(1) יהוה spoke to Moses, saying: (2) Tell the Israelite people to bring Me gifts; you shall accept gifts for Me from every person whose heart is so moved. (3) And these are the gifts that you shall accept from them ...

(1) And יהוה spoke to Moses, saying: Tell the Israelite people to bring Me gifts; you shall accept gifts for Me from every person whose heart is so moved. (Exodus 25:1-2) Each person should seek ways to transform their mundane desires – all that “his (her) heart prompts” – into good qualities. And from these habitual, bad traits, that individual should learn how to serve the Creator with the same passion and desire, even more intensely. Tiferes Shlomo, Toldos

(10) They shall make an ark of acacia wood, two and a half cubits long, a cubit and a half wide, and a cubit and a half high. (11) Overlay it with pure gold—overlay it inside and out—and make upon it a gold molding round about.

(1) וצפית אותו זהב טהור מבית ומחוץ תצפנו, “you are to overlay it with pure gold, from the inside and the outside you are to overlay it.” This verse is used by our sages (Babylonian Talmud Yoma 72) to demand that Torah scholars must be able to demonstrate that they practice what they preach. They base this on the Ark which was gold on the inside as well as on the outside. Although no one actually saw the inside, it had to correspond to its exterior. Another verse which alludes to this subject is Job 29:14

“I clothed myself in righteousness and it robed me; Justice was my cloak and turban.”

The repetition in this verse means that one’s inside must match the image one creates for oneself on the outside.

Our sages add further on this subject: “why were the words of Torah compared to glass?, i.e. (Job, 28:17) “gold or glass cannot match its value?” Answer: just as glass is transparent and allows you to see not only the outside but also the interior, so bearers of Torah must be able to be equally transparent, not hiding character weakness not visible to their students or to their peers.

(13) There are four types of charity givers. One who wishes to give, but that others should not give: his eye is evil to that which belongs to others ...

One who desires that he himself should give, and that others should give: that is a pious person ...

(1) Jehoash was seven years old when he became king. (2) Jehoash began his reign in the seventh year of Jehu, and he reigned in Jerusalem forty years. His mother’s name was Zibiah of Beer-sheba. (3) All his days Jehoash did what was pleasing to GOD, as the priest Jehoiada instructed him. (4) The shrines, however, were not removed; the people continued to sacrifice and offer at the shrines. (5) Jehoash said to the priests, “All the money, current money, brought into the House of GOD as sacred donations—any money that someone may pay as the money equivalent of persons, or any other money that someone may be minded to bring to the House of GOD— (6) let the priests receive it, each from his benefactor; they, in turn, shall make repairs on the House, wherever damage may be found.” (7) But in the twenty-third year of King Jehoash, [it was found that] the priests had not made the repairs on the House. (8) So King Jehoash summoned the priest Jehoiada and the other priests and said to them, “Why have you not kept the House in repair? Now do not accept money from your benefactors anymore, but have it donated for the repair of the House.” (9) The priests agreed that they would neither accept money from the people nor make repairs on the House. (10) And the priest Jehoiada took a chest and bored a hole in its lid. He placed it at the right side of the altar as one entered the House of GOD, and the priestly guards of the threshold deposited there all the money that was brought into the House of GOD. (11) Whenever they saw that there was much money in the chest, the royal scribe and the high priest would come up and put the money accumulated in the House of GOD into bags, and they would count it. (12) Then they would deliver the money that was weighed out to the overseers of the work, who were in charge of the House of GOD. These, in turn, used to pay the carpenters and the laborers who worked on the House of GOD, (13) and the masons and the stonecutters. They also paid for wood and for quarried stone with which to make the repairs on the House of GOD, and for every other expenditure that had to be made in repairing the House. (14) However, no silver bowls and no snuffers, basins, or trumpets—no vessels of gold or silver—were made at the House of GOD from the money brought into the House of GOD; (15) this was given only to the overseers of the work for the repair of the House of GOD. (16) No check was kept on those to whom the money was delivered to pay the workers; for they dealt honestly. (17) Money brought as a reparation offering or as a purgation offering was not deposited in the House of GOD; it went to the priests.