2 Kings 12:4-18--Jehoash Repairs the Temple

2 Kings 12:4-18
English Standard Version

Jehoash Repairs the Temple
4 Jehoash said to the priests, “All the money of the holy things that 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 that a man's heart prompts him to bring into the house of the LORD, 5 let the priests take, each from his donor, and let them repair the house wherever any need of repairs is discovered.” 6 But by the twenty-third year of King Jehoash, the priests had made no repairs on the house. 7 Therefore King Jehoash summoned Jehoiada 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 donors, but hand it over for the repair of the house.” 8 So the priests agreed that they should take no more money from the people, and that they should not repair the house.

9 Then Jehoiada 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. 10 And whenever they saw that there was much money in the chest, the king's secretary and the high priest came up and they bagged and counted the money that was found in the house of the LORD. 11 Then 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 on the house of the LORD, 12 and 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 for the repairs of the house. 13 But 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, 14 for that was given to the workmen who were repairing the house of the LORD with it. 15 And they did not ask for an accounting from the men into whose hand they delivered the money to pay out to the workmen, for they dealt honestly. 16 The 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.

​17 At that time Hazael king of Syria went up and fought against Gath and took it. But when Hazael set his face to go up against Jerusalem, 18 Jehoash king of Judah took all the sacred gifts that Jehoshaphat and Jehoram and Ahaziah his fathers, the kings of Judah, had dedicated, and his own sacred 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 Hazael king of Syria. Then Hazael went away from Jerusalem.

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Jehoash reinstituted the poll tax that had probably not been paid in a while as well as the use of tithes and offerings for the use of repairing the Temple of the LORD, but by his twenty-third year as king, the priests had not made any repairs to the Temple from the tithes and offerings that were being brought in.  The king and the priests together decided that instead of the priests collecting the money and then being responsible to turn it over to the king that they would instead set up a collection box (a locked chest with a hole in the top of it small enough to drop coins into but not large enough for anyone to reach inside the hole to grab any of the coins) and the king would then take that money that the people donated and use it to make the repairs.  Essentially this made a "building fund," and the people were instructed to put all their regular tithes and offerings as well as their poll tax money into the collection box (the priests would still be taken care of by the food offerings and the offerings of firstfruits and all the other ways in which they were provided with food and wine--they just would not take any of the gold or silver paid in coins that was given for tithes and offerings except in a couple of special cases mentioned later).

When the chest got full the money would be counted by both the high priest and the king's secretary and then the money would immediately be weighed out and put into the hands of the workmen who had oversight in repairing the Temple.  None of the money given was melted down to make the articles of bronze, silver or gold for the temple.

They also hired honest workmen so they did not ask for any accounting from them of how they spent the money that they were entrusted with.  The text also lets us know that the money that was associated with the payment of a guilt offering or sin offering was not put into the collection box because the Law required that it belonged to the priest who mediated such an offering, but it appears that regular tithes and offerings were put into the collection box until all the repairs were done.  It may be that this system stayed in effect even into the days of Jesus as we see what appears to be a similar collection going on with his parable about The Widow's Mite.

The one stain on the record of Jehoash (Joash) can be found in verses 17 and 18.  He's been a pretty good king to this point, but when the king of Syria is attacking the Philistines to the south and is starting to make his way north towards Jerusalem, Jehoash does not pray to the LORD or gather the army for war and trust that the LORD will give them the victory, he instead takes all the wealth out of the royal treasury that he and his father and grandfather and even his great-grandfather, as well as all the gold that was found in the treasuries of the Temple (this was a big mistake) and used it to pay a bribe to Hazael, king of Syria.  Hazael went away from Jerusalem for a time, but this would be the beginning of the end of Joash's reign.  We'll see more about that next time as well as when we look at what is said about him in 2 Chronicles 24.