Haggai Commentary

The Temple still lay in ruins nearly twenty years after the Hebrews returned to the land of Judah from exile in Babylon. Yet the people of Judah themselves were living in comfortable homes. Surely God’s house deserved better! Haggai pointed out this discrepancy and successfully roused the people to rebuild the Lord’s Temple. Haggai gave Israel a renewed vision of how their efforts would serve God’s plan for his people.

Setting

In 538 BC Cyrus the Great, king of Persia, issued a decree permitting conquered peoples who had been deported by the Babylonians to return to their homelands (see Ezra 1:1-11). The first emigrants to return to Jerusalem were led by Sheshbazzar, the first governor of the restored community (Ezra 1:5-11). In their enthusiasm, the returned exiles soon began to rebuild the altar and the Temple (Ezra 3:1-13), but local pagan residents threatened the Israelites and discouraged them from their God-given work (Ezra 4:4-24). The construction site lay neglected for nearly twenty years after their return.

The Hebrew people were gloomy during this period. Selfishness crippled community spirit, and apathy and disillusionment detracted from their worship. Only a small percentage of Hebrew exiles had actually returned to Judah, the city walls still lay in ruins, the Temple of God was a pile of rubble, and drought and blight ravaged the land. Judah languished as a Persian vassal state while the surrounding nations harassed the leadership in Jerusalem and thwarted their timid improvement efforts.

When Haggai began preaching in 520 BC, a severe drought was affecting the land (Hag 1:11). God sent him to motivate the Israelites to rebuild God’s Temple and to encourage the spiritual renewal of the people of Jerusalem. In response, the people resumed the rebuilding (1:14), and the project was completed in March 515 BC (see Ezra 6:15).

Summary

Each of Haggai’s four messages highlights a different theological concern. The first sermon (ch 1) challenged the Judeans to stop giving their personal comfort first priority and to focus on restoring proper worship of God by rebuilding his Temple.

The second message (2:1-9) assured the community that God had not forgotten the promises of blessing and restoration made by the earlier prophets. The glory of the Lord would once again fill the Temple (2:7). These were not just empty words to bolster a beleaguered remnant, but the sure words of God’s promise to his chosen people.

The third message (2:10-19) has ritual purity as its dominant theme. Haggai reminded his audience that the instructions of the law of Moses were still operative. God expects his people to be holy, even as he is holy (see Lev 11:44-45).

Haggai’s final and perhaps most important message (Hag 2:20-23) reestablished the prominence of King David’s descendants in Israel’s religious and political life. David’s dynasty was crucial to the restoration of the Hebrew people after the Babylonian Exile (see Jer 23:5; 33:15; Ezek 37:24). Zerubbabel was a descendant of King David; his commission to serve as the Lord’s “signet ring” marked the beginning of God’s restoration of Israel (Hag 2:23; cp. Jer 22:24) and pointed to Jesus Christ, a descendant of David (Matt 1:1) who would rule in righteousness forever.

Authorship

The book of Haggai is silent as to its authorship, but it is probable that Haggai wrote his own sermons (1:1, 3). The Bible records no biographic information about the prophet Haggai, but his ministry is attested by Ezra 6:14. Haggai probably wrote his book sometime between delivering his sermons (520 BC) and the completion of the Temple (515 BC), an event that the prophecy does not mention.

Date

Haggai delivered his messages between August and December of 520 BC, the second year of the rule of Darius I, king of Persia (see Hag 1:1, 15; 2:1, 10). Haggai’s ministry in postexilic Judea overlapped that of Zechariah, who began preaching in Jerusalem in November of that year (see Zech 1:1).

Literary Genre

While not a magnum opus like the books of Isaiah or Jeremiah, Haggai does have literary character. Haggai especially uses rhetorical questions to emphasize his thesis in three of the four messages (see 1:4; 2:3, 19). He repeats words or phrases to set the tone for his sermons (e.g., the repeated “look at what’s happening,” 1:5, 7; 2:15), and he engages in wordplay on occasion (e.g., Hebrew khareb, “ruins” [1:4] and khoreb, “drought” [1:11]).

Haggai’s written messages are presumably summaries of more lengthy sermons. The messages are oracles—authoritative messages inspired by God. Oracles often include formulaic expressions that use stock words and phrases. Several of these formulas occur in Haggai: the “date” formula (e.g., “the second year of King Darius’s reign,” 1:1; 2:1, 10, 20), the “message” formula (“the Lord gave/sent a message,” 1:1; 2:1, 10, 20), the “God-as-speaker” formula (“says the Lord,” 1:7, 13; 2:4), and the “covenant relationship” formula (“I am with you,” 2:4-5).

Meaning and Message

Haggai’s four brief sermons sounded a wake-up call to a community that was spiritually asleep. His message was to “get up and go to work” rebuilding the Lord’s Temple in Jerusalem.

Haggai correlated the community’s lack of agricultural and economic success with their neglect of the Lord’s Temple. He rebuked the people for their disinterest in worshiping God and called them to repentance and spiritual renewal. When the people responded positively and began the work of rebuilding, Haggai encouraged them with the promise of God’s continuing presence and help.

Haggai called the people of Jerusalem to authentic worship, trust in God’s word, personal holiness, and obedience to divinely appointed leadership. Haggai emphasizes the abiding presence of God’s Spirit (1:13-14; 2:4-5), a theme shared with his contemporary Zechariah (Zech 1:16; 8:23; see also Ezek 37:27-28).

An Exposition, with Practical Observations, of The Prophecy of Haggai

The captivity in Babylon gave a very remarkable turn to the affairs of the Jewish church both in history and prophecy. It is made a signal epocha in our Saviour's genealogy, Mat 1:17. Nine of the twelve minor prophets, whose oracles we have been hitherto consulting, lived and preached before that captivity, and most of them had an eye to it in their prophecies, foretelling it as the just punishment of Jerusalem's wickedness. But the last three (in whom the Spirit of prophecy took its period, until it revived in Christ's forerunner) lived and preached after the return out of captivity, not immediately upon it, but some time after. Haggai and Zechariah appeared much about the same time, eighteen years after the return, when the building of the temple was both retarded by its enemies and neglected by its friends. Then the prophets, Haggai the prophet and Zechariah the son of Iddo, prophesied unto the Jews that were in Jerusalem, in the name of the God of Israel, even unto them (so we read Ezr 5:1), to reprove them for their remissness, and to encourage them to revive that good work when it had stood still for some time, and to go on with it vigorously, notwithstanding the opposition they met with in it. Haggai began two months before Zechariah, who was raised up to second him, that out of the mouth of two witnesses the word might be established. But Zechariah continued longer at the work; for all Haggai's prophecies that are recorded were delivered within four months, in the second year of Darius, between the beginning of the sixth month and the end of the ninth. But we have Zechariah's prophecies dated above two years after, Zac 7:1. Some have the honour to lead, others to last, in the work of God. The Jews ascribe to these two prophets the honour of being members of the great synagogue (as they call it), which was formed after the return out of captivity; we think it more certain, and it was their honour, and a much greater honour, that they prophesied of Christ. Haggai spoke of him as the glory of the latter house, and Zechariah as the man, the branch. In them the light of that morning star shone more brightly than in the foregoing prophecies, as they lived nearer the time of the rising of the Sun of righteousness, and now began to see his day approaching. The Septuagint makes Haggai and Zechariah to be the penmen of Psa 138:1-8 and Psa 146:1-10,147, and Psa 148:1-14.

THE name Haggai means "my feast"; given, according to COCCEIUS, in anticipation of the joyous return from exile. He probably was one of the Jewish exiles (of the tribes Judah, Benjamin, and Levi) who returned under Zerubbabel, the civil head of the people, and Joshua, the high priest, 536 B.C., when Cyrus (actuated by the striking prophecies as to himself, Isa 44:28; Isa 45:1) granted them their liberty, and furnished them with the necessaries for restoring the temple (Ch2 36:23; Ezr 1:1; Ezr 2:2). The work of rebuilding went on under Cyrus and his successor Cambyses (called Ahasuerus in Ezr 4:6) in spite of opposition from the Samaritans, who, when their offers of help were declined, began to try to hinder it. These at last obtained an interdict from the usurper Smerdis the Magian (called Artaxerxes in Ezra 4:7-23), whose suspicions were easy to rouse. The Jews thereupon became so indifferent to the work that when Darius came to the throne (521 B.C.), virtually setting aside the prohibitions of the usurper, instead of recommencing their labors, they pretended that as the prophecy of the seventy years applied to the temple as well as to the captivity in Babylon (Hag 1:2), they were only in the sixty-eighth year of it [HENDERSON]; so that, the proper time not having yet arrived, they might devote themselves to building splendid mansions for themselves. Haggai and Zechariah were commissioned by Jehovah (Hag 1:1) in the second year of Darius (Hystaspes), 520 B.C., sixteen years after the return under Zerubbabel, to rouse them from their selfishness to resume the work which for fourteen years had been suspended. Haggai preceded Zechariah in the work by two months.

The dates of his four distinct prophecies are accurately given: (1) The first (Hag 1:1-15), on the first day of the sixth month of the second year of Darius, 520 B.C., reproved the people for their apathy in allowing the temple to lie in ruins and reminded them of their ill success in everything because of their not honoring God as to His house. The result was that twenty-four days afterwards they commenced building under Zerubbabel (Hag 1:12-15). (2) The second, on the twenty-first day of the seventh month (Hag 2:1-9), predicts that the glory of the new temple would be greater than that of Solomon's, so that the people need not be discouraged by the inferiority in outward splendor of the new, as compared with the old temple, which had so moved to tears the elders who had remembered the old (Ezr 3:12-13). Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel had implied the same prediction, whence some had doubted whether they ought to proceed with a building so inferior to the former one; but Haggai shows wherein the superior glory was to consist, namely, in the presence of Him who is the "desire of all nations" (Hag 2:7). (3) The third, on the twenty-fourth day of the ninth month (Hag 2:10-19), refers to a period when building materials had been collected, and the workmen had begun to put them together, from which time forth God promises His blessing; it begins with removing their past error as to the efficacy of mere outward observances to cleanse from the taint of disobedience as to the temple building. (4) The fourth (Hag 2:20-23), on the same day as the preceding, was addressed to Zerubbabel, as the representative of the theocratic people, and as having asked as to the national revolutions spoken of in the second prophecy (Hag 2:7).

The prophecies are all so brief as to suggest the supposition that they are only a summary of the original discourses. The space occupied is but three months from the first to the last.

The Jews' adversaries, on the resumption of the work under Zerubbabel, Haggai, and Zechariah, tried to set Darius against it; but that monarch confirmed Cyrus' decree and ordered all help to be given to the building of the temple (Ezr 5:3, &c.; Ezr 6:1, &c.). So the temple was completed in the sixth year of Darius' reign 516-515 B.C. (Ezr 6:14).

The style of Haggai is consonant with his messages: pathetic in exhortation, vehement in reproofs, elevated in contemplating the glorious future. The repetition of the same phrases (for example, "saith the Lord," or "the Lord of hosts," Hag 1:2, Hag 1:5, Hag 1:7; and thrice in one verse, Hag 2:4; so "the spirit," thrice in one verse, Hag 1:14) gives a simple earnestness to his style, calculated to awaken the solemn attention of the people, and to awaken them from their apathy, to which also the interrogatory form, often adopted, especially tends. Chaldaisms occur (Hag 2:3; Hag 2:6; Hag 2:16), as might have been expected in a writer who was so long in Chaldea. Parts are purely prose history; the rest is somewhat rhythmical, and observant of poetic parallelism.

Haggai is referred to in Ezr 5:1; Ezr 6:14; and in the New Testament (Heb 12:26; compare Hag 2:6-7, Hag 2:22).

Next: Haggai Chapter 1