Joash+12:1 The Hebrew uses Jehoash, an alternate form of Joash, from here until 12:9 began to reign in the seventh year of Jehu, and he reigned forty years in Jerusalem. His mother’s name was Zibiah of Beersheba. Joash did that which was right in YHWH’s eyes all his days in which Jehoiada the priest instructed him. However, the high places were not taken away. The people still sacrificed and burned incense in the high places.
Joash Initiates Temple Repairs
Joash said to the priests, “All the money of the holy things that is brought into the house of YHWH, in current money, the money of the people for whom each man is evaluated,+Exo 30:12 and all the money that it comes into any man’s heart to bring into the house of YHWH, let the priests take it to them, each man from his donor; and they are to repair the damage to the house, wherever any damage is found.”
But in the twenty-third year of King Joash the priests still had not repaired the damage to the house. Then King Joash called for Jehoiada the priest, and for the other priests, and said to them, “Why aren’t y’all repairing the damage to the house? Now, y’all are to take no more money from your* treasurers, except to give* it for repair of the damage to the house.”
The priests consented that they should take no more money from the people, and not repair the damage to the house. 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 YHWH; and the priests who kept the threshold put all the money that was brought into the house of YHWH into it. When they saw that there was much money in the chest, the king’s scribe and the high priest came up, and they put it in bags and counted the money that was found in the house of YHWH. 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 YHWH; and they paid it out to the carpenters and the builders who worked on the house of YHWH, and to the masons and the stone cutters, and for buying timber and cut stone to repair the damage to the house of YHWH, and for all that was laid out for the house to repair it. But there were not made for the house of YHWH cups of silver, snuffers, basins, trumpets, any vessels of gold or vessels of silver, of the money that was brought into the house of YHWH; for they gave that to those who did the work, and repaired the house of YHWH with it. 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. The money for the trespass offerings and the money for the sin offerings was not brought into the house of YHWH. It was the priests’.
Then Hazael king of Syria went up and fought against Gath, and took it; and Hazael set his face to go up to Jerusalem. 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 the house of YHWH, and of the king’s house, and sent it to Hazael king of Syria, who then withdrew from Jerusalem.
The Death of Joash
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? His servants arose and made a conspiracy, and struck Joash at the house of Millo, on the way that goes down to Silla. For Jozacar the son of Shimeath, and Jehozabad the son of Shomer, his servants, struck him, and he died; and they buried him with his fathers in David’s city; and Amaziah his son reigned in his place.