2 Kings 12

Living Bible

12 It was seven years after Jehu had become the king of Israel that Joash became king of Judah. He reigned in Jerusalem for forty years. (His mother was Zibiah, from Beersheba.) ² All his life Joash did what was right because Jehoiada the High Priest instructed him. ³ Yet even so he didn’t destroy the shrines on the hills—the people still sacrificed and burned incense there.

^4-5 One day King Joash said to Jehoiada, “The Temple building needs repairing. Whenever anyone brings a contribution to the Lord, whether it is a regular assessment or some special gift, use it to pay for whatever repairs are needed.”

⁶ But in the twenty-third year of his reign the Temple was still in disrepair. ⁷ So Joash called for Jehoiada and the other priests and asked them, “Why haven’t you done anything about the Temple? Now don’t use any more money for your own needs; from now on it must all be spent on getting the Temple into good condition.”

⁸ So the priests agreed to set up a special repair fund that would not go through their hands, lest it be diverted to care for their personal needs. ⁹ Jehoiada the priest bored a hole in the lid of a large chest and set it on the right-hand side of the altar at the Temple entrance. The doorkeepers put all of the people’s contributions into it. ¹⁰ Whenever the chest became full, the king’s financial secretary and the High Priest counted it, put it into bags, ^11-12 and gave it to the construction superintendents to pay the carpenters, stonemasons, quarrymen, timber dealers, and stone merchants, and to buy the other materials needed to repair the Temple of the Lord. ^13-14 It was not used to buy silver cups, gold snuffers, bowls, trumpets, or similar articles, but only for repairs to the building. ¹⁵ No accounting was required from the construction superintendents, for they were honest and faithful men. ¹⁶ However, the money that was contributed for guilt offerings and sin offerings was given to the priests for their own use. It was not put into the chest.

¹⁷ About this time, King Hazael of Syria went to war against Gath and captured it; then he moved on toward Jerusalem to attack it. ¹⁸ King Joash took all the sacred objects that his ancestors—Jehoshaphat, Jehoram, and Ahaziah, the kings of Judah—had dedicated, along with what he himself had dedicated, and all the gold in the treasuries of the Temple and the palace, and sent it to Hazael. So Hazael called off the attack.

¹⁹ The rest of the history of Joash is recorded in The Annals of the Kings of Judah. ²⁰ But his officers plotted against him and assassinated him in his royal residence at Millo on the road to Silla. ²¹ The assassins were Jozachar, the son of Shimeath, and Jehozabad, the son of Shomer—both trusted aides.^[a] He was buried in the royal cemetery in Jerusalem, and his son Amaziah became the new king.