2 Kings 12:7
Then king Jehoash called for Jehoiada the priest, and the other priests, and said unto them, Why repair ye not the breaches of the house? now therefore receive no more money of your acquaintance, but deliver it for the breaches of the house.
The summons came in the twenty-third year of Joash's reign, after he had grown to manhood in the king's office and was now thirty and mature enough to exert greater influence and demand that the work be done. By then the temple had already gone unrepaired for at least twenty-three years, and apparently for years before his reign. The reign of Joash in Judah stands within the nearly 300-year history running from Joram king of Israel through Jehu's dynasty to Hoshea when Israel fell to Assyria and was carried into captivity, and from Ahaziah and Athaliah in Judah to Jehoahaz. That span includes the sixty-year ministry of Elisha ending with his death under Jehoash of Israel in 796 B.C., and the prophesying of Hosea, Jonah, and Amos in Israel and Joel, Isaiah, Micah, Jeremiah, Zephaniah, and Nahum in Judah, when Judah always prospered under righteous faithful rulers and brought calamity on itself and its people when rulers turned from God to gross idolatry.
The verse stands at the beginning of the reign of Joash in Judah under the good priest Jehoiada, together with Joash's submission to Hazael and his death. It belongs to the account of the young king Joash repairing the temple two centuries before Josiah, in a similar way to Josiah repairing the house of God in Jerusalem after six years of cleansing the land and preparing the people for true worship. Jehoash called for Jehoiada the priest and the other priests to rebuke and confront them for why the breaches of the house had not been repaired. Despite money collected for years and years of donations intended for the work, the damaged places remained untouched, so he ordered them to receive no more money of their acquaintance but to deliver it for the breaches of the house.
The money was the half shekel which the Lord had commanded through Moses to be collected annually from every man twenty years old and upward for the service of the tabernacle and later for the temple. Those who hold that the priests had been permitted to collect money for their own support teach that it had supplied them so liberally that they should have used some of it to repair the temple. Jehoiada's negligence came because he was now an old man who depended on his assistants for performing the duties of the priesthood. Collection of the money had been neglected until, because of the backslidden condition of the people, gathering it had become a difficult and disagreeable task.
The temple's restoration was Jehoash's own determination and initiative to repair the Lord's house, not merely a suggestion from Jehoiada. The repairs were not to proceed until the money for them had been raised, as an instruction to God's people to build without borrowing.