Haggai

Haggai spoke to God’s people about seventy years after Babylon destroyed Jerusalem and Solomon’s temple in 586 B.C. In 538 B.C. King Cyrus of Persia allowed the Jews to go home and rebuild the house of the LORD (Ezra 1:1–4). About 50,000 people returned under Zerubbabel, a descendant of King David who became governor of Judah, and Joshua the high priest (Ezra 2:2, 64–65). They rebuilt the altar and laid the foundation of the temple, but their neighbors opposed them, and the work stopped for about sixteen years (Ezra 3–4). In the meantime the people turned to their own homes, fields and troubles. Then, in 520 B.C., the second year of King Darius I of Persia, the LORD sent two prophets, Haggai and Zechariah, to stir the people to build again (Ezra 5:1–2). Haggai’s book records four short messages, each dated to the day, all within about four months.

The first message came on the first day of the sixth month, a new moon day when people gathered for worship, and it was addressed to Zerubbabel and Joshua (1:1). The people had been saying, “The time has not yet come to rebuild the LORD’s house” (1:2). The LORD answered with a question: “Is it a time for you yourselves to be living in your paneled houses, while this house remains a ruin?” (1:4). Then came the call that runs through the whole book: “Give careful thought to your ways” (1:5). “You have planted much, but harvested little. You eat, but never have enough. You drink, but never have your fill. You put on clothes, but are not warm. You earn wages, only to put them in a purse with holes in it” (1:6). Their hard work was not paying off, and Haggai wanted them to ask why.

The LORD gave the answer. “Go up into the mountains and bring down timber and build my house, so that I may take pleasure in it and be honored” (1:8). “You expected much, but see, it turned out to be little. … Why? … Because of my house, which remains a ruin, while each of you is busy with your own house” (1:9). That is why the heavens had held back their dew and the earth its crops, and why the LORD had called for a drought on the fields, the grain, the new wine, the olive oil, people and cattle (1:10–11). Moses had warned that turning from the LORD would bring this kind of failure on the land (Deuteronomy 28:38–40). The problem was not that the people had no time or money; it was that they had put the LORD last.

Something rare in the prophets happened next: the people listened at once. “Then Zerubbabel … Joshua … and the whole remnant of the people obeyed the voice of the LORD their God and the message of the prophet Haggai. … And the people feared the LORD” (1:12). God answered their obedience with a short and powerful promise, given through “Haggai, the LORD’s messenger”: “I am with you,” declares the LORD (1:13). The LORD “stirred up the spirit” of the leaders and of the people, and they came and began to work on the house of the LORD Almighty their God on the twenty-fourth day of the sixth month (1:14–15), just over three weeks after Haggai first spoke.

The second message came on the twenty-first day of the seventh month (2:1), the last day of the Feast of Tabernacles, the same feast at which Solomon had dedicated the first temple (1 Kings 8:2). By now the builders were discouraged. Some of the older people could remember Solomon’s magnificent temple, and the new building looked poor beside it (Ezra 3:12). “Who of you is left who saw this house in its former glory? How does it look to you now? Does it not seem to you like nothing?” (2:3). The LORD did not deny it, but he gave them his word: “Be strong, Zerubbabel. … Be strong, Joshua. … Be strong, all you people of the land, … and work. For I am with you” (2:4). He reminded them of the covenant he made when they came out of Egypt: “And my Spirit remains among you. Do not fear” (2:5).

Then the LORD looked ahead. “In a little while I will once more shake the heavens and the earth, the sea and the dry land. I will shake all nations, and what is desired by all nations will come, and I will fill this house with glory” (2:6–7). The builders had little silver and gold, but the LORD said, “The silver is mine and the gold is mine” (2:8). “The glory of this present house will be greater than the glory of the former house … And in this place I will grant peace” (2:9). The temple was finished in 516/515 B.C. and later greatly enlarged by King Herod. The letter to the Hebrews quotes Haggai’s words about shaking the heavens and the earth and applies them to the kingdom that “cannot be shaken” (Hebrews 12:26–28).

The third message came two months later, on the twenty-fourth day of the ninth month (2:10). Haggai put a question of the law to the priests. If someone carries consecrated meat in a fold of their garment and it touches bread or stew, does that food become holy? The priests answered, “No.” If someone who is unclean from touching a dead body touches the food, does it become unclean? “Yes,” they said (2:11–13). Holiness does not spread by touch, but uncleanness does. “So it is with this people and this nation in my sight,” declares the LORD. “Whatever they do and whatever they offer there is defiled” (2:14). Standing near a holy altar did not make them holy. Then Haggai told them to look back to the days before the work began, when the harvests came up short and the LORD struck their work “with blight, mildew and hail, yet you did not return to me” (2:15–17; see Amos 4:9). Now that the foundation of the LORD’s temple had been laid, things would change, even before the seed came up: “From this day on I will bless you” (2:18–19).

The fourth message came on the same day and was addressed to Zerubbabel alone (2:20–21). Again the LORD said, “I am going to shake the heavens and the earth.” He would overturn royal thrones, shatter the power of foreign kingdoms, and overthrow chariots and their drivers (2:21–22). Then the book ends with a promise to David’s descendant: “‘On that day,’ declares the LORD Almighty, ‘I will take you, my servant Zerubbabel son of Shealtiel,’ declares the LORD, ‘and I will make you like my signet ring, for I have chosen you’” (2:23). A signet ring was a king’s seal of authority. About eighty years earlier the LORD had said of Zerubbabel’s grandfather, King Jehoiachin, that even if he were a signet ring on God’s right hand, God would pull him off (Jeremiah 22:24). Haggai’s last word reverses that judgment: the royal line of David has not been thrown away. Zerubbabel is named among the ancestors of Jesus in Matthew 1:12–13 and Luke 3:27.

Several themes run through Haggai. Put God first: the people’s troubles came from neglecting the LORD’s house while they cared for their own (1:4, 9; compare Matthew 6:33). Give careful thought to your ways: Haggai calls his hearers to stop and look at their lives (1:5, 7; 2:15, 18). God’s presence: “I am with you” and “my Spirit remains among you” (1:13; 2:4–5). Obedience and blessing: when the people obeyed, the LORD stirred them up and promised to bless them (1:12–14; 2:19). True holiness: being near holy things does not make anyone holy (2:10–14). God keeps his promises: he rules the nations and has not forgotten his covenant with David (2:6–9, 21–23). Readers understand some parts of Haggai in different ways. “What is desired by all nations” (2:7) was translated in the King James Version as “the desire of all nations shall come,” and many Christians have read it as a promise of the Messiah; most modern translations take it as the treasures of the nations, in line with the silver and gold of 2:8, and some see both ideas together. The greater glory (2:9) is seen by many Christians as fulfilled when Jesus came to the temple, by others as pointing to God’s presence with his people in the new creation (Revelation 21:22), and by some as both. “This people” (2:14) is usually taken as the returned Jews themselves, whose neglect had made their offerings unclean; some instead think of the neighbors whose help had been refused (Ezra 4:1–3). The promise to Zerubbabel (2:23) may have raised hopes for Zerubbabel himself, who never became king; many readers see it as pointing beyond him to the Messiah from David’s line. This outline simply follows the text.