So the king called Jehoiada, who was head over this, and said to him, “Why have you not required from the Levites that they bring in from Judah and Jerusalem the tax levied by Moses, the servant of the Lord, for the congregation of Israel for the tent of the testimony?”
In the first year of King Cyrus of Persia, that the word of the Lord spoken by the mouth of Jeremiah might be fulfilled, the Lord stirred up the spirit of King Cyrus of Persia, so that he sent a proclamation throughout all his kingdom and also declared in a written edict:
When you take the census of the Israelites according to their number, then each man is to pay a ransom for his life to the Lord when you count them, so that there be no plague among them when you number them.