⁶ Then the king sent for Jehoiada, the chief priest, and said to him, Why have you not given the Levites orders that the tax fixed by Moses, the servant of the Lord, and by the meeting of Israel, for the Tent of witness, is to be got in from Judah and Jerusalem and handed over?

¹² When you are taking the number of the children of Israel, let every man who is numbered give to the Lord a price for his life, so that no disease may come on them when they are numbered.

¹³ And this is what they are to give; let every man who is numbered give half a shekel, by the scale of the holy place: (the shekel being valued at twenty gerahs:) this money is an offering to the Lord.

¹⁴ Everyone who is numbered, from twenty years old and over, is to give an offering to the Lord.

¹⁵ The man of wealth is to give no more and the poor man no less than the half-shekel of silver, when the offering is made to the Lord as the price for your lives.

¹⁶ And you are to take this money from the children of Israel to be used for the work of the Tent of meeting, to keep the memory of the children of Israel before the Lord and to be the price of your lives.

⁵⁰ But to them you are to give the care of the Tent of meeting with its vessels and everything in it: they are to take up the Tent, and be responsible for everything to do with it, and put up their tents round it.

⁷ And Moses put the rods before the Lord in the Tent of witness.

⁸ Now on the day after, Moses went into the Tent of witness; and he saw that Aaron's rod, the rod of the house of Levi, had put out buds, and was covered with buds and flowers and fruit.

² Let your brothers, the family of Levi, come near with you, so that they may be joined with you and be your servants: but you and your sons with you are to go in before the ark of witness.

³ And Joab said to the king, Whatever the number of the people, may the Lord make it a hundred times as much, and may the eyes of my lord the king see it: but why does my lord the king take pleasure in doing this thing?

⁴⁴ Our fathers had the Tent of witness in the waste land, as God gave orders to Moses to make it after the design which he had seen.