, עַל סֵפֶר הַבְּרִית הַזֶּה. כב כִּי לֹא נַעֲשָׂה, כַּפֶּסַח הַזֶּה, מִימֵי הַשֹּׁפְטִים, אֲשֶׁר שָׁפְטוּ אֶת-יִשְׂרָאֵל; וְכֹל, יְמֵי מַלְכֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל--וּמַלְכֵי יְהוּדָה. כג כִּי, אִם-בִּשְׁמֹנֶה עֶשְׂרֵה שָׁנָה, לַמֶּלֶךְ, יֹאשִׁיָּהוּ: נַעֲשָׂה הַפֶּסַח הַזֶּה, לַיהוָה--בִּירוּשָׁלִָם. כד וְגַם אֶת-הָאֹבוֹת וְאֶת-הַיִּדְּעֹנִים וְאֶת-הַתְּרָפִים וְאֶת-הַגִּלֻּלִים וְאֵת כָּל-הַשִּׁקֻּצִים, אֲשֶׁר נִרְאוּ בְּאֶרֶץ יְהוּדָה וּבִירוּשָׁלִַם--בִּעֵר, יֹאשִׁיָּהוּ: לְמַעַן הָקִים אֶת-דִּבְרֵי הַתּוֹרָה, הַכְּתֻבִים עַל-הַסֵּפֶר, אֲשֶׁר מָצָא חִלְקִיָּהוּ הַכֹּהֵן, בֵּית יְהוָה. כה וְכָמֹהוּ לֹא-הָיָה לְפָנָיו מֶלֶךְ, אֲשֶׁר-שָׁב אֶל-יְהוָה בְּכָל-לְבָבוֹ וּבְכָל-נַפְשׁוֹ וּבְכָל-מְאֹדוֹ--כְּכֹל, תּוֹרַת מֹשֶׁה; וְאַחֲרָיו, לֹא-קָם כָּמֹהוּ.
Such a Passover sacrifice had not been performed since the time of the judges who judged Israel, and all the days of the kings of Israel and the kings of Judah.
Who Was Nathan Melech?
At last, we return to the seal impression recently discovered in Jerusalem, a bulla “Belonging to Nathan-Melech, Servant of the King.”
Here is what the haftorah says about this man:
מלכים ב כג, י: וְטִמֵּא אֶת-הַתֹּפֶת, אֲשֶׁר בְּגֵי בֶן הִנֹּם לְבִלְתִּי לְהַעֲבִיר אִישׁ אֶת-בְּנוֹ וְאֶת-בִּתּוֹ בָּאֵשׁ—לַמֹּלֶך. יא וַיַּשְׁבֵּת אֶת-הַסּוּסִים, אֲשֶׁר נָתְנוּ מַלְכֵי יְהוּדָה לַשֶּׁמֶשׁ מִבֹּא בֵית-יְהוָה, אֶל-לִשְׁכַּת נְתַן-מֶלֶךְ הַסָּרִיס, אֲשֶׁר בַּפַּרְוָרִים; וְאֶת-מַרְכְּבוֹת הַשֶּׁמֶשׁ, שָׂרַף בָּאֵש.
And he abolished the horses that the kings of Judah had dedicated to the sun, from the entrance of the house of the Lord until the chamber of Nethan-melech the servant, who was in the outskirts, and he burnt the sun chariots with fire.
This man, Nathan Melech, was a servant of King Yosheyhu, assisting the king in cleansing the entire Temple area from the scores of idols and deities placed there by previous kings. These horses were used for idol worship; the pagans would to go out with their horses and welcome the sunrise as part of their worship of the sun. So the king eliminated the horses situated between the Temple until the home of Nathan-Melech
This man, Nathan Melech, is never mention again in the Tanach.
Now, most people in the Tanach exist only in the text. We have no external archeological evidence of their existence or their stories, save a few exceptions.
Not so with Nathan Melech. Mentioned only ones, we discovered him outside of the text!
Just a few weeks before we read about his man in the Haftorah of Passover, we have found for the first time in history archaeological evidence of this person outside the text itself, found in a home from the era of Yosheyahu, a residence which we can see today was large and belonged to a very rich and influential man!
We discovered the home, and the bulla and stamp used by this man, the very home described by the Tanach as the location from which the Pagan horses were eliminated.
[Further proof comes from the fact that usually a seal had the name of the father or the tribe etc. The fact that this official’s seal had his first name alone, without any other family name, demonstrated that he was known to all, and there was no need to add his family lineage. This fits well with the grand nature of the home where the seal was discovered, and the fact that he was a prominent officer of Yosheyahu.]
Of course, it is not possible to determine with complete certainty that the Nathan-Melech who is mentioned in the Bible was in fact the owner of the stamp, yet it is impossible to ignore the extraordinary facts that link them together.
And, by the way, the ongoing archaeological excavations at the City of David continue to prove that ancient Jerusalem is no longer just a matter of faith, as it was for a long time, but also a matter of fact. We can see that every single name mentioned in the Tanach, down to the last servant of a king, is authentic.
The Lesson
What’s the message for us?
Many people look at the Jewish world today, and they note how profoundly is the impact of assimilation, alienation, intermarriage, and the estrangement of much of our people from our heritage and Jewish life.
It is easy to despair and resign. Comes the Haftorah and says: Never ever give up hope. King Yosheyahu inherited a situation far bleaker. Yet this great man was determined to make a revolution—and he succeeded. The heart of G-d’s children is awake even if they claim they are sleeping.
Never ever give up on the Jewish people. We today have the power to reinvent our nation, individually and collectively, from its slumber. Like King Yosheyahu of old we must gather our brothers and sisters and remind them who they are, where they come from, and what their destiny is.
The bulla discovered just a short while before Pesach is a powerful reminder, perhaps, for each of us to discover our own ability to cleanse ourselves—like Natham Melach and Yosheyahu of old—from all foreign influence, from all which obstructs our deep and true relationship with our souls, our G-d, and our Torah.
I Am Free
Rabbi Yaakov Galinsky was a famous Maggid (preacher) living in Benei Berak, but as a 20-year-old he was a slave laborer in the Soviet gulag. One night he woke up and saw a fellow prisoner get up from his bunk and look around to be sure no one was watching. He took out a hidden package, removed a uniform, and changed into it. It was the uniform of a high military officer, complete with ribbons and medals. As quickly as he had donned it, he took it off, returned it to its hiding place, and changed back into his prison garb.
Later that day the curious Rabbi Galinsky asked his barracks-mate what he was doing. The man, a non-Jew, said defiantly, “I was a general in the Lithuanian Army. The Soviets arrested me and sent me here. They treat me as a slave – but I am not a slave! I am a general! Someday Lithuania will be free, and I will be a general again! The Soviets want to humiliate me, but I will always remember what I really am!”
Rabbi Galinsky said that this experience gave him perspective into life. Here was a man slaving away in Siberia. But he had his nightly reminder that this is not who he is! He belongs elsewhere. He is not a prisoner in essence; he is a free man!
This, he said, is what we need as Jews. Despite any challenge or difficulty, never forget who we are and G-d’s investment in us.
That’s why we have a mitzvah every day of the year to mention the Exodus of Egypt and on Passover we tell the story in detail. What’s the point?!
It is a statement, a protest, against the forces that enslave us. Once or twice a day we have to don the uniform of the military general and declare to ourselves: We are not slaves. We are not meant to be confined. We are meant to be truly free, to serve G-d with all our heart, to liberate ourselves from all the blockages which do not allow us to live every moment our eternal covenant with G-d.
[1] The commentaries to the verse attribute the burning of the Torah to Achaz. As some have pointed out, though, our version of the Talmud (Sanhedrin 103b) indicates that it was Amon, Yoshiyahu’s father, who did this. See also Sefer Haikkarim 3:22.
[2] This is the interpretation of Abarbenel. Radak and Ralbag’s understanding of the event is that an ordinary Torah was discovered. Abarbanel finds it difficult to believe that there were no other copies of the Torah preserved even during the idolatrous periods of the nation’s history and suggests that what was discovered sealed in the Temple was Moses’ own Torah, written by his hand.
[3] Deuteronomy 28:36.
- Comment
Class Summary:
Amidst the first ever picture of a Black Hole, turbulent Israeli elections, the crashing of its spacecraft before landing on the moon, Congresswoman Omer revealing her truest colors, the Muller report, the fire at Notre Dame, few of us noticed a small news story tucked away amidst far more tantalizing events. But it should not go unnoticed.
Just in the weeks before Passover, a bulla—seal impression—and a 2,600-year-old stamp dating back to the First Temple and bearing Hebrew names were uncovered as part of the archaeological excavations in the ancient City of David, in Jerusalem.
You are sitting and wondering who cares? So let me tell you. The seal impression, dated to end of the First Temple period, features the words: “LeNathan-Melech Eved HaMelech,” which means: “[Belonging to] Nathan-Melech, Servant of the King.”
The name Nathan-Melech appears only once in the entire Hebrew Bible. Where? You guessed it! In the Haftorah we recite on Pesach (on the second day)—in chapter 23 of the second book of Kings.
So we have, apparently, discovered the personal stamp of this person with a rare name mentioned once in Tanach, about whom we read about today.
To appreciate the significance of this, we need to appreciate the backdrop to the story described in this Haftorah of Passover—as it was one of the amazing moments in Jewish history, and contains powerful lessons for today.
Rabbi Yaakov Galinsky was a famous Maggid (preacher) living in Benei Berak, but as a 20-year-old he was a slave laborer in the Soviet gulag. One night he woke up and saw a fellow prisoner get up from his bunk and look around to be sure no one was watching. He took out a hidden package, removed a uniform, and changed into it. It was the uniform of a high military officer, complete with ribbons and medals. As quickly as he had donned it, he took it off, returned it to its hiding place, and changed back into his prison garb.
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