Hilkiah and those the king had sent with him went to speak to the prophet Huldah, who was the wife of Shallum son of Tokhath, the son of Hasrah, keeper of the wardrobe. She lived in Jerusalem, in the New Quarter. – 2 Chronicles 34:22

Today's Scripture Reading (June 18, 2026): 2 Chronicles 34

English Theologian, N.T. Wright argues that everything in the Bible is expressed in terms of cooperative opposites. The idea is that from the very creation of the universe, we see essential pairings of opposites. Day makes necessary night. Water and dry land are mutually defining. In the mind of Wright, this is one principle that argues against the idea of gay marriage. God's design from the very beginning is that cooperative opposites are what is critical in any endeavor. In the concept of marriage, those cooperative opposites must be "one man and one woman," or what we have come to call traditional marriage.

I am not convinced that Wright is correct in his argument about marriage. Even in same-sex marriages, the participants are usually quite different. However, that does not mean he is wrong about the importance of both men and women in the world in which we live. Maybe one problem within contemporary feminism lies in the concept of gender equality, which often argues that we can do the same things. I believe strongly in a radical equality between the sexes, but that does not mean that men and women are the same. We aren't. Men and women, even outside the concept of marriage, present a necessary, complementary opposite in life. Both men and women are required to accomplish societal goals that extend beyond marriage and reproduction. Men and women approach problems differently. One is not better than the other; they are just different. And the best solution usually results when both are involved in the process.

The Book of Kings offers us another example of cooperative opposites in the story of the prophetess Huldah. Huldah is remembered as one of the seven prophetesses of Judaism, alongside Sarah, Miriam, Deborah, Hannah, Abigail, and Esther. But Huldah had a more famous male relative. His name was Jeremiah. According to tradition, Huldah and Jeremiah were two sides of the same coin, or, as Wright might put it, cooperative opposites. Jeremiah and Huldah performed very similar functions in the religious life of the day. We know that Jeremiah, often nicknamed "The Weeping Prophet," taught a message of repentance to Judah during the last days of the nation. Jeremiah begged Judah to return to God. But it seems that his ministry was mostly to the men of the city. Huldah set herself to the same task with the women of the city, pleading that they would return to God before it was too late.

Huldah is also thought to have been an important public educator of her day. It might be that the King's delegation went to Huldah, rather than to Jeremiah, because they believed she might be more inclined to respond with compassion and intercede before God for them, rather than with the condemnation they expected from Jeremiah. And their decision to take this new document, likely the Book of Deuteronomy, to Huldah made her the first person to declare a document scripture, as she treated the newly found text as the authoritative word of God.  

Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: Zephaniah 1

See Also 2 Kings 22:14