2 Kings 12:5

Let the priests take it to them, every man of his acquaintance: and let them repair the breaches of the house, wheresoever any breach shall be found.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(5) Every man of his acquaintance.—See 2Chronicles 24:5. From that passage it is evident that the chronicler understood that the priests were required to collect such moneys, each in his own city and district, year by year. Our text, taken alone, would seem to imply that persons going to the Temple to have the value of vows estimated, or to make free-will offerings, resorted to the priests whom they knew. (The word rendered “acquaintance” only occurs in this account.)

The breaches of the house.—The dilapidations of the Temple were serious, not because of its age—it had only stood about 130 years—but owing to the wanton attacks of Athaliah and her sons (comp. 2Chronicles 24:7), who had, moreover, diverted the revenues of the sanctuary to the support of the Baalworship.

Benson Commentary

2 Kings 12:5. Let the priests take it to them, &c. — Let them go abroad through all the parts of the land, as they have acquaintance and interest, and gather up the money, and bring it to Jerusalem. Let them repair, &c., wheresoever any breach shall be found — Either through decay, or by ill accidents; or by the malice of Athaliath, or her relations; of which see 2 Chronicles 24:7.

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

12:1-16 It is a great mercy to young people, especially to all young men of rank, like Jehoash, to have those about them who will instruct them to do what is right in the sight of the Lord; and they do wisely and well for themselves, when willing to be counselled and ruled. The temple was out of repair; Jehoash orders the repair of the temple. The king was zealous. God requires those who have power, to use it for the support of religion, the redress of grievances, and repairing of decays. The king employed the priests to manage, as most likely to be hearty in the work. But nothing was done effectually till the twenty-third year of his reign. Another method was therefore taken. When public distributions are made faithfully, public contributions will be made cheerfully. While they were getting all they could for the repair of the temple, they did not break in upon the stated maintenance of the priests. Let not the servants of the temple be starved, under colour of repairing the breaches of it. Those that were intrusted did the business carefully and faithfully. They did not lay it out in ornaments for the temple, till the other work was completed; hence we may learn, in all our expenses, to prefer that which is most needful, and, in dealing for the public, to deal as we would for ourselves.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

The collection was not to be made in Jerusalem only, but in all "the cities of Judah" 2 Chronicles 24:5; the various priests and Levites being collectors in their own neighborhoods.

Breaches - The word in the original includes every kind and degree of ruin or dilapidation.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

4. Jehoash said to the priests, &c.—There is here given an account of the measures which the young king took for repairing the temple by the levying of taxes: 1. "The money of every one that passeth the account," namely, half a shekel, as "an offering to the Lord" (Ex 30:13). 2. "The money that every man is set at," that is, the redemption price of every one who had devoted himself or any thing belonging to him to the Lord, and the amount of which was estimated according to certain rules (Le 27:1-8). 3. Free will or voluntary offerings made to the sanctuary. The first two were paid annually (see 2Ch 24:5).

Matthew Poole's Commentary

Let the priests take it to them; let them go abroad through all the parts of the land, as they have acquaintance and interest, and gather up the money, and bring it to Jerusalem.

Wheresoever any breach shall be found; either through decay, or by ill accidents, or by the malice of Athaliah or her relations; of which see 2 Chronicles 24:7.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

Let the priests take it to them, every man of his acquaintance,.... Of those that were most known by them; for the priests had cities assigned them in several parts of the land, and they that dwelt with them in them, or in the parts adjacent to them, were best known by them; and they were sent into all the cities, some to one and some to another, where they were most acquainted, to collect money, both what was due by law, and what the people should freely give, see 2 Chronicles 24:5.

and let them repair the breaches of the house, wheresoever any breach shall be found: that is, of the temple, which, according to the Jewish chronology (i), had been built but one hundred and fifty five years; and being built very strong, would have needed no considerable repairs as yet, but that it had been broken up and misused by Athaliah and her sons, 2 Chronicles 24:7.

(i) Seder Olam Rabba, c. 18.

Geneva Study Bible

Let the priests take it to them, every man of his acquaintance: and let them repair the {d} breaches of the house, wheresoever any breach shall be found.

(d) For the temple which was built a hundred and fifty-five years before, had many things decayed in it, both by the negligence of the king's predecessors, and also by the wickedness of the idolaters.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

5. let the priests take it to them, every man of his acquaintance] This passage is not easy to understand until we have along with it the parallel account of the Chronicler. From 2 Kings it might be thought that the words of Jehoash applied to such offerings as were made at the temple, and then it would be hard to see what a man’s acquaintance had to do with such a matter. But in 2 Chron. we are told that the priests and Levites were bidden ‘to go out unto the cities of Judah and gather money of all Israel’. Hence nothing was more natural than that each should go among the people to whom he was best known, and from whom he would have the best chance of bringing in contributions, Josephus (Ant. IX. 8. 2) says that ‘the priests and Levites were sent through the whole land to ask half a shekel from each person for the furniture and restoration of the temple, which had been broken up by Joram and Athaliah and her sons’.

and let them repair] R.V. they shall repair. This is literal, and besides allows more emphasis to be given to the pronoun ‘they’ which is placed in a marked position in the original. The wish of the king at first was to put the whole matter in the charge of the priest.

the breaches] The Hebrew word, which the LXX. merely transliterates (βεδέκ), is found only in this chapter and 2 Kings 22:5, and in Ezekiel 27:9; Ezekiel 27:27. But in the last-mentioned passages it is used of the filling up, by calking, of the chinks in ships. Hence we can understand the sort of decay which had taken place in the temple-building. Years of neglect had allowed the walls to crumble and crack and similar damages to arise in every part.

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 5. - Let the priests take it to them, every man of his acquaintance. The money was to be gathered of "all Israel," out of all "the cities of Judah" (2 Chronicles 24:5). The priests of each locality were to be the collectors, and would therefore gather "of their acquaintance." As we cannot suppose that very much would accrue from either the first or second source, since a census was rarely taken, and personal vows were not very common, we must regard the command of Joash as, in the main, the authorization of a general collection throughout the kingdom of voluntary contributions towards the temple repairs, and so as analogous to the "letters" which our own sovereigns, or archbishops, issue from time to time for collections in churches for special objects. And let them repair the breaches of the house, wheresoever any breach shall be found. The "breaches," or dilapidations, may have been caused, partly by the neglect of necessary repairs during the reigns of Jehoram, Ahaziah, and Athaliah; but they were mainly the result of the willful violence of Athaliah (2 Chronicles 24:7). Apparently, the damage done must have been very great. 2 Kings 12:5

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

(5-17). Repairing of the temple (cf. 2 Chronicles 24:5-14). - 2 Kings 12:4, 2 Kings 12:5. That the temple, which had fallen into ruins, might be restored, Joash ordered the priests to collect all the money of the consecrated gifts, that was generally brought into the house of the Lord, and to effect therewith all the repairs that were needed in the temple. The general expression הקּדשׁים כּסף, money of the holy gifts, i.e., money derived from holy gifts, is more specifically defined by וגו עובר כּסף, according to which it consisted of three kinds of payments to the temple: viz., (1) עובר כּסף, i.e., money of persons mustered (or numbered in the census); עובר is an abbreviated expression for הפּקדים העובר, "he who passes over to those who are numbered" (Exodus 30:13), as it has been correctly interpreted by the Chald., Rashi, Abarb., and others; whereas the explanation "money that passes" (Luther), or current coin, which Thenius still defends, yields not suitable sense, since it is impossible to see why only current coin should be accepted, and not silver in bars of vessels, inasmuch as Moses had accepted gold, silver, copper, and other objects of value in natura, for the building of the tabernacle (Exodus 24:2-3; Exodus 35:5; Exodus 36:5-6). The brevity of the expression may be explained from the fact, that עובר כּסף had become a technical term on the ground of the passage in the law already cited. The objection raised by Thenius, that the explanation adopted would be without any parallel, would, if it could be sustained, also apply to his own explanation "current money," in which עובר is also taken as an abbreviation of לסּהר עבר לסּ in Genesis 23:16. There is still less ground for the other objection, that if עובר כּסף denoted one kind of temple-revenue, כּל or אישׁ would necessarily have been used. (2) ערכּו...אישׁ, "every kind of souls' valuation money;" אישׁ is more precisely defined by ערכּו, and the position in which it stands before כּסף resembles the בּתרו in Genesis 15:10 -literally, soul money of each one's valuation. Thenius is wrong in his interpretation, "every kind of money of the souls according to their valuation," to which he appends the erroneous remark, that אישׁ is also used in Zechariah 10:1 and Joel 2:7 in connection with inanimate objects as equivalent to כּל. ערכּו...אישׁ, every kind of valuation, because both in the redemption of the male first-born (Numbers 18:15-16) and also in the case of persons under a vow a payment had to be made according to the valuation of the priest. (3) "All the money that cometh into any one's mind to bring into the house of the Lord," i.e., all the money which was offered as a free-will offering to the sanctuary. This money the priests were to take to themselves, every one from his acquaintance, and therewith repair all the dilapidations that were to be found in the temple. In the Chronicles the different kinds of money to be collected for this purpose are not specified; but the whole is embraced under the general expression "the taxes of Moses the servant of God, and of the congregation of Israel, to the tent of the testimony," which included not only the contribution of half a shekel for the building of the temple, which is prescribed in Exodus 30:12., but also the other two taxes mentioned in this account.

(Note: There is no ground either in the words or in the facts for restricting the perfectly general expression "taxes of Moses and of the congregation of Israel" to the payment mentioned in Exodus 30:12, as Thenius and Bertheau have done, except perhaps the wish to find a discrepancy between the two accounts, for the purpose of being able to accuse the chronicler, if not of intentional falsification, as De Wette does, at any rate of perverting the true state of the case. The assertion of Thenius, that the yearly payment of half a shekel, which was appointed in the law and regarded as atonement-money, appears to be directly excluded in our text, is simply founded upon the interpretation given to עובר כּסף as current money, which we have already proved to be false.)

Again, according to 2 Kings 12:7 of the Chronicles, Joash gave the following reason for his command: "For Athaliah, the wicked woman, and her sons have demolished the house of God, and all the dedicated gifts of the house of Jehovah have they used for the Baals." We are not told in what the violent treatment of demolition (פּרץ) of the temple by Athaliah had her sons consisted. The circumstance that considerable repairs even of the stonework of the temple were required in the time of Joash, about 130 or 140 years after it was built, is quite conceivable without any intentional demolition. And in no case can we infer from these words, as Thenius has done, that Athaliah or her sons had erected a temple of Baal within the limits of the sanctuary. The application of all the dedicatory offerings of the house of Jehovah to the Baals, involves nothing more than that the gifts which were absolutely necessary for the preservation of the temple and temple-service were withdrawn from the sanctuary of Jehovah and applied to the worship of Baal, and therefore that the decay of the sanctuary would necessarily follow upon the neglect of the worship.