⁴Joash said to the priests, “Take all the money brought as offerings to the Temple of the Lord. This includes the money each person owes in taxes and the money each person promises or brings freely to the Lord. ⁵Each priest will take the money from the people he serves. Then the priests must repair any damage they find in the Temple.”

⁶But by the twenty-third year Joash was king, the priests still had not repaired the Temple. ⁷So King Joash called for Jehoiada the priest and the other priests and said to them, “Why aren’t you repairing the damage of the Temple? Don’t take any more money from the people you serve, but hand over the money for the repair of the Temple.” ⁸The priests agreed not to take any more money from the people and not to repair the Temple themselves.

⁹Jehoiada the priest took a box and made a hole in the top of it. Then he put it by the altar, on the right side as the people came into the Temple of the Lord. The priests guarding the doorway put all the money brought to the Temple of the Lord into the box.

¹⁰Each time the priests saw that the box was full of money, the king’s royal secretary and the high priest came. They counted the money that had been brought to the Temple of the Lord, and they put it into bags. ¹¹Next they weighed the money and gave it to the people in charge of the work on the Temple. With it they paid the carpenters and the builders who worked on the Temple of the Lord, ¹²as well as the bricklayers and stonecutters. They also used the money to buy timber and cut stone to repair the damage of the Temple of the Lord. It paid for everything.

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