The Temple Repairment and Work Inclusion (2 Kings 12:1-16)

What’s the main idea of the text?

The following passage tells us about Jehoash, one of the kings of Israel registered in the historic books of the Old Testament (v. 1). According to the biblical register, he did the right before the Lord in the way the high priest, Jehoiada, instructed him (v.2). Nevertheless, there was indeed something that avoided the Israelite nation to be blessed by the Lord: They were doing sacrifices and burning incenses in the igh places (v.3). To confront this, King Jehoash started to figure out by giving instructions on how the money generated from the priests and men of God to be brought into the house of the Lord (v.4). The most important thing in this passage is how the money would be destined to: The priests should take it to the technicians of the temple because it consisted on the repair thereof. That’s the whole principle of the fruit that generates work, and to make that productive, they should hire the people to repair it (v.5). It is confessed that it had come to pass just 33 years of not the temple being repaired nor maintained by any single priest (v.6). Then, Kig Jehoash called for Jehoiada the priest and other priests to scold them by reclaiming that why hadn’t they repaired the breaches of the house, he then exhorts them, saying: “Therefore receive no money of your acquaintance, but deliver it for the breaches of the house (v.7 KJV). So, they were not consent to receive more money from the people and neither to repair the breaches of the house [good for King Jehoash!] (v.8).

There is a beautiful ritual described in the following verses: Jehoiada the priest, indeed, had taken a chest, bored a hole in the lid of it, and set it beside the altar, on the right side, as one cometh into the house of the Lord; then, all the priests had put on the chest the money that had come from the house of the Lord (v. 9). It was a lot of money therein, so the king and the high priest came up to figure it out and be shared toward the workers who helped in the temple restoration work (vv. 10-12). The thing that impacts me the most is that in v.13, there were no bowls of silver, snuffers, basins, trumpets, or vessels of gold or silver. Why? Because all the money was paid to the workmen who had repaired the house of the Lord (vv. 13-14). Something impactful is that sin money, as well as the trespass money, wasn’t given to the workmen but to the priests [you know what? That’s a true Christian culture!].