Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

For the Chief Musician. A Psalm by David.

²¹ Jehoash was seven years old when he began to reign.

12 Jehoash began to reign in the seventh year of Jehu, and he reigned forty years in Jerusalem. His mother’s name was Zibiah of Beersheba. ² Jehoash did that which was right in Yahweh’s eyes all his days in which Jehoiada the priest instructed him. ³ However, the high places were not taken away. The people still sacrificed and burned incense in the high places.

⁴ Jehoash said to the priests, “All the money of the holy things that is brought into Yahweh’s house, in current money, the money of the people for whom each man is evaluated,^(A) and all the money that it comes into any man’s heart to bring into Yahweh’s house, ⁵ let the priests take it to them, each man from his donor; and they shall repair the damage to the house, wherever any damage is found.”

⁶ But it was so, that in the twenty-third year of King Jehoash the priests had not repaired the damage to the house. ⁷ Then King Jehoash called for Jehoiada the priest, and for the other priests, and said to them, “Why aren’t you repairing the damage to the house? Now therefore take no more money from your treasurers, but deliver it for repair of the damage to the house.”

⁸ The priests consented that they should take no more money from the people, and not repair the damage to the house. 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 Yahweh’s house; and the priests who kept the threshold put all the money that was brought into Yahweh’s house into it. ¹⁰ When they saw that there was much money in the chest, the king’s scribe and the high priest came up, and they put it in bags and counted the money that was found in Yahweh’s house. ¹¹ They gave the money that was weighed out into the hands of those who did the work, who had the oversight of Yahweh’s house; and they paid it out to the carpenters and the builders who worked on Yahweh’s house, ¹² and to the masons and the stone cutters, and for buying timber and cut stone to repair the damage to Yahweh’s house, and for all that was laid out for the house to repair it. ¹³ But there were not made for Yahweh’s house cups of silver, snuffers, basins, trumpets, any vessels of gold or vessels of silver, of the money that was brought into Yahweh’s house; ¹⁴ for they gave that to those who did the work, and repaired Yahweh’s house with it. ¹⁵ Moreover they didn’t demand an accounting from the men into whose hand they delivered the money to give to those who did the work; for they dealt faithfully. ¹⁶ The money for the trespass offerings and the money for the sin offerings was not brought into Yahweh’s house. It was the priests’.

5 Come now, you rich, weep and howl for your miseries that are coming on you. ² Your riches are corrupted and your garments are moth-eaten. ³ Your gold and your silver are corroded, and their corrosion will be for a testimony against you and will eat your flesh like fire. You have laid up your treasure in the last days. ⁴ Behold, the wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you have kept back by fraud, cry out; and the cries of those who reaped have entered into the ears of the Lord of Armies.^{[a] 5} You have lived in luxury on the earth, and taken your pleasure. You have nourished your hearts as in a day of slaughter. ⁶ You have condemned and you have murdered the righteous one. He doesn’t resist you.