Priorities

Context: Jehoash the king and Jehoiada the priest (2 Chronicles 22:10-12,23:1-3)

• Jehoash is the son of King Ahaziah – grandson of king Jehoram and Athaliah
  • Athaliah was the daughter of Omri a king of Israel (1 Ki 16:25, 2 Chr 22:2)
• Jehoiada was a priest – married to Jehoshabeath the daughter of king Jehoram
  • His son was Zechariah
• After Ahaziah was killed, Athaliah killed all the royal family and
  • Reigned over Israel for six years
    • However, Jehoshabeath (and Jehoiada) saved Jehoash
      • Jehoash was hidden in God’s house
• In the seventh year, Jehoiada made a covenant with the captains
  • And made Jehoash king of Judah – as per God’s Word about son’s of David
• As long as the priest Jehoiada instructed him, king Jehoash did what was right
  • Not just right, but what was right in the eyes of the Lord

What was Jehoash’s desire and how did he plan for it? (v4-5)

• House of the Lord should be repaired by the priests – wherever they find any damage
  • He was hidden there for 6 years and must know its state?
    • Athaliah sons had broken up God’s house (2 Chronicles 24:7)
• Money was collected from the people in various ways
  • All the money of the holy things that was brought into the God’s house
  • Money collected as part of census – when all the people are counted
  • Money that the people gave specifically to repair God’s house

Why was an alternate plan needed and what was the plan? (v6-16)

• When king Jehoash was 30, he checked and found the priests didn’t repair anything
  • Is it fair to expect the priests to repair?  Debatable –
  • Priests agreed that they shouldn’t take the money
    • And they weren’t going to work on the repairs too
• So the king came up with an alternate plan –
  • King’s scribe and the high priest took charge of the money and counted it
    • They gave it to carpenters, builders, masons, stone cutters
      • To buy raw materials and work on repairs
    • There was no accounting needed from those who took the money
      • Because they worked faithfully

How did king Jehoash repay priest Jehoiada’s kindness? (2 Chronicles 24:20-22)

• King Jehoash did all the right things only when priest Jehoiada was around
• After priest Jehoiada passed away, king Jehoash turned away from God
  • God sent prophets but he would not listen
  • When Jehoiada’s son, Zechariah spoke God’s Word
    • They conspired and stoned him at king’s commandment
      • In the court of God’s house
    • Therefore, king Jehoash own servants conspired and killed him
• King Jehoash was not buried with the kings.  Priest Jehoiada was. (2 Chron 24:16,25)

Conclusion / Application

• What are our priorities? How are we pursuing them?
• Don’t be deceived. God is not mocked, for whatever a man sows, that he will also reap.

Main Passage 2 Kings 12:4-16 – World English Bible (WEB)

4 Jehoash said to the priests, “All the money of the holy things that is brought into Yahweh’s house, in current money, the money of the people for whom each man is evaluated, and all the money that it comes into any man’s heart to bring into Yahweh’s house, 5 let the priests take it to them, each man from his donor; and they shall repair the damage to the house, wherever any damage is found.” 

6 But it was so, that in the twenty-third year of king Jehoash the priests had not repaired the damage to the house. 7 Then king Jehoash called for Jehoiada the priest, and for the other priests, and said to them, “Why don’t you repair the damage to the house? Now therefore take no more money from your treasurers, but deliver it for repair of the damage to the house.”

8 The priests consented that they should take no more money from the people, and not repair the damage to the house. 9 But Jehoiada 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 Yahweh’s house; and the priests who kept the threshold put all the money that was brought into Yahweh’s house into it. 10 When they saw that there was much money in the chest, the king’s scribe and the high priest came up, and they put it in bags and counted the money that was found in Yahweh’s house. 11 They gave the money that was weighed out into the hands of those who did the work, who had the oversight of Yahweh’s house; and they paid it out to the carpenters and the builders, who worked on Yahweh’s house, 12 and to the masons and the stone cutters, and for buying timber and cut stone to repair the damage to Yahweh’s house, and for all that was laid out for the house to repair it. 13 But there were not made for Yahweh’s house cups of silver, snuffers, basins, trumpets, any vessels of gold, or vessels of silver, of the money that was brought into Yahweh’s house; 14 for they gave that to those who did the work, and repaired Yahweh’s house with it. 15 Moreover 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. 16 The money for the trespass offerings, and the money for the sin offerings was not brought into Yahweh’s house. It was the priests’.

Notes / Cross References

2 Chronicles 22:10-12 Now when Athaliah the mother of Ahaziah saw that her son was dead, she arose and destroyed all the royal offspring of the house of Judah. 11 But Jehoshabeath, the king’s daughter, took Joash the son of Ahaziah, and stealthily rescued him from among the king’s sons who were slain, and put him and his nurse in the bedroom. So Jehoshabeath, the daughter of king Jehoram, the wife of Jehoiada the priest (for she was the sister of Ahaziah), hid him from Athaliah, so that she didn’t kill him. 12 He was with them hidden in God’s house six years while Athaliah reigned over the land.

2 Chronicles 23:1-3 In the seventh year, Jehoiada strengthened himself, and took the captains of hundreds, Azariah the son of Jeroham, Ishmael the son of Jehohanan, Azariah the son of Obed, Maaseiah the son of Adaiah, and Elishaphat the son of Zichri, into a covenant with him. 2 They went around in Judah, and gathered the Levites out of all the cities of Judah, and the heads of fathers’ households of Israel, and they came to Jerusalem. 3 All the assembly made a covenant with the king in God’s house. He said to them, “Behold, the king’s son must reign, as Yahweh has spoken concerning the sons of David.

2 Kings 11:12 Then he (Jehoiada the priest) brought out the king’s son (Joash), and put the crown on him, and gave him the covenant; and they made him king, and anointed him; and they clapped their hands, and said, “Long live the king!”

2 Kings 12:2 Jehoash did that which was right in Yahweh’s eyes all his days in which Jehoiada the priest instructed him.

Exodus 30:12 “When you take a census of the children of Israel … then each man shall give a ransom for his soul to Yahweh when you count them, that there be no plague among them when you count them.

2 Chronicles 24:20-22 The Spirit of God came on Zechariah the son of Jehoiada the priest; and he stood above the people, and said to them, “God says, ‘Why do you disobey Yahweh’s commandments, so that you can’t prosper? Because you have forsaken Yahweh, he has also forsaken you.’” 21 They conspired against him, and stoned him with stones at the commandment of the king in the court of Yahweh’s house. 22 Thus Joash the king didn’t remember the kindness which Jehoiada his father had done to him, but killed his son. When he died, he said, “May Yahweh look at it, and repay it.”