^21 [a]Jehoash was seven years old when he began to reign.^(A)

The Temple Repaired

12 In the seventh year of Jehu, Jehoash began to reign; he reigned forty years in Jerusalem. His mother’s name was Zibiah of Beer-sheba. ² Jehoash did what was right in the sight of the Lord all his days because the priest Jehoiada instructed him. ³ Nevertheless, the high places were not taken away; the people continued to sacrifice and make offerings on the high places.^(A)

⁴ Jehoash said to the priests, “All the silver offered as sacred donations that is brought into the house of the Lord—the census tax, personal redemption payments, and silver from voluntary offerings brought into the house of the Lord^(B)— ⁵ let the priests receive from each of the donors, 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.^{(C) 7} Therefore King Jehoash summoned the priest Jehoiada with the other priests and said to them, “Why are you not repairing the house? Now therefore do not accept any more silver from your donors but hand it over for the repair of the house.”^{(D) 8} So the priests agreed that they would neither accept more silver from the people nor repair the house.

⁹ Then the priest Jehoiada took a chest, made a hole in its lid, and set it beside the altar on the right side as one entered the house of the Lord; the priests who guarded the threshold put in it all the silver that was brought into the house of the Lord.^{(E) 10} Whenever they saw that there was a great deal of silver in the chest, the king’s secretary and the high priest went up, cast the silver that was found in the house of the Lord into ingots, and counted it.^{(F) 11} They gave the silver that was weighed out into the hands of the workers who had the oversight of the house of the Lord; then they paid it out to the carpenters and the builders who worked on the house of the Lord, ¹² to the masons and the stonecutters, as well as to buy timber and quarried stone for making repairs on the house of the Lord, as well as for any outlay for repairs of the house.^{(G) 13} But for the house of the Lord no basins of silver, snuffers, bowls, trumpets, or any vessels of gold or of silver were made from the silver that was brought into the house of the Lord,^{(H) 14} for that was given to the workers who were repairing the house of the Lord with it. ¹⁵ They did not ask an accounting from those into whose hand they delivered the silver to pay out to the workers, for they dealt honestly.^(I)