2 Kings 12

12 ¹ In the seventh year of Jehu, Jehoash began to reign, and he reigned forty years in Jerusalem. His mother's name was Zibiah, from Beersheba. ² Jehoash did what was right in the eyes of our Father all the years that Jehoiada the priest instructed him. ³ Even so, the high places were not removed; the people still sacrificed and burned incense on the high places.

⁴ Jehoash said to the priests, "All the money for the sacred gifts that is brought into the house of our Father—the money collected in the census, the money each person is assessed by valuation, and all the money that anyone's heart prompts him to bring to the house of our Father— ⁵ let the priests receive it, each from his own treasurer, and let them repair whatever damage is found in the temple."

⁶ But by the twenty-third year of King Jehoash, the priests still had not repaired the damage to the temple. ⁷ So King Jehoash summoned Jehoiada the priest and the other priests and said to them, "Why are you not repairing the damage to the temple? Now then, take no more money from your treasurers, but hand it over for the repair of the temple."

⁸ The priests agreed that they would take no more money from the people and that they would not repair the temple themselves. ⁹ Then Jehoiada the priest took a chest, bored a hole in its lid, and set it beside the altar, on the right side as one enters the house of our Father. There the priests who guarded the threshold put all the money that was brought into the house of our Father. ¹⁰ Whenever they saw that there was a large amount of money in the chest, the king's secretary and the high priest came up, and they counted and bagged the money found in the house of our Father. ¹¹ Then they handed the weighed money over to the workers appointed to oversee the house of our Father, and these paid the carpenters and builders who worked on the house of our Father, ¹² the masons and the stonecutters. They also bought timber and dressed stone to repair the damage to the house of our Father, and they covered every other expense for the temple's repair. ¹³ None of the money brought into the house of our Father was used to make silver basins, wick trimmers, sprinkling bowls, trumpets, or any other article of gold or silver; ¹⁴ it was paid to the workers, who used it to repair the house of our Father. ¹⁵ They did not require an accounting from the men to whom they gave the money to pay the workers, because these men acted with complete honesty. ¹⁶ The money from the guilt offerings and the sin offerings was not brought into the house of our Father; it belonged to the priests.

The Fall of Joash

¹⁷ About that time Hazael king of Aram marched up, attacked Gath, and captured it. Then he turned to attack Jerusalem. ¹⁸ But Jehoash king of Judah took all the sacred gifts that his predecessors—Jehoshaphat, Jehoram, and Ahaziah, the kings of Judah—had dedicated, along with his own dedicated gifts and all the gold found in the treasuries of the house of our Father and of the royal palace, and he sent them to Hazael king of Aram. So Hazael withdrew from Jerusalem.

¹⁹ As for the rest of the acts of Joash and all that he did, are they not written in the Book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Judah? ²⁰ His own officials rose up, formed a conspiracy, and struck Joash down at Beth Millo, on the road that goes down to Silla. ²¹ The officials who attacked and killed him were Jozabad son of Shimeath and Jehozabad son of Shomer. He was buried with his ancestors in the City of David, and Amaziah his son succeeded him as king.