Judah’s good king Joash
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📚Jehoash began to reign in the seventh year of Jehu, and he reigned forty years in Jerusalem. And his mother’s name was Zibiah. She was from Beersheba. 2 📚✭And Jehoash did what was right in the sight of the LORD all the days in which Jehoiada the priest instructed him. 3 📚✭But the high places were not taken away. The people still sacrificed and burned incense on the high places. 4 📚And Jehoash said to the priests, “All the money of the dedicated things that is brought into the house of the LORD, each man’s census money✭, the money from each man’s assessment, and all the money any man’s heart prompts him✭ to bring into the house of the LORD, 5 📚let the priests themselves take it, each one from his acquaintances, and let them repair the damaged places of the house, wherever any damage may be found”.
6 📚✭But it so happened that by the twenty-third year of king Jehoash the priests had not repaired the damaged places in the house. 7 📚Then king Jehoash called for Jehoiada the priest and the other priests, and said to them, “Why are you not repairing the damaged places of the house? Now therefore accept no more money from your acquaintances, but deliver it for the damaged places in the house”. 8 And the priests agreed to receive no more money from the people, and not to repair the damaged places in the house themselves.
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 the LORD; and the priests who were doorkeepers put in it all the money that was brought into the house of the LORD. 10 📚And so it was that whenever they saw there was much money in the chest, the king’s scribe and the high priest came up and put it in bags, and counted the money that was found in the house of the LORD. 11 📚✭And they gave the counted money into the hands of those who did the work, who had the oversight of the house of the LORD; and they paid it out to the carpenters and builders who worked on the house of the LORD, 12 📚and to masons and stone cutters, and to buy timber and cut stone to repair the damaged places in the house of the LORD, and for all that was paid out for the house to repair it.
13 📚However, no silver bowls, snuffers, basins, trumpets, no gold or silver articles were made for the house of the LORD, from the money that was brought into the house of the LORD, 14 but they gave it to the workmen, and made repairs to the house of the LORD with it. 15 📚Moreover, they did not demand an account with the men into whose hands they delivered the money to be given to workmen, for they dealt faithfully✭. 16 📚The money for trespass offerings and money for sin offerings was not brought into the house of the LORD. It belonged to the priests.
Joash’s wrong step
17 📚✭Then Hazael✭ king of Syria went up and fought against Gath and took it; and Hazael set his face to go up to Jerusalem. 18 📚✭And Jehoash king of Judah took all the sacred things that Jehoshaphat and Jehoram and Ahaziah, his forefathers, kings of Judah, had dedicated, and his own sacred things, and all the gold that was found in the treasuries of the house of the LORD and in the king’s house, and sent it to Hazael king of Syria; and he went away from Jerusalem.
19 📚And the rest of the acts of Joash, and all that he did, are they not written in the book of The Annals✭ of the Kings of Judah? 20 📚And his servants arose and made a conspiracy, and killed Joash✭ in the house of Millo, on the way down to Silla. 21 📚For Jozachar the son of Shimeath and Jehozabad the son of Shomer, his servants, struck him, and he died; and they buried him with his ancestors in the city of David✭. And his son Amaziah reigned in his place.