The official whose 'hand was with Jeremiah, so that he was not given into the hand of the people to be put to death' (Jeremiah 26:24) — the last line of the temple-trial chapter, and the reason there is a rest of the book. ⚠ He belongs to a family that shows up at three hinges of Judah's last century. His father SHAPHAN is the royal scribe who read the recovered law-book aloud to Josiah and set off that king's whole reform (2 Kings 22:8-10). Ahikam himself was on the delegation Josiah sent to the prophetess Huldah about that book (22:12-14), which makes his later protection of Jeremiah of a piece with his own history. And his son GEDALIAH is the man Babylon appoints governor over the survivors after Jerusalem falls — the official Jeremiah is finally released into the custody of (Jeremiah 39:14; 40:5-6), and who is assassinated within months (ch. 41). One family at the discovery of the law, at the rescue of the prophet, and at the administration of the ruins.