Josiah’s Restoration Work^(A)

⁸ In the eighteenth year of his reign, after he had purged the land and the Temple, he sent Azaliah’s son Shaphan, Maaseiah, mayor^[a] of Jerusalem,^[b] and Joahaz’s son Joah, the recorder, to repair the Temple of the Lord his God. ⁹ They approached Hilkiah the high priest and delivered to him the money that had been brought into God’s Temple that the descendants of Levi and gatekeepers had collected from Manasseh, Ephraim, the surviving Israelis, Judah, Benjamin, and the inhabitants of Jerusalem. ¹⁰ They paid it to the workmen who supervised the Lord’s Temple, and the workmen who were employed in the Lord’s Temple to supervise restoration and repair of the Temple. ¹¹ They, in turn, paid the carpenters and builders to purchase quarried stone and timber for binders and beams for the buildings that previous^[c] kings of Judah had let deteriorate. ¹² The workmen did their duties faithfully with these foremen supervising them: Jahath and Obadiah, descendants of Levi who were Merari’s sons, Zechariah and Meshullam, descendants of Kohath, and various descendants of Levi, who were skilled musicians. ¹³ These men also supervised the heavy lift workers and supervised all the workmen from job to job, while some of the descendants of Levi served as scribes, officials, and gatekeepers.