2 Kings 12: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

Joash becomes king of Judah in Jehu's seventh year and rules forty years in Jerusalem, doing right as long as Jehoiada the priest teaches him, though the high places stay in use. He orders the temple money collected for repairs, and when the priests fail to make the repairs by his twenty-third year, Jehoiada sets up a collection chest and the funds go directly to the workmen, who are trusted without an audit. When Hazael of Aram threatens Jerusalem, Joash buys him off with the temple and palace treasures; later his own servants conspire against him and kill him, and his son Amaziah becomes king.

Claim by Claim

1. 12:1
   • Jehoash began to reign in the seventh year of Jehu.
   • Jehoash reigned forty years in Jerusalem.
   • Jehoash's mother was named Zibiah.
   • Zibiah was from Beersheba.
2. 12:2
   • Jehoash did what was right in the sight of the LORD.
   • He did so all his days in which Jehoiada the priest instructed him.
3. 12:3
   • The high places were not removed.
   • The people continued to sacrifice at the high places.
   • The people continued to burn incense at the high places.
4. 12:4
   • Jehoash spoke to the priests.
   • He said that all the money of the dedicated gifts brought into the house of the LORD was to be gathered.
   • This included the money each person is assessed at in the census.
   • This included the money set as the valuation for each person.
   • This included all money that anyone freely chose in his heart to bring into the house of the LORD.
5. 12:5
   • Jehoash said the priests should take the money, each from someone he knew.
   • He said they should repair the damaged parts of the house.
   • The repairs were to be made wherever damage was found.
6. 12:6
   • By the twenty-third year of king Jehoash, the priests had still not repaired the damaged parts of the house.
7. 12:7
   • King Jehoash summoned Jehoiada the priest and the other priests.
   • He asked them why they were not repairing the damage to the house.
   • He told them to take no more money from those they knew.
   • He told them to hand the money over for the repair of the house.
8. 12:8
   • The priests agreed to receive no more money from the people.
   • The priests agreed not to repair the damage to the house themselves.
9. 12:9
   • Jehoiada the priest took a chest.
   • He bored a hole in its lid.
   • He set it beside the altar.
   • He set it on the right side as one enters the house of the LORD.
   • The priests who guarded the threshold put into the chest all the money brought into the house of the LORD.
10. 12:10
    • When they saw that there was much money in the chest, the king's scribe and the high priest came up.
    • They tied the money up in bags.
    • They counted the money found in the house of the LORD.
11. 12:11
    • They gave the counted money into the hands of those who did the work.
    • Those men had oversight of the house of the LORD.
    • The money was paid out to the carpenters and builders who worked on the house of the LORD.
12. 12:12
    • The money was paid to masons and stonecutters.
    • The money was used to buy timber and dressed stone.
    • These were used to repair the damaged parts of the house of the LORD.
    • The money covered everything else spent on repairing the house.
13. 12:13
    • No silver bowls, snuffers, basins, trumpets, or vessels of gold or silver were made for the house of the LORD from that money.
    • The money in question was that brought into the house of the LORD.
14. 12:14
    • The money was given to the workmen.
    • With it they repaired the house of the LORD.
15. 12:15
    • No accounting was demanded from the men into whose hands the money was given to pay the workmen.
    • The reason was that those men acted faithfully.
16. 12:16
    • The money from guilt offerings and sin offerings was not brought into the house of the LORD.
    • That money belonged to the priests.
17. 12:17
    • Hazael king of Aram went up and fought against Gath.
    • Hazael captured Gath.
    • Hazael then set his face to go up against Jerusalem.
18. 12:18
    • Jehoash king of Judah took all the dedicated things that his fathers Jehoshaphat, Jehoram, and Ahaziah, kings of Judah, had dedicated.
    • He took his own dedicated things.
    • He took all the gold found in the treasuries of the house of the LORD and of the king's house.
    • He sent it all to Hazael king of Aram.
    • Hazael went away from Jerusalem.
19. 12:19
    • The rest of the acts of Joash and all that he did are written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Judah.
20. 12:20
    • His servants rose up and formed a conspiracy.
    • They killed Joash at the house of Millo, on the way down to Silla.
21. 12:21
    • Jozachar son of Shimeath and Jehozabad son of Shomer, his servants, struck him.
    • Joash died.
    • They buried him with his fathers in the city of David.
    • Amaziah his son reigned in his place.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

12:1

Jehoash and Joash are two forms of the same name, and this chapter uses both for the same king of Judah. Reigns were dated by reference to the neighboring kingdom: Jehu was king of Israel, the separate northern kingdom, and Judah was the southern kingdom with its capital at Jerusalem. Beersheba was a town at the far southern edge of Judah.

12:2

Jehoiada was the chief priest who had hidden Joash as an infant during a purge of the royal family and later put him on the throne; Joash came to the throne as a child of seven. The Hebrew of this verse can be read two ways, either that Joash did right all his life, being taught by Jehoiada, or that he did right only for as long as Jehoiada was instructing him. Both readings are possible and translators divide over them.

12:3

"High places" were local open-air worship sites, often on hilltops, with an altar and sometimes a standing stone or sacred pole. They were the ordinary way people worshiped outside Jerusalem. Judah's official policy was that sacrifice belonged at the temple in Jerusalem alone, so the survival of these sites is reported as a failure. Burning incense meant burning fragrant resin as an offering.

12:4

There were no minted coins in this period; "money" meant silver measured out by weight. Three separate revenue streams are listed. The first is the fixed head-tax owed by each man counted in a census, half a shekel of silver each, a shekel being roughly two-fifths of an ounce. The second is money paid to discharge a vow: someone who had promised a person to God's service paid a set sum instead, scaled by age and sex. The third is a purely voluntary gift.

12:5

The Hebrew phrase behind "the people he deals with" is obscure. It may mean each priest's own circle of acquaintances or donors, or it may refer to treasurers or assessors. The point is that each priest collected from a defined group of contributors and was expected to pass the funds on for repairs.

12:6

Joash had been made king at the age of seven, so this is roughly thirty years into his life and twenty-three into his reign, a long delay for a project already ordered.

12:9

The priests who guarded the doorway held a senior post, not a menial one; they controlled who and what entered the temple courts. Putting the collection chest in plain view beside the altar took the money out of individual priests' hands.

12:10

The king's secretary was a high royal official who kept state records and accounts; sending him along with the chief priest meant the palace and the temple audited the money together. Silver was counted by weight and then tied up in bags of a fixed amount, so a sealed bag could be handled without recounting.

12:12

Cut stone, sometimes called dressed stone, was shaped by hand so the blocks fit tightly together. It cost more than rough stone but made a far stronger wall.

12:13

These are the utensils of temple service rather than the building itself: wick trimmers for tending the lamps, wide bowls used to catch and fling the blood of sacrifices, and silver trumpets blown to signal at festivals and assemblies. The point of the verse is accounting, every shekel went to the fabric of the building, not to replacing furnishings.

12:15

No audit was demanded of the supervisors, an unusual arrangement, recorded here as a mark of their reputation rather than as normal practice.

12:16

Guilt offerings and sin offerings were made to put right specific wrongs, and often involved a payment of compensation on top of the sacrifice. That payment was the priests' own income, their livelihood, so it was kept separate from the building fund.

12:17

Aram (called Syria in the older wording) was the kingdom centered on Damascus, to the north-east, and Hazael was its aggressive king. Gath was one of the five main Philistine cities, on the coastal plain west of Jerusalem; taking it put Hazael's army on Judah's doorstep.

12:18

Objects "set apart for God" had been formally dedicated and could not be put to ordinary use; stripping the temple and palace treasuries of them was a drastic step. Jehoshaphat, Jehoram and Ahaziah were earlier kings of Judah in Joash's own line. What he sends is tribute, a payment to buy off an invader rather than fight him.

12:19

This refers to the official court annals of Judah's kings, a record now lost. It is not the biblical books of 1 and 2 Chronicles. Formulas like this one close the account of nearly every king in these books, pointing readers to a fuller source.

12:20

The Millo was a structure in Jerusalem, probably a stepped stone terrace or earth fill supporting the northern side of the old city; "Beth Millo" means the building at that spot. Silla is otherwise unknown.

12:21

The City of David was the oldest and highest-status quarter of Jerusalem, the original fortified town David captured, and the customary burial ground of Judah's kings. Being buried "with his ancestors" there was the normal honorable end for a king.