Ishodad of Merv, on 2Kgs 22:8

“And Helcias the high priest said to Saphan the scribe: I have found the book of the law in the house of the Lord: and Helcias gave the book to Saphan, and he read it.”

“The book that was discovered was the Deuteronomy that Moses had placed in the ark as a precaution. It was brought out through a divine action, in order to show the people that it cried and argued against them because of their great iniquity and therefore did not want to stay in its place. Hilkiah, who found the book, was the father of the prophet Jeremiah. It is not without a reason that the book was discovered at the time of Josiah because he, more than all the other kings, showed a real fervor against the priests of Baal, especially against those of the ten tribes, that is, those that had survived among them. Indeed, if [the book] had been found at the time of the other kings, they would not have accepted it. They might have even torn it up, as Zedekiah tore the prophecy of Jeremiah and threw it into the fire. [Another reason] is that the time of their captivity had come. For the seventy years of the Babylonian captivity are usually counted from the eighteenth year of Josiah, the year in which the book was discovered: as if the captivity was about to come in those days but was hindered because of Josiah's virtue.”

Imported from an open dataset — not yet checked against the printed edition.