April 11, 2020: Day 70 – II Kings 12

We find ourselves once again looking at the reign of a king of Judah, so the south, where Jerusalem was located, and this time it is Joash, or in some translations, Jehoash.  He ruled for 40 years and Scripture tells us that “Joash did what was right in the sight of the Lord all his days.”  Then we get a story about the finances of the temple.  The whole chapter, pretty much, is about the finances of the temple.

First Pres has a fund to which each year we budget a certain amount which could be called a rainy day fund.  It has a technical term but I forget what it is, but I think everyone understands when I call it a rainy day fund.  When something big breaks or there have to be repairs that are important then we have a certain amount of funds set aside that we hope will cover those repairs.

The king commands the priests that any monies that they receive which come into the house of the Lord, that would be the temple, “let them repair the house wherever any need of repairs is discovered.”  That’s a great plan but as time passed the priests were collecting the money but no repairs were being done.  It doesn’t seem like anything untoward was being done, it just seems like there was an administrative shortfall in someone taking charge and telling people how to get the work done.  The king commands that they stop collecting money but just use the money that was already collected to repair the temple and the work begins as a result.

We find the king is also one who likes to avoid conflict and would prefer to pay off his enemies than to fighting them.  It works, the king of Aram withdrew from Jerusalem after he had been paid off.  There is nothing wrong with that.  We find that at the end of his time a conspiracy arose and he was killed by his own servants.  Forty years of reigning was a pretty long time.