2 Kings 12:1-16

The Reign of Jehoash of Judah

12¹ In the seventh year of Jehu began Jehoash to reign; and he reigned forty years in Jerusalem: and his mother’s name was Zibiah of Beersheba. ² Jehoash did that which was right in the eyes of Yahweh all his days in which Jehoiada the priest instructed him. ³ However the high places were not taken away; the people still sacrificed and burnt incense in the high places.

⁴ Jehoash said to the priests, “All the money of the holy things that is brought into the house of Yahweh, in current money, the money of the persons for whom each man is rated, and all the money that it comes into any man’s heart to bring into the house of Yahweh, ⁵ let the priests take it to them, every 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 three and twentieth year of king Jehoash the priests had not repaired the breaches of the house. ⁷ Then king Jehoash called for Jehoiada the priest, and for 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 treasurers, 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 the house of Yahweh: and the priests who kept the threshold put therein all the money that was brought into the house of Yahweh. 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 the house of Yahweh. ¹¹ They gave the money that was weighed out into the hands of those who did the work, who had the oversight of the house of Yahweh: and they paid it out to the carpenters and the builders, who worked on the house of Yahweh, ¹² and to the masons and the stone cutters, and for buying timber and cut stone to repair the breaches of the house of Yahweh, and for all that was laid out for the house to repair it. ¹³ But there were not made for the house of Yahweh cups of silver, snuffers, basins, trumpets, any vessels of gold, or vessels of silver, of the money that was brought into the house of Yahweh; ¹⁴ for they gave that to those who did the work, and repaired therewith the house of Yahweh. ¹⁵ Moreover they didn’t demand 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 the house of Yahweh: it was the priests’.