King Joash of Judah

1When Jehu had been ruling Israel for almost seven years, Joash became the king of Judah. He ruled in Jerusalem for 40 years. His mother was Zibiah, from Beersheba city.

2All his life, he did what pleased Yahweh, because Jehoiada the priest instructed/taught him.

3But the places where the people worshiped Yahweh on the tops of hills were not destroyed, and they continued to offer sacrifices and burn incense at those places, instead of at the place that God had chosen for them in Jerusalem.

4Joash said to the priests, “You must take all the money which the people contribute, both the money they are required to give and the money that they themselves decide to give, as sacred offerings to buy things for the temple.

5Each priest must take the money from people who know him (OR, from one of the treasurers), and he must use that money to repair the temple whenever he sees that there is something that needs to be repaired.”

6But after Joash had been ruling for almost twenty-three years, the priests still had not repaired anything in the temple.

7So Joash summoned Jehoiada and the other priests and said to them, “◄Why are you not repairing things in the temple?/You should have been repairing things in the temple!► [RHQ] From now on, you must not keep the money that you receive from people who know you (OR, the treasurers). You must give it to the people who will be repairing things in the temple!”

8The priests agreed to do that, and they also agreed that they themselves would not do the repair work.

9Then Jehoiada took a chest and bored a hole in the lid. He placed it alongside the altar for burning incense/sacrifices that was on the right as anyone enters the temple. The priests who guarded the entrance to the temple put in the box the money that was brought to the temple.

10Whenever they saw that there was a lot of money in the chest, the king’s secretary and the Supreme Priest would come and count the money. Then they would put it in bags and tie the bags shut.

11Then, after they weighed it, they would give the money to the men who supervised the work in the temple. Then the supervisors would use that money to pay the carpenters and builders who did the repair work in the temple,

12and the masons and the stone cutters. Also with some of that money they bought timber and stones that had been cut to be used in the repair work, and to pay all the other expenses for the repair work.

13But they did not use any of that money to pay men to make silver cups or wick trimmers or bowls or trumpets or any other items made of silver or gold to be used in the temple.

14All that money was given to the men who were doing the work of repairing the temple.

15The men who supervised the work always did things honestly, so the king’s secretary and the Supreme Priest never required that the supervisors report what they had spent the money for.

16But the money that people gave to pay for the wrong things that they had done and the money they gave to purify themselves because of the sins that they had committed was not put in the chest. That money belonged to the priests.

17At that time, Hazael, the king of Syria, went with his army and attacked Gath city and conquered it. Then he decided that they would attack Jerusalem.

18So Joash, the king of Judah, took all the money that the previous kings, Jehoshaphat and Jehoram and Ahaziah, had dedicated to Yahweh. He added some of his own money, and all the gold that was in the rooms in the temple where valuable things were kept/stored, and the gold in his palace, and sent it all to King Hazael, to ◄appease him/persuade him to not attack Jerusalem►. So King Hazael took his army away from Jerusalem.

19If you want to read more of what Joash did, it is all written [RHQ] in the scroll called ‘The History of the Kings of Judah’.

20Joash’s officials plotted against him, and two of them killed Joash on the road that goes down to the Silla district. The two men who did that were Jozabad, the son of Shimeath, and Jehozabad, the son of Shomer. Joash was buried in the place where his ancestors were buried, in the part of Jerusalem called ‘The City of David’. Then Joash’s son Amaziah became the king of Judah.