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In 2nd Kings 12, we read how king Yehoash (Joash) cleaned the house of God. This is a picture of God’s cleaning His house — His people — through the work of His Spirit and the Messiah.
In 2Kings 11:21–12:1, we learn that Yehoash (Jehoash) was not raised in a royal house but in a priestly house. He did well as long as the High Priest Yehoyada (Jehoiada) was alive. His knowledge of God was based on how the High Priest taught him and he never would have had this much understanding of God if he had been raised in the royal house.
When Yehoash became king, one of his first edicts was in regard to ordering the priests to collect money from offerings.
Torah doesn’t mention giving money offerings but animal and grain offerings. Where is this money coming from? The priests would collect money from people who would buy sacrificial animals from them. That is the source of money that Yehoash was telling the priests to use to repair the Temple.
There was a second source of money that Yehoash told them to use.
“Let the priests take it for themselves, each from his acquaintance; and they shall repair the damages of the house wherever any damage may be found.” (2Kings 12:5)
Yehoash also told the priests that they would have to do the repairs themselves. People who weren’t priests were not allowed to enter most of the Temple areas so nonpriest families could not have entered in to repair the holy places. Making the priests do the work themselves did not get the job done.
How successful were they? Not very because 23 years later, they still didn’t have enough money to repair the Temple. The priests had designated the entire Temple as holy and only priests and levites were allowed to enter any part of the Temple. This is why Yehoash had told the priests to collect all the money necessary and to do all the work. Since most priests are not trained as masons, carpenters, etc., the repairs would have been slow going at best. Another issue was that the priests would only serve once every 24 weeks, in addition to festivals. That’s not enough time to complete any kind of repairs on a building.
Then Yehoash told them to no longer collect money from their communities and basically fired the priests from doing the repairs. The only place that Torah would command the priests to repair was the Most Holy Place, the rest of the Temple could be accessed by any male who was ritually clean. The problem may have been that there might not have been a large percentage of people in the country who maintained ritual purity. The people of Yehudah (Judah) were not as far away from God as the Northern Tribes but they had certainly backslidden since Solomon’s time.
With fewer people coming to the Temple, they might not have enough money. The priest may have had a hard time raising money because many people didn’t worship in the Temple and didn’t give money to rehab it.
What does Yehoyada do? To prevent people from assuming that the priests have been mishandling the money, he comes up with a way to collect more money. The offerings were anonymous.
“But Yehoyada the priest took a chest and bored a hole in its lid and put it beside the altar, on the right side as one comes into the house of the LORD; and the priests who guarded the threshold put in it all the money which was brought into the house of the LORD. When they saw that there was much money in the chest, the king’s scribe and the high priest came up and tied it in bags and counted the money which was found in the house of the LORD.” (2Kings 12:9–10)
In Solomon’s temple, foreigners did most of the masonry, particular the outside masonry. The interiors were built by Israelites but not by the priests. If they built it in Solomon’s time, they certainly could have built it in Yehoash’s time.
Why didn’t Yehoash have utensils made? He didn’t finish all the work that needed to be done, he ended up using that money for another purpose.
“Then Hazael king of Aram went up and fought against Gath and captured it, and Hazael set his face to go up to Jerusalem. Yehoash king of Yehudah took all the sacred things that Yehoshaphat (Jehoshaphat) and Yehoram (Jehoram) and Ahaziah, his fathers, kings of Yehudah, had dedicated, and his own sacred things and all the gold that was found among the treasuries of the house of the LORD and of the king’s house, and sent them to Hazael king of Aram. Then he went away from Yerushalayim (Jerusalem).” (2Kings 12:17–18)
Hazael was anointed king of Aram by Elisha as king of Aram/Syria. He is God’s anointed king. He is told to go on a rampage against Israel and goes all the way to Gath. Yehoash probably has no idea of Hazael’s anointing. All Yehoash sees is how Hazael is an unstoppable army, bringing death and mayhem. He saw that God did nothing to stop Hazael’s rampage. Elisha did not Hazael any authority to rampage Yehudah, but Yehoash didn’t know that.
Why didn’t Yehoash ask God what to do? He makes the decision on his own. He also made his own decision not to take down the high places.
Yehoash sees Hazael approaching Yerushalayim with his large, well-trained army and Yehoash doesn’t have an army to raise up against him, so instead of asking God what to do, Yehoash raids God’s money box and buys them off and they go home.
This decision earned Yehoash a death sentence, and died when he was 47 years old.
“His servants arose and made a conspiracy and struck down Yoash (Joash) at the house of Millo as he was going down to Silla. For Yozakar (Jozacar) the son of Shimeath and Yehozabad (Jehozabad) the son of Shomer, his servants, struck him and he died; and they buried him with his fathers in the city of David, and Amaziah his son became king in his place.” (2Kings 12:20–21)
The servants murdered an anointed king of God. They did something against God’s law, but not against God’s will. Hazael did not obey God’s Torah but he did follow God’s will for his life.
What would Messiah do based on this story? Messiah’s job will be to clean God’s house first, just as Yehoash’s job was to get God’s house repaired and cleaned first. And as it was then, so it is now: God’s house is His people, not just a building, which can’t contain Him anyway. Thus, Yeshua and the Spirit are cleaning the people of God of their uncleanness, which are the things that separate us from God.
Speaker: Daniel Agee. Summary: Tammy.