2 Kings 12

¹In the seventh year of Jehu Jehoʹash began to reign, and he reigned forty years in Jerusalem. His mother’s name was Zibʹiah of Beer-sheba. ²And Jehoʹash did what was right in the eyes of the Lord all his days, because Jehoiʹada the priest instructed him. ³Nevertheless the high places were not taken away; the people continued to sacrifice and burn incense on the high places.

⁴Jehoʹash said to the priests, “All the money of the holy things which is brought into the house of the Lord, the money for which each man is assessed—the money from the assessment of persons—and the money which a man’s heart prompts him to bring into the house of the Lord, ⁵let the priests take, each from his acquaintance; and let them repair the house wherever any need of repairs is discovered.” ⁶But by the twenty-third year of King Jehoʹash the priests had made no repairs on the house. ⁷Therefore King Jehoʹash summoned Jehoiʹada the priest and the other priests and said to them, “Why are you not repairing the house? Now therefore take no more money from your acquaintances, but hand it over for the repair of the house.” ⁸So the priests agreed that they should take no more money from the people, and that they should not repair the house.

⁹Then Jehoiʹada the priest took a chest, and bored a hole in the lid of it, and set it beside the altar on the right side as one entered the house of the Lord; and the priests who guarded the threshold put in it all the money that was brought into the house of the Lord. ¹⁰And whenever they saw that there was much money in the chest, the king’s secretary and the high priest came up and they counted and tied up in bags the money that was found in the house of the Lord. ¹¹Then they would give the money that was weighed out into the hands of the workmen who had the oversight of the house of the Lord; and they paid it out to the carpenters and the builders who worked upon the house of the Lord, ¹²and to the masons and the stonecutters, as well as to buy timber and quarried stone for making repairs on the house of the Lord, and for any outlay upon the repairs of the house. ¹³But there were not made for the house of the Lord basins of silver, snuffers, bowls, trumpets, or any vessels of gold, or of silver, from the money that was brought into the house of the Lord, ¹⁴for that was given to the workmen who were repairing the house of the Lord with it. ¹⁵And they did not ask an accounting from the men into whose hand they delivered the money to pay out to the workmen, for they dealt honestly. ¹⁶The money from the guilt offerings and the money from the sin offerings was not brought into the house of the Lord; it belonged to the priests.

¹⁷At that time Hazʹael king of Syria went up and fought against Gath, and took it. But when Hazʹael set his face to go up against Jerusalem, ¹⁸Jehoʹash king of Judah took all the votive gifts that Jehoshʹaphat and Jehoʹram and Ahaziʹah his fathers, the kings of Judah, had dedicated, and his own votive gifts, and all the gold that was found in the treasuries of the house of the Lord and of the king’s house, and sent these to Hazʹael king of Syria. Then Hazʹael went away from Jerusalem.

¹⁹Now the rest of the acts of Joʹash, and all that he did, are they not written in the Book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Judah? ²⁰His servants arose and made a conspiracy, and slew Joʹash in the house of Millo, on the way that goes down to Silla. ²¹It was Joʹzacar the son of Shimʹeath and Jehoʹzabad the son of Shomer, his servants, who struck him down, so that he died. And they buried him with his fathers in the city of David, and Amaziʹah his son reigned in his stead.