12 Yoash became king in Yerushalem in the seventh year of Yehu’s reign over Israel. (His mother was Tsivyah from Be’er-Sheva.) He reigned for forty years 2 and all his life, he did what Yahweh had said was correct because he was instructed by Yehoyada the priest. 3 However, they didn’t remove the hilltop shrines where the people continued sacrificing and burning incense.

4 Then Yoash told the priests, “You all must collect all the money that’s donated to Yahweh’s temple, whether it’s the money they’re required to pay or the money that they themselves decide to give as sacred offerings to buy things for the temple. 5 Each priest must bring what they’ve collected from their acquaintances, and use it to make repairs wherever they find that there’s been damage to the temple.”

6 However, when the priests still hadn’t repaired the damaged portions by the twenty-third year of Yoash’s reign, 7 he sent for Yehoyada the priest and the other priests, and questioned them, “Why aren’t you all strengthening the temple where it was damaged? From now on, you all won’t take any money from acquaintances, but you’ll give it directly for repairing the damage.” 8 So the priests agreed to not accept money from the people, and that they themselves wouldn’t be the ones to repair the temple.

9 Then Yehoyada the priest took a wooden chest and he made a hole in the top, and he placed it at the right of the altar. When a person came into the temple, the priests guarding the entrance would place any donated money into the chest. 10 Whenever they noticed the chest getting full, the king’s secretary and the high priest would go and count the money as they bagged it up. 11 They used the funds to pay the supervisors and inspectors and the tradesmen doing the repair work: carpenters and builders, 12 and the masons and stone-cutters. They also paid for the timber and stones, and everything else that was needed for the temple repairs. 13 However, they didn’t use the donated silver coins that were brought to the temple to make silver bowls, snuffers, basins, or trumpets, or for any other gold or silver instruments within the temple, 14 because they passed on the donations to the people doing the work, and in this way Yahweh’s residence got repaired. 15 They didn’t audit the men who took the silver coins to the workers because the whole system was based on trust. 16 The silver coins that came as part of the guilt offering and the sin offerings were not used for temple repairs—they belonged to the priests.

17 Then Aram’s King Haza’el attacked Gat and captured it, after which he decided to attack Yerushalem. 18 Yehudah’s King Yoash took all the sacred things that his ancestors Yehoshafat and Yehoram and Ahazyah, the previous kings of Yehudah, had consecrated and his sacred things, and all of the gold that was found in Yahweh’s temple treasuries and in the king’s palace, and he sent them to Aram’s King Haza’el who then cancelled his planned attack on Yerushalem.

19 Everything else that Yoash said and did is written in the book of the events of the kings of Yehudah.

20 However, his servants got together and planned his assassination, and they ambushed Yoash in Bet-Millo on the road going down to Silla. 21 His servants Yozavad (Shimeat’s son) and Yehozabad (Shomer’s son) struck him and he died, and they buried him in his ancestral tomb in the city of David, and his son Amatsyah replaced him as king.