Haggai
Author: Haggai
Haggai speaks in the second year of Darius to the returned exiles who have left the Lord’s house unfinished.
Outline
Consider your ways (1)
The people say the time has not come to build, and the prophet ties their empty harvest to that delay.
The latter glory (2:1–9)
Those who remember the first house are told to be strong, because the Lord will fill this house with glory.
Clean and chosen (2:10–23)
Holiness does not spread by contact the way uncleanness does, and Zerubbabel is made like a signet.
Key verses
Haggai 1:4
The people are asked whether it is time for them to live in paneled houses while the Lord’s house lies waste.
Haggai 2:9
The glory of the latter house is said to be greater than the former, and in that place the Lord will give peace.
Haggai 2:23
Zerubbabel is taken and made like a signet, because the Lord has chosen him.
Haggai is dated with unusual care. The word comes in the second year of Darius the king, on the first day of the sixth month, to Zerubbabel the governor of Judah and to Joshua the high priest. The audience is the community that has come back from Babylon and has built houses for itself while the temple remains a ruin. They have a sentence ready. The time has not come, the time that the Lord’s house should be built. Haggai asks whether it is time for them to dwell in paneled houses while this house lies waste. He tells them to consider their ways. They have sown much and bring in little. They eat and do not have enough. They drink and are not filled. They earn wages and put them into a bag with holes. The drought on the grain, the new wine, the oil, and the labor of their hands is tied to the Lord’s house that they run every man to his own house and leave waste.
Zerubbabel, Joshua, and the remnant of the people obey the voice of the Lord and the words of Haggai. They fear before the Lord. The prophet then carries a second word: I am with you. The Lord stirs the spirit of the governor, the priest, and all the people, and they come and work on the house on the twenty-fourth day of the sixth month. The book’s first success is not a vision of glory. It is a community that stops postponing the building.
In the seventh month the word comes again, and it is aimed at memory. Who is left among you who saw this house in its former glory? How do you see it now? Is it not in your eyes as nothing? The older exiles can compare the new work with Solomon’s house and feel the comparison as a defeat. Haggai tells Zerubbabel, Joshua, and the people to be strong and work, for the Lord is with them. The covenant word he made when they came out of Egypt still stands. My Spirit remains among you. Fear not. Yet once, in a little while, the Lord will shake the heavens and the earth, the sea and the dry land, and the nations, and the desire of all nations will come. The silver is his and the gold is his. The glory of this latter house will be greater than the former, and in this place he will give peace. The encouragement is not that the stones already look like the old temple. It is that the Lord has not finished with the house they are tempted to despise.
A question to the priests makes a point about holiness. If a man carries holy flesh in his garment and touches bread or pottage, does the holiness spread? They say no. If someone unclean by a dead body touches those things, do they become unclean? They say yes. Haggai applies it to the people and to the work of their hands. Uncleanness spreads more readily than they hoped holiness would. From the day the foundation is considered, the Lord says he will bless them. The last oracle, on the twenty-fourth day of the ninth month, tells Zerubbabel that the Lord will shake the heavens and the earth and overthrow the strength of the kingdoms. In that day he will take Zerubbabel and make him as a signet, for he has chosen him. Haggai’s four months of preaching are about a house, a harvest, a disappointed memory, and a governor marked as chosen. The practical command and the promise of a greater glory are the same message.