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Introduction
to Haggai
This summary of the book of Haggai provides information about the title,
author(s), date of writing, chronology, theme, theology, outline, a brief
overview, and the chapters of the Book of Haggai.
Haggai (1:1) was a prophet who, along with Zechariah, encouraged
the returned exiles to rebuild the temple (see Ezr 5:1-2; 6:14).
Haggai means "festal," which may indicate that the prophet was born
during one of the three pilgrimage feasts (Unleavened Bread, Pentecost or
Weeks, and Tabernacles; cf. Dt 16:16). Based on 2:3
(see note there) Haggai may have witnessed the destruction of Solomon's temple.
If so, he must have been in his 70s during his ministry.
In 538 b.c. the conqueror of Babylon, Cyrus king of Persia, issued
a decree allowing the Jews to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the temple (see Ezr 1:2-4; 6:3-5). Led by Zerubbabel (but see note on Ezr
1:8, "Sheshbazzar"), about 50,000 Jews journeyed home and
began work on the temple. About two years later (536) they completed the
foundation amid great rejoicing (Ezr 3:8-11). Their success aroused the
Samaritans and other neighbors who feared the political and religious
implications of a rebuilt temple in a thriving Jewish state. They therefore
opposed the project vigorously and managed to halt work until 520, after Darius
the Great became king of Persia in 522 (Ezr 4:1-5,24).
Darius was interested in the religions of his empire, and Haggai
and Zechariah began to preach in his second year, 520 b.c. (see 1:1;
Zec 1:1). The Jews were more to blame for their
inactivity than their opponents, and Haggai tried to arouse them from their
lethargy. When the governor of Trans-Euphrates and other officials tried to
interfere with the rebuilding efforts, Darius fully supported the Jews (Ezr 5:3-6; 6:6-12). In 516 the temple was finished and
dedicated (Ezr 6:15-18).
Haggai's messages are among the most carefully and precisely dated
in the entire OT. They were given during a four-month period in 520 b.c., the
second year of King Darius. The first message was delivered on the first day of
the sixth month (Aug. 29), the last on the 24th day of the ninth month (Dec.
18). See notes on 1:1; 2:1,10; see also Introduction to Zechariah:
Dates.
Apart from Obadiah, Haggai is the shortest book in the OT, but its
teachings are none the less significant. Haggai clearly shows the consequences
of disobedience (1:6,11; 2:16-17) and obedience (2:7-9,19). When the people give priority to God
and his house, they are blessed rather than cursed (cf. Lk
12:31 and note). Obedience brings the encouragement and strength of
the Spirit of God (2:4-5).
In ch. 2 God gives great encouragement to those laboring
under difficult conditions to rebuild his temple by assuring them that the
future glory of the modest temple they are able to build will be greater than
that of the temple Solomon had built in the time of Israel's greatest wealth
and power. The Jews in Judah may now be a much reduced community and under the
hegemony of a powerful world empire, but the Lord will shake up the present
world order and assert his claim to all the world's wealth so that the glory of
his future temple will be without rival. "The desired of all nations will
come, and I will fill this house with glory" (see 2:6-7 and notes).
Like Malachi, Haggai uses a number of questions to highlight key
issues (see 1:4,9; 2:3,19). He also makes effective use of
repetition: "Give careful thought" occurs in 1:5,7; 2:15,18, and "I am with you" in 1:13;
2:4. "I will shake the heavens and the
earth" is found in 2:6,21. The major sections of the book are
marked off by the date on which the word of the Lord came "through"
(or "to") Haggai (1:1;
2:1,10,20).
Several times the prophet appears to reflect other passages of
Scripture (compare 1:6 with Dt 28:38-39 and 2:17
with Dt 28:22). The threefold use of "Be
strong" in 2:4 (see note there) echoes the encouragement
given in Jos 1:6-7,9,18. (For chiasm see Outline below.)
I.
First Message: The Call to Rebuild the Temple (1:1-11)
A.
The People's Lame Excuse (1:1-4)
II.
The Response of Zerubbabel and the People (1:12-15)
III.
Second Message: The Temple to Be Filled with Glory (2:1-9)
V.
Fourth Message: The Promise to Zerubbabel (2:20-23)
It is also possible to outline the book in a chiastic a-b / b-a pattern:
Similar chiastic patterns exist in the subunits within these larger
units.
──《New
International Version》
Introduction to Haggai
After the return from captivity, Haggai was
sent to encourage the people to rebuild the temple, and to reprove their
neglect. To encourage their undertaking, the people are assured that the glory
of the second temple shall far exceed that of the first, by the appearing
therein of Christ, the Desire of all nations.
── Matthew Henry《Concise Commentary on Haggai》
00 Overview
HAGGAI
INTRODUCTION
It is marvellous how much light has been thrown by recent discoveries
in the East upon many passages of Old Testament Scripture. The bricks and
inscriptions, the tablets and monuments, of Assyria and Babylonia, after having
been hidden from the knowledge of men for thousands of years, have at last
disclosed their secrets to us. They carry us back through the long dark vista
of centuries. It is possible for us now to frame some adequate idea of that
“great Babylon” which Nebuchadnezzar boasted that he had built for the house of
the kingdom, and within whose walls many of God’s captive people found a home
when they were carried away from Judah and Jerusalem. It must have been one of
the most splendid cities which the world has ever seen. In the centre Of it
rose the temple of Baal, towering stage above stage towards the sky, with a
gigantic image of the god adorning its summit. The palace of the king stood not
far distant, with its courts and corridors and famous hanging gardens. Round
the city ran a wall, pierced by a hundred gates of bronze, and itself so broad
that two chariots could pass one another without difficulty on the roadway
which crowned it. And the great river Euphrates flowed through the midst of the
houses and palaces and temples, with handsome quays and frequent drawbridges,
and boats plying constantly up and down. Such was the golden city against which
Isaiah and Jeremiah hurled
their threats, the chosen home of luxury and refinement, and of a people who
cared only for their own gratification. Its renown filled the earth. It exalted
its throne above the stars of God. There was no other city half so proud or
glorious. But it was doomed to shame and defeat, as more than one Hebrew
prophet had foretold. Men have loved to think of Cyrus, whom the Lord raised up
to do His own work of humbling Babylon and of liberating His captives from
thraldom, as a worshipper of one God only. They have imagined that the chief
motive which prompted him to attack the great city was his burning desire to
destroy its idols. They have said that he allowed the Jews to return to their
own land because, like them, he had but one supreme deity--the Ormazd, or good
spirit of the Zoroastrian creed. But just as science, according to the poet,
has withdrawn “the veil of enchantment” from creation, and has forced its
visions of beauty to yield to “cold material laws,” so the tablets and
inscriptions have robbed Cyrus of this great honour with which succeeding
generations had crowned him. He was a devotee, we are compelled now to believe,
of the many gods of Babylon. His first care, after making himself master of the
town, was to restore some of these gods to the shrines from which they had been
removed by Nabonidos. He prayed for their help and blessing on all his
enterprises. Bel and Nebo and the countless divinities of the Chaldean pantheon
were revered by him with implicit faith. £ But he was tolerant, too, of other
creeds. Moreover, he was anxious to ingratiate himself into the favour of the
Jews, who formed no inconsiderable part of the population of the city.
Therefore he dealt kindly with them. He published the decree which permitted
them to go back to their native land and to rebuild the ruined Temple of
Jehovah. He gave them many privileges which they had not previously enjoyed.
The prophet Haggai was in Babylon, we may be sure, that day when Cyrus marched
into it “with banner and with music, with soldier and with priest.” No doubt he
had more than once looked the great conqueror in the face. He lived in the
period of the Exile--lived to see its ending, and to witness the dawning of the
time appointed by the Lord to favour Zion. He is the earliest of those three
prophets whose work lay after the long Captivity.
I. I am to try to
sketch the prophet’s surroundings. He was one of those who had known from
personal experience what banishment and exile mean. He had remembered Jerusalem
by the rivers of Babylon. And he had rejoiced with all the best souls in the
nation when God stirred up the spirit of Cyrus to perform His will. We can
picture him journeying homeward across the bleak desert with the caravans of
pilgrims. At times the only feeling of the travellers was one of overflowing
joy. It was all like a dream to them, too good to be true--like the rush of the
waters in the rainy season into the dry torrent-beds in the south of Palestine;
like the reaper bearing on his shoulder the sheaves in summer which he had sown
in the dull days of winter. But at other times there was grief mingled with the
gladness. Tears of penitence and words of prayer broke freely forth. They came
“with weeping and with supplications,” as Jeremiah says, asking the way to Zion
with their faces thitherward. Full of such thoughts as these, he and his
companions made the long journey of four months’ duration across the stony and
arid desert. Guarded by God, they escaped the perils of the wilderness and the
perils of robbers. They arrived safely in Jerusalem, the city of their fathers,
the home and seat of their Lord. These pilgrims were not the whole of Israel.
They were but forty-two thousand men, with their dependants. £ The great
majority of the Jews preferred to remain in exile. Many of them had gained high
positions in the state which they could not easily resign; others had acquired
property or had formed connections from which they were unable or unwilling to
part; numbers were charmed and detained by the glory and greatness of
Babylon--its streets, its pleasure-grounds, its storehouses, its busy river.
They found it hard to prefer Jerusalem, a town grass-grown and desolate, to
this splendid city. So the company of travellers who faced the desert, and made
their way to the fatherland which held their hearts captive, was by no means so
large as it might have been. And their souls must have been like to fail them
when they saw Jerusalem itself. Its walls were crumbled into ruins. Its houses
were mere wrecks, blackened with smoke and fire. Its Temple was demolished.
Yet, saddening though all their surroundings were, they refused at first to be
discouraged. This was the city, they reminded themselves, where David and Solomon
had reigned; the city in which God had chosen to put His name. They began by
erecting the altar of burnt-offering; and then they made preparations for
rebuilding the Temple and the walls. But now trouble came. They had righteously
refused to permit the Samaritans to aid them in what was really a holy
work--the Samaritans who joined to their worship of Jehovah the worship of
heathen gods. Thus they turned those Northern neighbours of theirs into bitter
enemies, who annoyed them perpetually, who strove to thwart all their
undertakings, who maligned and slandered their character at the Persian Court.
The intrigues of these unscrupulous foes were only too successful. They
persuaded Cambyses and Smerdis, who held the throne after Cyrus, to forbid the
prosecution of the Temple works. For fifteen years everything came to a
standstill. Worse still, during the long delay the zeal of the people for the
sanctuary of God grew cold. They submitted to what appeared to them inevitable.
They looked on the unfinished work and said, “The time is not come, the time that the
Lord’s house should be built.” They turned aside to selfish objects and
pursuits, erecting rich and comfortable homes for themselves, and decorating
them with that wainscot of cedar which had been reckoned hitherto the peculiar
ornament of the sanctuary. It was a sad declension after the hopeful start
which had been made. What Haggai thought during this time of retrogression we
can have little difficulty in guessing. Surely it cut him to the heart. Surely
he mourned for the lukewarmness of his friends. But at length a fresh morning
broke and a happier day. Darius Hystaspis £ ascended the throne of
Persia--Darius, who was a Zoroastrian and a worshipper of one God. His
sympathies were entirely with the Jews. He promulgated a new decree, bidding
them resume the building of the Temple, and giving them revenues for the
purpose. And, contemporaneous with the king’s accession, came the prophetic
activity of Haggai. After long silence the Spirit of the Lord impelled him to
speak. It was the autumn of the year 520 b.c.--the month of September, we may
say--and by December of the same year Haggai’s work as a prophet was finished. But he
accomplished a great deal during these few weeks. God gave him a reward which
is often denied to men and women whose labours extend over a much longer period
of time.
II. Remembering
that these were the circumstances in which he commenced to speak on God’s
behalf, let us pass briefly in review his prophecies themselves. There have
been some who have thought that, when he stood up to deliver his message to the
people, he was already an old man. He refers in his words to the glory of the
former house of the Lord, the magnificent Temple of Solomon which
Nebuchadnezzar had destroyed. And it has been argued that he was speaking from
his own recollections of that fair and noble structure. It may be a slender
foundation on which to base an assertion of any kind, indeed, we can have no
certainty about the matter; but I for one like to think of this prophet as
going forth to do God’s work in the twilight of life, with feeble steps and a
face furrowed by age and trouble and hair white as the snow, yet with a
childlike faith and a firm and resolute heart. Let this be as it may, however,
we know that he appeared at a most critical juncture in the history of the
people; and we know, too, that whether young or old, he justified the choice
which God had made of him. £ Four times over in this autumn of the year 520 the
burden of the Lord was laid upon him. Four times over he went out to deliver his short and
pregnant messages to his countrymen. The earliest occasion was on the first day
of the month Elul, when the harvest had been quite gathered in. Then Haggai
broke the silence, addressing himself directly to Zerubbabel, the Hebrew ruler
of Jerusalem, and to Joshua the high-priest, but intending to reach through
them the whole body of the people. In the name of the God of Israel he summoned
his fellow-citizens to arise and work, encouraged by the manifest favour with
which the new king regarded them. He did not spare their faults; like a skilful
surgeon, he probed the wounds of the little commonwealth to the bottom. Let
them look the facts, unwelcome as they were, in the face, Haggai said. Let them
return to their first love and their first zeal. Let them resume without
further delay the holy Temple work which they had laid aside so selfishly and
sinfully (Haggai 1:2-11). A month later, on the
last day of the Feast of Tabernacles--the most joyous and gladsome of all the
Hebrew solemnities--Haggai spoke again. This time his words were full of good
cheer; for his former message of stern rebuke had had an immediate effect, and
had roused the people from their lethargy. Some of the builders, he felt, might
contrast the new Temple with the old, to the disparagement of that about which
they were now busy. There were among them grey-haired men, laudatores
temporis acti, who passed slighting comments on each feature of the growing
structure, and who told with fond regrets of the “exceeding magnifical” house
that had once been there. Therefore the prophet urged the workmen to pursue
their toil with unflagging earnestness, because God was with them in as real a
sense as He had been with their fathers. He went further still. He assured them
that the glory of the new Temple would outshine that of the old. It might not
ever be so splendid outwardly. But the new sanctuary was to be invested with a
spiritual majesty to which its predecessor could not lay claim. God was to do wonders of
grace and power within its courts. Yet again, having performed his errand and
uttered his brief message, Haggai was silent--on this occasion for rather more
than two months. Then he spoke a third time. A new fear had arisen among the
people--the fear that God was not about to bless them, even although they had
given themselves afresh to Him. Dearth and blight and disappointment were still
dogging their footsteps; the sky seemed as dark and stormy as before. The
prophet of the Lord had a solemn lesson to teach his hearers now. By a
reference to the Levitical law, and by a question put to the priests, he
reminded the citizens that, while a holy thing did not communicate its holiness
to whatever might touch it, a thing which was unclean contaminated all with
which it came into contact. The speck within the garnered fruit moulders the
whole basketful; the hand that is stained with blood incarnadines the
multitudinous seas, “making the green one red.” Just so it had been with the
Jews. Their good deeds had not compensated for their lukewarmness; but on the
contrary, their lack of zeal for God, their sin in neglecting the Temple, had
spread its moral pollution over every work of their hands. But yet they must
not despair. God would not deal with them in mere righteousness and unbending
justice. Nay, He would forget all their ingratitude. Because they were now
seeking to serve Him, He would commence among them a new era of prosperity. “From
this day--the four-and-twentieth day of the ninth month--will I bless
you”--such was His pitiful and loving assurance. It had been all failure
hitherto; it was to be only peace and joy and strength and fruitfulness
henceforward (Haggai 2:10-19). Once more Haggai
spoke--a little further on in the same day. God bade him tell Zerubbabel that
he need feel no alarm about the civil liberties of the people in the future.
Disturbances and commotions of no ordinary kind were impending, but through
them all the Jewish prince and those committed to his care would dwell secure.
The grand words of the 91st Psalm would be realised in their history: “A
thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand; but it
shall not come nigh thee. Only with thine eyes shalt thou behold and see the
reward of the wicked. Because thou hast made the Lord, which is my refuge, even
the Most High, thy habitation, there shall no evil befall thee, neither shall
any plague come nigh thy dwelling” (Haggai 2:20-23). That was Haggai’s latest
utterance.
III. There was no
need why he should remain longer in the public view. He had finished the task
which God assigned him, and had finished it successfully. Critics have
sometimes found fault with his style. They have said that there is little
eloquence or poetry in it--that it is bald and rugged and uninviting. But work
that is sharp and stern requires weapons of a similar sort. Haggai’s short
emphatic sentences are exactly what was best suited to the occasion. They
compelled attention, and not attention only, but obedience too. They pricked
men to the heart. They kindled within them that godly sorrow which needeth not
to be repented of. The best results followed the ministry of Haggai. He had no
sooner uttered the first of his prophecies ere he saw it bear fruit. Moved with
holy fear, Zerubbabel and Joshua and the people obeyed the call of God’s
messenger. They flocked to the work which had been so long and shamefully
neglected. Within a month the building of the Temple was being vigorously
pressed forward. Few, indeed, of His ambassadors have had a harvest so speedy
and so copious as Haggai had. Haggai is in truth one of the “last” who shall be
“first.” How long he had to wait before God called him to utter a single word I
How few his opportunities were even after his ministry had commenced! How very
quickly his time of speech and action was drawn to a close! Yet he did a mighty
and far-reaching work. He quickened a backsliding people to repentance. He
restored their souls, and led them again in the ways of truth and holiness.
IV. Finally, let us
draw from Haggai’s prophecy one or two truths suitable for ourselves, who live
at such a distance from him.
1. It seems to me that here we get no little insight into the cause
and the cure of dull times. The Jews of the prophet’s day had to complain of
depression and hardship. Their harvests had been poor; they could earn little,
and what they did earn leaked imperceptibly away. And the preacher told them
plainly why. It was because they had forgotten to give to God--to give Him
their time and their thought and their substance. Let them contribute heartily
to His cause, and their troubles would vanish; from that hour He would bless
them and make them prosperous. Do not we require the reproof?
2. Haggai teaches us, too, not to despise our own generation and the
work that is being done in it. He condemned the men who spoke of the glory of
Solomon’s Temple as if it surpassed altogether that of the later house; he told
them that God would do greater things in the new sanctuary than in the old. The
tendency which he combated lives among us yet. We remember the deliverances of
the past; but we question whether there can be any such deliverances in the
present. We are proud of the faith and struggles and achievements of our
fathers; but we doubt whether their descendants can ever come within sight of
them. And it is good to recall the years of the right hand of the Most
High--years long since fled. But it is wrong to speak as if God had departed
from the earth today. He is active still. He is in intimate relations with
mankind even now. He fainteth not, neither is weary.
3. This prophet tells us also that no amount of holy services will
cleanse and renew us if we be ourselves unholy. The parable which he drew from
the ancient Levitical law has this for its moral. Men are always prone to
imagine that, if only they render to God an outward religion, it will atone for
the blemishes and shortcomings and selfishness and sin of their lives. -It is a
fatal and wicked error. Our God looks beneath the surface into the inner man.
He demands that we should rend our hearts and not our garments. He asks from us
a simple and true and earnest faith in His crucified and risen Son. He bids us
welcome His Holy Spirit into our souls. He will not bless us unless this is our
attitude and character. Can we say that it is yours and mine? (Original
Secession Magazine.)
Chapter 1
HAGGAI
INTRODUCTION
It is marvellous how much light has been thrown by recent
discoveries in the East upon many passages of Old Testament Scripture. The
bricks and inscriptions, the tablets and monuments, of Assyria and Babylonia,
after having been hidden from the knowledge of men for thousands of years, have
at last disclosed their secrets to us. They carry us back through the long dark
vista of centuries. It is possible for us now to frame some adequate idea of
that “great Babylon” which Nebuchadnezzar boasted that he had built for the
house of the kingdom, and within whose walls many of God’s captive people found
a home when they were carried away from Judah and Jerusalem. It must have been
one of the most splendid cities which the world has ever seen. In the centre Of
it rose the temple of Baal, towering stage above stage towards the sky, with a
gigantic image of the god adorning its summit. The palace of the king stood not
far distant, with its courts and corridors and famous hanging gardens. Round
the city ran a wall, pierced by a hundred gates of bronze, and itself so broad
that two chariots could pass one another without difficulty on the roadway
which crowned it. And the great river Euphrates flowed through the midst of the
houses and palaces and temples, with handsome quays and frequent drawbridges,
and boats plying constantly up and down. Such was the golden city against which
Isaiah and Jeremiah hurled
their threats, the chosen home of luxury and refinement, and of a people who
cared only for their own gratification. Its renown filled the earth. It exalted
its throne above the stars of God. There was no other city half so proud or
glorious. But it was doomed to shame and defeat, as more than one Hebrew prophet
had foretold. Men have loved to think of Cyrus, whom the Lord raised up to do
His own work of humbling Babylon and of liberating His captives from thraldom,
as a worshipper of one God only. They have imagined that the chief motive which
prompted him to attack the great city was his burning desire to destroy its
idols. They have said that he allowed the Jews to return to their own land
because, like them, he had but one supreme deity--the Ormazd, or good spirit of
the Zoroastrian creed. But just as science, according to the poet, has
withdrawn “the veil of enchantment” from creation, and has forced its visions
of beauty to yield to “cold material laws,” so the tablets and inscriptions
have robbed Cyrus of this great honour with which succeeding generations had
crowned him. He was a devotee, we are compelled now to believe, of the many
gods of Babylon. His first care, after making himself master of the town, was
to restore some of these gods to the shrines from which they had been removed
by Nabonidos. He prayed for their help and blessing on all his enterprises. Bel
and Nebo and the countless divinities of the Chaldean pantheon were revered by
him with implicit faith. £ But he was tolerant, too, of other creeds. Moreover,
he was anxious to ingratiate himself into the favour of the Jews, who formed no
inconsiderable part of the population of the city. Therefore he dealt kindly
with them. He published the decree which permitted them to go back to their
native land and to rebuild the ruined Temple of Jehovah. He gave them many
privileges which they had not previously enjoyed. The prophet Haggai was in
Babylon, we may be sure, that day when Cyrus marched into it “with banner and
with music, with soldier and with priest.” No doubt he had more than once
looked the great conqueror in the face. He lived in the period of the
Exile--lived to see its ending, and to witness the dawning of the time
appointed by the Lord to favour Zion. He is the earliest of those three
prophets whose work lay after the long Captivity.
I. I am to try to
sketch the prophet’s surroundings. He was one of those who had known from
personal experience what banishment and exile mean. He had remembered Jerusalem
by the rivers of Babylon. And he had rejoiced with all the best souls in the
nation when God stirred up the spirit of Cyrus to perform His will. We can
picture him journeying homeward across the bleak desert with the caravans of
pilgrims. At times the only feeling of the travellers was one of overflowing
joy. It was all like a dream to them, too good to be true--like the rush of the
waters in the rainy season into the dry torrent-beds in the south of Palestine;
like the reaper bearing on his shoulder the sheaves in summer which he had sown
in the dull days of winter. But at other times there was grief mingled with the
gladness. Tears of penitence and words of prayer broke freely forth. They came
“with weeping and with supplications,” as Jeremiah says, asking the way to Zion
with their faces thitherward. Full of such thoughts as these, he and his
companions made the long journey of four months’ duration across the stony and
arid desert. Guarded by God, they escaped the perils of the wilderness and the
perils of robbers. They arrived safely in Jerusalem, the city of their fathers,
the home and seat of their Lord. These pilgrims were not the whole of Israel.
They were but forty-two thousand men, with their dependants. £ The great
majority of the Jews preferred to remain in exile. Many of them had gained high
positions in the state which they could not easily resign; others had acquired
property or had formed connections from which they were unable or unwilling to
part; numbers were charmed and detained by the glory and greatness of
Babylon--its streets, its pleasure-grounds, its storehouses, its busy river.
They found it hard to prefer Jerusalem, a town grass-grown and desolate, to
this splendid city. So the company of travellers who faced the desert, and made
their way to the fatherland which held their hearts captive, was by no means so
large as it might have been. And their souls must have been like to fail them
when they saw Jerusalem itself. Its walls were crumbled into ruins. Its houses
were mere wrecks, blackened with smoke and fire. Its Temple was demolished.
Yet, saddening though all their surroundings were, they refused at first to be
discouraged. This was the city, they reminded themselves, where David and
Solomon had reigned; the city in which God had chosen to put His name. They
began by erecting the altar of burnt-offering; and then they made preparations
for rebuilding the Temple and the walls. But now trouble came. They had
righteously refused to permit the Samaritans to aid them in what was really a
holy work--the Samaritans who joined to their worship of Jehovah the worship of
heathen gods. Thus they turned those Northern neighbours of theirs into bitter
enemies, who annoyed them perpetually, who strove to thwart all their
undertakings, who maligned and slandered their character at the Persian Court.
The intrigues of these unscrupulous foes were only too successful. They
persuaded Cambyses and Smerdis, who held the throne after Cyrus, to forbid the
prosecution of the Temple works. For fifteen years everything came to a
standstill. Worse still, during the long delay the zeal of the people for the
sanctuary of God grew cold. They submitted to what appeared to them inevitable.
They looked on the unfinished work and said, “The time is not come, the time that the
Lord’s house should be built.” They turned aside to selfish objects and
pursuits, erecting rich and comfortable homes for themselves, and decorating
them with that wainscot of cedar which had been reckoned hitherto the peculiar
ornament of the sanctuary. It was a sad declension after the hopeful start
which had been made. What Haggai thought during this time of retrogression we
can have little difficulty in guessing. Surely it cut him to the heart. Surely
he mourned for the lukewarmness of his friends. But at length a fresh morning
broke and a happier day. Darius Hystaspis £ ascended the throne of
Persia--Darius, who was a Zoroastrian and a worshipper of one God. His
sympathies were entirely with the Jews. He promulgated a new decree, bidding
them resume the building of the Temple, and giving them revenues for the
purpose. And, contemporaneous with the king’s accession, came the prophetic
activity of Haggai. After long silence the Spirit of the Lord impelled him to
speak. It was the autumn of the year 520 b.c.--the month of September, we may
say--and by December of the same year Haggai’s work as a prophet was finished. But he
accomplished a great deal during these few weeks. God gave him a reward which
is often denied to men and women whose labours extend over a much longer period
of time.
II. Remembering
that these were the circumstances in which he commenced to speak on God’s
behalf, let us pass briefly in review his prophecies themselves. There have
been some who have thought that, when he stood up to deliver his message to the
people, he was already an old man. He refers in his words to the glory of the
former house of the Lord, the magnificent Temple of Solomon which
Nebuchadnezzar had destroyed. And it has been argued that he was speaking from
his own recollections of that fair and noble structure. It may be a slender
foundation on which to base an assertion of any kind, indeed, we can have no
certainty about the matter; but I for one like to think of this prophet as
going forth to do God’s work in the twilight of life, with feeble steps and a
face furrowed by age and trouble and hair white as the snow, yet with a
childlike faith and a firm and resolute heart. Let this be as it may, however,
we know that he appeared at a most critical juncture in the history of the
people; and we know, too, that whether young or old, he justified the choice
which God had made of him. £ Four times over in this autumn of the year 520 the
burden of the Lord was laid upon him. Four times over he went out to deliver his short and
pregnant messages to his countrymen. The earliest occasion was on the first day
of the month Elul, when the harvest had been quite gathered in. Then Haggai
broke the silence, addressing himself directly to Zerubbabel, the Hebrew ruler
of Jerusalem, and to Joshua the high-priest, but intending to reach through
them the whole body of the people. In the name of the God of Israel he summoned
his fellow-citizens to arise and work, encouraged by the manifest favour with
which the new king regarded them. He did not spare their faults; like a skilful
surgeon, he probed the wounds of the little commonwealth to the bottom. Let
them look the facts, unwelcome as they were, in the face, Haggai said. Let them
return to their first love and their first zeal. Let them resume without
further delay the holy Temple work which they had laid aside so selfishly and
sinfully (Haggai 1:2-11). A month later, on the
last day of the Feast of Tabernacles--the most joyous and gladsome of all the
Hebrew solemnities--Haggai spoke again. This time his words were full of good
cheer; for his former message of stern rebuke had had an immediate effect, and
had roused the people from their lethargy. Some of the builders, he felt, might
contrast the new Temple with the old, to the disparagement of that about which
they were now busy. There were among them grey-haired men, laudatores
temporis acti, who passed slighting comments on each feature of the growing
structure, and who told with fond regrets of the “exceeding magnifical” house
that had once been there. Therefore the prophet urged the workmen to pursue
their toil with unflagging earnestness, because God was with them in as real a
sense as He had been with their fathers. He went further still. He assured them
that the glory of the new Temple would outshine that of the old. It might not
ever be so splendid outwardly. But the new sanctuary was to be invested with a
spiritual majesty to which its predecessor could not lay claim. God was to do wonders of
grace and power within its courts. Yet again, having performed his errand and
uttered his brief message, Haggai was silent--on this occasion for rather more
than two months. Then he spoke a third time. A new fear had arisen among the
people--the fear that God was not about to bless them, even although they had
given themselves afresh to Him. Dearth and blight and disappointment were still
dogging their footsteps; the sky seemed as dark and stormy as before. The
prophet of the Lord had a solemn lesson to teach his hearers now. By a
reference to the Levitical law, and by a question put to the priests, he
reminded the citizens that, while a holy thing did not communicate its holiness
to whatever might touch it, a thing which was unclean contaminated all with
which it came into contact. The speck within the garnered fruit moulders the
whole basketful; the hand that is stained with blood incarnadines the
multitudinous seas, “making the green one red.” Just so it had been with the
Jews. Their good deeds had not compensated for their lukewarmness; but on the
contrary, their lack of zeal for God, their sin in neglecting the Temple, had
spread its moral pollution over every work of their hands. But yet they must
not despair. God would not deal with them in mere righteousness and unbending
justice. Nay, He would forget all their ingratitude. Because they were now
seeking to serve Him, He would commence among them a new era of prosperity.
“From this day--the four-and-twentieth day of the ninth month--will I bless
you”--such was His pitiful and loving assurance. It had been all failure
hitherto; it was to be only peace and joy and strength and fruitfulness
henceforward (Haggai 2:10-19). Once more Haggai
spoke--a little further on in the same day. God bade him tell Zerubbabel that
he need feel no alarm about the civil liberties of the people in the future.
Disturbances and commotions of no ordinary kind were impending, but through
them all the Jewish prince and those committed to his care would dwell secure.
The grand words of the 91st Psalm would be realised in their history: “A
thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand; but it
shall not come nigh thee. Only with thine eyes shalt thou behold and see the
reward of the wicked. Because thou hast made the Lord, which is my refuge, even
the Most High, thy habitation, there shall no evil befall thee, neither shall
any plague come nigh thy dwelling” (Haggai 2:20-23). That was Haggai’s latest
utterance.
III. There was no
need why he should remain longer in the public view. He had finished the task
which God assigned him, and had finished it successfully. Critics have
sometimes found fault with his style. They have said that there is little
eloquence or poetry in it--that it is bald and rugged and uninviting. But work
that is sharp and stern requires weapons of a similar sort. Haggai’s short
emphatic sentences are exactly what was best suited to the occasion. They
compelled attention, and not attention only, but obedience too. They pricked
men to the heart. They kindled within them that godly sorrow which needeth not
to be repented of. The best results followed the ministry of Haggai. He had no
sooner uttered the first of his prophecies ere he saw it bear fruit. Moved with
holy fear, Zerubbabel and Joshua and the people obeyed the call of God’s
messenger. They flocked to the work which had been so long and shamefully
neglected. Within a month the building of the Temple was being vigorously
pressed forward. Few, indeed, of His ambassadors have had a harvest so speedy
and so copious as Haggai had. Haggai is in truth one of the “last” who shall be
“first.” How long he had to wait before God called him to utter a single word I
How few his opportunities were even after his ministry had commenced! How very
quickly his time of speech and action was drawn to a close! Yet he did a mighty
and far-reaching work. He quickened a backsliding people to repentance. He
restored their souls, and led them again in the ways of truth and holiness.
IV. Finally, let us
draw from Haggai’s prophecy one or two truths suitable for ourselves, who live
at such a distance from him.
1. It seems to me that here we get no little insight into the cause
and the cure of dull times. The Jews of the prophet’s day had to complain of
depression and hardship. Their harvests had been poor; they could earn little,
and what they did earn leaked imperceptibly away. And the preacher told them
plainly why. It was because they had forgotten to give to God--to give Him
their time and their thought and their substance. Let them contribute heartily
to His cause, and their troubles would vanish; from that hour He would bless
them and make them prosperous. Do not we require the reproof?
2. Haggai teaches us, too, not to despise our own generation and the
work that is being done in it. He condemned the men who spoke of the glory of
Solomon’s Temple as if it surpassed altogether that of the later house; he told
them that God would do greater things in the new sanctuary than in the old. The
tendency which he combated lives among us yet. We remember the deliverances of
the past; but we question whether there can be any such deliverances in the
present. We are proud of the faith and struggles and achievements of our
fathers; but we doubt whether their descendants can ever come within sight of
them. And it is good to recall the years of the right hand of the Most
High--years long since fled. But it is wrong to speak as if God had departed
from the earth today. He is active still. He is in intimate relations with
mankind even now. He fainteth not, neither is weary.
3. This prophet tells us also that no amount of holy services will
cleanse and renew us if we be ourselves unholy. The parable which he drew from
the ancient Levitical law has this for its moral. Men are always prone to
imagine that, if only they render to God an outward religion, it will atone for
the blemishes and shortcomings and selfishness and sin of their lives. -It is a
fatal and wicked error. Our God looks beneath the surface into the inner man.
He demands that we should rend our hearts and not our garments. He asks from us
a simple and true and earnest faith in His crucified and risen Son. He bids us
welcome His Holy Spirit into our souls. He will not bless us unless this is our
attitude and character. Can we say that it is yours and mine? (Original Secession
Magazine.)
──《The Biblical Illustrator》