Study Desk

After he had been king for a while, Joash decided to have the Temple repaired.

so he called in Jehoiada, their leader, and demanded, "Why haven't you seen to it that the Levites collect from Judah and Jerusalem the tax which Moses, the servant of the Lord , required the people to pay for support of the Tent of the Lord 's presence?"

The king ordered the Levites to make a box for contributions and to place it at the Temple gate.

They sent word throughout Jerusalem and Judah for everyone to bring to the Lord the tax which Moses, God's servant, had first collected in the wilderness.

When the repairs were finished, the remaining gold and silver was given to the king and Jehoiada, who used it to have bowls and other utensils made for the Temple. As long as Jehoiada was alive, sacrifices were offered regularly at the Temple.

They buried him in the royal tombs in David's City in recognition of the service he had done for the people of Israel, for God, and for the Temple.

And so the people stopped worshiping in the Temple of the Lord , the God of their ancestors, and began to worship idols and the images of the goddess Asherah. Their guilt for these sins brought the Lord 's anger on Judah and Jerusalem.

Amaziah became king at the age of twenty-five, and he ruled in Jerusalem for twenty-nine years. His mother was Jehoaddin from Jerusalem.

He did not, however, execute their children, but followed what the Lord had commanded in the Law of Moses: "Parents are not to be put to death for crimes committed by their children, and children are not to be put to death for crimes committed by their parents; people are to be put to death only for crimes they themselves have committed."

King Amaziah organized all the men of the tribes of Judah and Benjamin into army units, according to the clans they belonged to, and placed officers in command of units of a thousand and units of a hundred. This included all men twenty years of age or older, 300,000 in all. They were picked troops, ready for battle, skilled in using spears and shields.

Amaziah asked the prophet, "But what about all that silver I have already paid for them?" The prophet replied, "The Lord can give you back more than that!"

But Amaziah refused to listen. It was God's will for Amaziah to be defeated, because he had worshiped the Edomite idols.

Uzziah became king at the age of sixteen, and he ruled in Jerusalem for fifty-two years. His mother was Jecoliah from Jerusalem.

He had a large army ready for battle. Its records were kept by his secretaries Jeiel and Maaseiah under the supervision of Hananiah, a member of the king's staff.

Under them were 307,500 soldiers able to fight effectively for the king against his enemies.

Uzziah supplied the army with shields, spears, helmets, coats of armor, bows and arrows, and stones for slinging.

In Jerusalem his inventors made equipment for shooting arrows and for throwing large stones from the towers and corners of the city wall. His fame spread everywhere, and he became very powerful because of the help he received from God.

For the rest of his life King Uzziah was ritually unclean because of his disease. Unable to enter the Temple again, he lived in his own house, relieved of all duties, while his son Jotham governed the country.

Jotham became king at the age of twenty-five, and he ruled in Jerusalem for sixteen years. His mother was Jerushah, the daughter of Zadok.

He fought against the king of Ammon and his army and defeated them. Then he forced the Ammonites to pay him the following tribute each year for three years: four tons of silver, fifty thousand bushels of wheat, and fifty thousand bushels of barley.