CHAPTER 12 Sep. 6 
Joash Repairs the Temple
In the seventh year of Jehu began Jehoash to reign; and he reigned forty years in Jerusalem. His mother’s name was Zibiah of Beersheba. 2Jehoash did that which was right in the eyes of Yahweh all the days in which Jehoiada the priest instructed him. 3However the high places were not taken away; the people still sacrificed and burnt incense in the high places. 4Jehoash said to the priests, All the money of the holy things that is brought into the house of Yahweh, in current money, the money of the persons at which each man is rated, and all the money that it comes into any man’s heart to bring into the house of Yahweh, 5let the priests take it to them, every man from his acquaintance; and they shall repair the breaches of the house, wherever any breach shall be found. 6But, in the twenty third year of king Jehoash the priests had not repaired the breaches of the house. 7Then king Jehoash called for Jehoiada the priest, and for the other priests, and said to them, Why don’t you repair the breaches of the house? Now therefore take no more money from your treasurers, but deliver it for the breaches of the house. 8The priests agreed that they should take no more money from the people, neither repair the breaches of the house themselves. 9Jehoiada 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 the house of Yahweh. The priests who kept the threshold put therein all the money that was brought into the house of Yahweh. 10It was so, when they saw that there was much money in the chest, that the king’s scribe and the high priest came up, and they put up in bags and counted the money that was found in the house of Yahweh. 11They gave the money that was weighed out into the hands of those who did the work, who had the oversight of the house of Yahweh. They paid it out to the carpenters and the builders, who worked on the house of Yahweh, 12and to the masons and the stone cutters, and for buying timber and cut stone to repair the breaches of the house of Yahweh, and for all that was laid out for the house to repair it. 13But there were not made for the house of Yahweh cups of silver, snuffers, basins, trumpets, any vessels of gold, or vessels of silver, of the money that was brought into the house of Yahweh; 14for they gave that to those who did the work, and repaired therewith the house of Yahweh. 15Moreover 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. 16The money for the trespass offerings, and the money for the sin offerings, were not brought into the house of Yahweh: it was the priests’. 
The Death of Jehoash
17Then Hazael king of Syria went up and fought against Gath, and took it; and Hazael set his face to go up to Jerusalem. 18Jehoash king of Judah took all the holy things that Jehoshaphat, Jehoram and Ahaziah, his fathers, kings of Judah, had dedicated, and his own holy things, and all the gold that was found in the treasures of the house of Yahweh, and of the king’s house, and sent it to Hazael king of Syria; and he went away from Jerusalem. 19Now the rest of the acts of Joash, and all that he did, aren’t they written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Judah? 20His servants arose, and made a conspiracy, and struck Joash at the house of Millo, on the way that goes down to Silla. 21For Jozacar the son of Shimeath, and Jehozabad the son of Shomer, his servants, struck him, and he died; and they buried him with his fathers in the city of David. Amaziah his son reigned in his place.

Commentary

12:2 Our spirituality can be dominated by others for a time, but in the end, God wants us to have a personal relationship with Him- and therefore He has a way of removing all the props which we have had holding up our faith, and then we are left alone to directly engage with Him totally on our own initiative. This may account for some of the midlife crises of faith which there are amongst believers who were raised in the Faith.
12:18 He went away from Jerusalem- Sometimes our faithless actions appear to have worked out and bought us the deliverance we sought, but the parallel record in Chronicles makes it clear that Jehoash paid for this with the loss of his personal faith.