Theopedia

Book of Haggai

“Yet now be strong, O Zerubbabel, declares the LORD. Be strong, O Joshua, son of Jehozadak, the high priest. Be strong, all you people of the land, declares the LORD. Work, for I am with you, declares the LORD of hosts.”

— Haggai 2:4

Overview

The Book of Haggai is a prophetic book of the Old Testament, one of the twelve Minor Prophets, made up of four brief oracles delivered over about three months to the Jewish community that had returned from the Babylonian exile.1 Haggai is “the first of the three prophets after the captivity,” together with Zechariah and Malachi, “commonly called Prophets of the Restoration.”1 Every one of its messages concerns the same subject: the rebuilding of the Jerusalem temple, which the returned exiles had left standing unfinished.1

Author and Date

The book is attributed to the prophet Haggai, who ministered alongside Zechariah shortly after the Jews returned to Judah from Babylon.1 Its oracles are precisely dated within the text itself. The first came “in the second year of Darius the king, in the sixth month, in the first day of the month” (Hag. 1:1); this was Darius Hystaspes, who came to the Persian throne in 521 BC, so his second year fell in 520 BC.1 The remaining three oracles followed within the same three months, the last two delivered on the same day, the twenty-fourth of the ninth month (Hag. 2:10, 20).2

Historical and Literary Context

The exiles who returned to Judah under Zerubbabel had begun rebuilding the temple but let the work stall under discouragement and the opposition of their neighbors.1 Ezra’s narrative records that the adversaries of Judah hired counselors “to frustrate their purpose” and that the work ceased until the reign of Darius (Ezra 4:4-5, 24). Haggai and Zechariah were sent to reprove the returned community for its indifference to God’s house and to press it to resume construction, addressing both Zerubbabel, governor of Judah, and Joshua the high priest (Hag. 1:1; Ezra 5:1-2).1 Their preaching succeeded: the temple’s builders “prospered through the prophesying of Haggai the prophet and Zechariah,” and the house was finished four years later, in the sixth year of Darius (Ezra 6:14-15). Nehemiah’s later mission to rebuild Jerusalem’s walls took up the same restoration begun under Zerubbabel and completed in Haggai’s day.

Structure

Haggai is organized around four dated oracles, each tied to a specific occasion:1

  1. First oracle (1:1-15). Delivered the first day of the sixth month, rebuking the people for building their own paneled houses while the Lord’s house lay in ruins, and calling them to resume building; Zerubbabel, Joshua, and the people obey.
  2. Second oracle (2:1-9). Delivered the twenty-first day of the same month, encouraging builders discouraged by the modesty of the new structure next to Solomon’s temple, and promising that its latter glory will exceed the former.2
  3. Third oracle (2:10-19). Delivered the twenty-fourth day of the ninth month, using the ceremonial law on defilement to press the people toward genuine repentance, followed by a promise of blessing.2
  4. Fourth oracle (2:20-23). Delivered the same day, addressed to Zerubbabel alone, promising that God will shake the nations and make Zerubbabel “as a signet.”2

Major Themes

The priority of God’s house over private comfort

Haggai’s first oracle confronts the returned exiles directly: “Is it a time for you yourselves to dwell in your paneled houses, while this house lies in ruins?” (Hag. 1:4). The prophet traces the community’s poor harvests, empty purses, and general want straight to this neglect: “You have sown much, and harvested little… You looked for much, and behold, it came to little… Because of my house that lies in ruins, while each of you busies himself with his own house” (Hag. 1:6, 9). The remedy is not sentiment but action: “Go up to the hills and bring wood and build the house, that I may take pleasure in it and that I may be glorified” (Hag. 1:8). Barrows summarizes the burden of this first message as a sharp reproof “for their indifference to the cause of God’s house and their selfish devotion to their own private interests.”1

God’s presence and Spirit remaining with his people

Facing builders who might reasonably despair at their limited resources and a still-hostile province, the Lord answers not with a change of circumstance but with a promise of his own presence: “Work, for I am with you, declares the LORD of hosts, according to the covenant that I made with you when you came out of Egypt. My Spirit remains in your midst. Fear not” (Hag. 2:4-5). Bavinck lists this text, alongside Psalm 33:6 and Isaiah 61:1 and 63:9-12, among the Old Testament passages in which Scripture speaks of the Lord, his Spirit, and his word together in a threefold way that points toward the self-differentiation later revealed as the Trinity.3 The same oracle also promises “peace” directly from “the LORD of hosts” over the rebuilt house (Hag. 2:9), tying the community’s continued labor to God’s own commitment to remain among them rather than to any strength of their own.

The future glory of the temple and the shaking of the nations

Haggai’s second oracle answers the discouragement of those old enough to remember Solomon’s temple with a promise reaching beyond the modest structure then rising: “The latter glory of this house shall be greater than the former, says the LORD of hosts… and in this place I will give peace” (Hag. 2:9). The Lord attaches this promise to a coming disturbance of the nations themselves: “Yet once more… I will shake the heavens and the earth and the sea and the dry land. And I will shake all nations, so that the treasures of all nations shall come in, and I will fill this house with glory” (Hag. 2:6-7). Bavinck places this prophecy among the Old Testament promises of the temple’s restoration, noting that “Haggai predicts that the splendor of the second temple will be greater than that of the first.”4 Barrows likewise reads the promise as finding only a partial, material fulfillment in the temple’s later expansion under Herod, its real fulfillment being spiritual: the second temple “was honored by the presence of the Son of God, who is the brightness of the Father’s glory.”2 Boyce reads the shaking of “the heavens and the earth and the sea and the dry land” as accompanying the coming of “the desirable things of all nations,” taking the whole oracle as a prophecy of Christ’s own appearance in that temple.5 The book’s closing oracle extends the same Messianic line to Zerubbabel himself: promised protection “as a signet,” he stood among the ancestors of Christ (Matt. 1:12; Luke 3:27), so that the pledge made to him points, through his own office, toward its complete fulfillment in the Messiah.2

Related Doctrines

References

  1. Elijah Porter Barrows, Companion to the Bible (New York: American Tract Society, 1867), 345. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7 ↩8 ↩9

  2. Elijah Porter Barrows, Companion to the Bible (New York: American Tract Society, 1867), 346. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6

  3. Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Abridged in One Volume, ed. John Bolt (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011), chap. 9, “The Triune God and His Counsel.” ↩

  4. Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Abridged in One Volume, ed. John Bolt (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011), chap. 24, “The Return of Christ.” ↩

  5. James Petigru Boyce, “Chapter XXV. Christ in the Old Testament,” in Abstract of Systematic Theology, 2nd printing (Baltimore: H. M. Wharton & Company, 1887), 266. ↩