Chest

The chest appears in scripture both as a temple-treasury fixture, used for collecting silver brought to the house of Yahweh, and as an item of merchandise in Tyre's far-traveling commerce. Two reigns supply the temple-money picture and one prophetic catalog supplies the trade picture.

Jehoiada's chest beside the altar

When silver was being gathered for the repair of the temple under Joash, the priest Jehoiada arranged a single closed receptacle near the entrance: "But Jehoiada the priest took a chest, and bored a hole in the lid of it, and set it beside the altar, on the right side as one comes into the house of Yahweh: and the priests who kept the threshold put in it all the silver that was brought into the house of Yahweh" (2 Kings 12:9). The bored lid is what makes the receptacle a chest in the technical sense — once silver was dropped through, it could not be recovered without opening the chest under witness.

A chest at the gate, and the wilderness-tax revived

The Chronicler's account preserves the same king's program with more procedural detail. Joash ordered a chest made and stationed at the gate: "So the king commanded, and they made a chest, and set it outside at the gate of the house of Yahweh" (2 Chronicles 24:8). A proclamation was then issued to revive the wilderness-tax that Moses had laid on Israel (2 Chronicles 24:9), and the people responded eagerly: "all the princes and all the people rejoiced, and brought in, and cast into the chest, until they had made an end" (2 Chronicles 24:10). The chest was emptied on a regular cycle by the king's scribe and the chief priest's officer, who "came and emptied the chest, and took it, and carried it to its place again" (2 Chronicles 24:11), the daily emptying yielding silver in abundance.

Chests of rich apparel in Tyre's trade

The chest also appears as a luxury container in the merchandise of Tyre. Among the wares Ezekiel catalogs in the city's commerce, the prophet names "your traffickers in choice wares, in wrappings of blue and embroidered work, and in chests of rich apparel, bound with cords and made of cedar, these were your merchandise" (Ezekiel 27:24). Here the chest is itself an item of trade — cedar-built, cord-bound, holding the embroidered and dyed garments that passed through Tyre's hand to the buying nations.