2 Kings 12

¹ In the seventh year of Jehu, Joash began to reign; and he reigned forty years in Jerusalem. His mother’s name was Zibiah of Beersheba. ² Joash did that which was right in Yahweh’s eyes all his days in which Jehoiada the priest instructed him.

³ However the high places were not taken away. The people still sacrificed and burned incense in the high places.

⁴ Joash said to the priests, “All the money of the holy things that is brought into Yahweh’s house, in current money, the money of the persons for whom each man is assessed, and all the money that it comes into any man’s heart to bring into Yahweh’s house, ⁵ let the priests take it to them, each man from his acquaintance; and they shall repair the breaches of the house, wherever any breach shall be found.”

⁶ But it was so, that in the twenty-third year of King Joash the priests had not repaired the breaches of the house. ⁷ Then King Joash called for Jehoiada the priest, and the other priests, and said to them, “Why don’t you repair the breaches of the house? Now therefore take no more money from your acquaintances, but deliver it for the breaches of the house.”

⁸ The priests consented that they should take no more money from the people, neither repair the breaches of the house.

⁹ But Jehoiada the priest took a chest, and bored a hole in its lid, and set it beside the altar, on the right side as one comes into Yahweh’s house; and the priests who kept the threshold put there all the money that was brought into Yahweh’s house. ¹⁰ It was so, when they saw that there was much money in the chest, that the king’s scribe and the high priest came up, and they put up in bags and counted the money that was found in Yahweh’s house. ¹¹ They gave the money that was weighed out into the hands of those who did the work, who had the oversight of Yahweh’s house; and they paid it out to the carpenters and the builders who worked on Yahweh’s house, ¹² and to the masons and the stonecutters, and for buying timber and hewn stone to repair the breaches of Yahweh’s house, and for all that was laid out to repair the house.

¹³ But there were not made for Yahweh’s house cups of silver, snuffers, basins, trumpets, any vessels of gold, or vessels of silver, of the money that was brought into Yahweh’s house; ¹⁴ for they gave that to those who did the work, and repaired Yahweh’s house with it. ¹⁵ Moreover they didn’t require an accounting from the men into whose hand they delivered the money to give to those who did the work; for they dealt faithfully.

¹⁶ The money for the trespass offerings, and the money for the sin offerings, was not brought into Yahweh’s house. It was the priests’.

¹⁷ Then Hazael king of Syria went up, and fought against Gath, and took it; and Hazael set his face to go up to Jerusalem. ¹⁸ Joash king of Judah took all the holy things that Jehoshaphat, and Jehoram, and Ahaziah, his fathers, kings of Judah, had dedicated, and his own holy things, and all the gold that was found in the treasures of Yahweh’s house, and in the king’s house, and sent it to Hazael king of Syria. Then he went away from Jerusalem.

¹⁹ Now the rest of the acts of Joash, and all that he did, aren’t they written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Judah?

²⁰ His servants arose, and made a conspiracy, and struck Joash at the house of Millo, on the way that goes down to Silla. ²¹ For Jozacar the son of Shimeath, and Jehozabad the son of Shomer, his servants, struck him, and he died. They buried him with his fathers in David’s city; and Amaziah his son reigned in his place.