2 Kings 12

Repairing the 150-year-old Temple

King tells priests to repair the Temple
2 Chronicles 24:1-16

1By the time seven-year-old Joash became king of Judah, King Jehu was into his seventh year of ruling Israel. Joash reigned for an entire generation, 40 years. [1] His mother was Zibiah, [2] from Beersheba. 2Joash kept on the good side of the LORD because the priest Jehoiada taught him the laws to live by. 4Joash told the priests, “I want you to take some silver out of the Temple treasury. Take it from the donations people bring on their own and from the individual taxes they have to pay. 5Then use that money to repair anything that needs fixing at the Temple.” [3]

King withholds priests salaries

6The priests ignored him and did nothing until his 23rd year as king. 7That’s when he called in Jehoiada and some other priests to give them a royal nudge. He said, “Why aren’t you repairing the Temple. Here’s another thing you’re not going to do. You’re not going to accept any more personal donations. Instead, you’re going to hand it over as your contribution to the Temple building fund.”

8The priests agreed to the king’s fundraising plan. They wouldn’t accept any more silver. They would add it directly to the building fund. 9Priest Jehoiada had a chest built with a hole in the top for donations. Whenever someone brought a gift of silver to the Temple, priests who served as guards at the steps into the Temple dropped the silver in the chest.

Priests pay builders in silver bricks

10When the chest filled up, the high priest and the king’s secretary took the silver and had it melted into bricks, which they counted.

11Then they distributed those ingots of silver to the foremen of the Temple workers, as salary. The foremen gave the money to their carpenters and other workers. 12Other workers included stonecutters, masons, and brokers who bought the lumber and stone that the construction workers needed to finish repairing the LORD’s Temple.

13Priests didn’t use any of that silver for new utensils and furnishings that were needed inside the Temple. And they didn’t use the silver to make silver bowls, lamp snuffers to turn off the lights, trumpets, or anything else made of silver and gold. 14All the donations went directly to the workers.

15After workers got their hands on it, the priests and the royal officials agreed they didn’t need to follow the money trail. That’s because the workers were honest. 16The only silver that the priests got to keep were the donations people brought to atone for their sins, when silver accompanied their sin offerings. [4]

Judah’s king buys his way out of a war

17About that time, King Hazael of Syria invaded the land along the coast and took the town of Gath. Then he decided to take Jerusalem, too.

18Judah’s King Joash bought him off. He loaded up a wealth of valuables and gifts that Judah’s kings had accumulated over the years. These came from the reigns of Jehoshaphat, Jehoram, Ahaziah, and kings before them as well. He added his own valuables and gifts. He also threw in all the gold from the Temple treasury. He sent them out to King Hazael, who called off the attack and went home.

19The rest of Joash’s story and everything he accomplished are preserved in the History of Judah’s Kings.

Royal servants kill their king

20Some of Joash’s officers and servants plotted an assassination. They killed him at the house built on fill dirt, [5] near the road to Silla. [6] 21The king-killers were two of his trusted servants: Jozacar son of Shimeath and Jehozabad son of Shomer. The king was buried with his family in the City of David. [7] His son Amaziah became Judah’s next king.

Footnotes

Intro Notes to 2 Kings

112:1

Well, maybe not 40 years exactly. “Forty years” was a common way of saying “many years,” or “a long time.” The symbolic number shows up about 150 times in the Bible. It was probably intended to be taken no more literally than our modern saying “at the eleventh hour.” “Eleventh hour” means at the last moment, not 11 o-clock.

212:1

Zibiah likely died when Athaliah killed the royal family, but overlooked Joash who went in hiding when the assassinations began (2 Kings 11:1-3).

312:5

The Temple would have been roughly 150 years old by then. Solomon’s crew of workers, which included citizens drafted for duty against their will, finished the Jerusalem Temple in about 957 BC. Joash reigned from about 835-796 BC.

412:16

A sin offering here refers to something the people of Israel brought to God after they realized they had accidentally broken one of God’s laws earlier. Some scholars say a better translation is the opposite of “sin” because the sacrifice is intended to “un-sin” people, to purify them. So those scholars call it a “purification offering.”

512:20

The word is more literally Beth-millo. Beth means house. The writer doesn’t tell us what Millo means. The root at the bottom of the Hebrew term means to “fill.” Some say the Millo may have been a bit like a retaining wall or an abutment to support the south side of the Temple Mount area. Many scholars say it probably was once part of a stair-step structure discovered by British archaeologist Kathleen Kenyon. And that structure may have been part of a large stone building discovered in 2005 by Israeli archaeologist Eilat Mazar. What the “Millo house” means is anyone’s guess.

612:20

It’s unknown what or where Silla was.

712:21

The City of David was the original part of town before Solomon expanded up the hill to add the Temple and palace complexes.