2 Kings 12 Bible study: A hole in the lid

The king made at seven years old (11:21) now reigns: "Jehoash began to reign in the seventh year of Jehu, and he reigned forty years in Jerusalem. His mother’s name was Zibiah of Beersheba" (12:1). Then the verdict: "Jehoash did that which was right in the LORD’s eyes all his days in which Jehoiada the priest instructed him" (12:2) (tap instructed). It is the first of six times 2 Kings says a king "did that which was right", and the first of four times it adds, "However, the high places were not taken away" (12:3) (tap high places). "The people still sacrificed and burned incense in the high places" (12:3). 1 Kings had said that the high places were not taken away in the days of Asa (1 Kings 15:14) and of Jehoshaphat (1 Kings 22:43). The chapter ties Jehoash's doing right to the days of Jehoiada's instruction, and says no more about it.

2 Kings 12:15→leads toLuke 16:10-12

The men who paid the workmen weren't asked for an accounting: "Moreover they didn’t demand an accounting from the men into whose hand they delivered the money to give to those who did the work; for they dealt faithfully" (12:15). After a story Jesus told his disciples about a rich man's manager (Luke 16:1-8), he says, "He who is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much" (Luke 16:10), "If therefore you have not been faithful in the unrighteous mammon, who will commit to your trust the true riches?" (Luke 16:11), and "If you have not been faithful in that which is another’s, who will give you that which is your own?" (Luke 16:12). Jesus doesn't cite 2 Kings 12, so setting his words beside it is a reading, resting on a shared subject, money that belongs to someone else and how it is handled, not on a shared word. Some read them together: the men of 12:15 were trusted with money that wasn't theirs and dealt faithfully, the faithfulness Jesus speaks of. Others keep Jesus' words to his teaching on money and "the true riches" (Luke 16:11), and read 12:15 only as how the repairs were paid for, without looking from one to the other.

בֶּדֶקbedeqsay BE-dek

Brown-Driver-Briggs: "fissure, rent, breach". Strong's: "a gap or leak (in a building or a ship)". It is the chapter's problem: the WEB's damage in "they shall repair the damage to the house, wherever any damage is found" (12:5), and seven times in all in 12:5-12. The Hebrew Bible has the word ten times: these seven, once in Josiah's order "to repair the damage to the house" (22:5), and twice in Ezekiel of the seams of a ship, where "repairers of ship seams" (Ezekiel 27:9) is the same pair of Hebrew words as repair the damage here (tap repair).