1. Jehoash was 7 years old when he became king, and he ruled for forty years in Jerusalem. His mother’s name was Zibiah; she was from Beer-sheba.
2. Jehoash did what was right in the Lord’s eyes as long as Jehoiada the priest was alive.
3. Jehoiada had him marry two wives, and Jehoash fathered sons and daughters.
4. Sometime later, Jehoash wanted to renovate the Lord’s temple.
5. He gathered the priests and the Levites and said, "Go to the cities of Judah and collect the annual tax of silver due from all Israel for the upkeep of God’s temple. Do it right away."But the Levites procrastinated.
6. So the king summoned the chief priest Jehoiada and asked him, "Why haven’t you required the Levites to bring in from Judah and Jerusalem the tax imposed by the Lord’s servant Moses and the Israelite assembly for the covenant tent?" (
7. Now wicked Athaliah and her followers had broken into God’s temple and used all the holy objects of the Lord’s temple in their worship of the Baals.)
8. So at the king’s command a box was made and placed outside the gate of the Lord’s temple.
9. Then a proclamation was issued throughout Judah and Jerusalem requiring the people to bring to the Lord the tax that God’s servant Moses had imposed on Israel in the wilderness.
10. This so pleased all the leaders and all the people that they gladly dropped their money in the box until it was full.