Introduction
to Haggai
Haggai, one of the twelve so-called minor prophets. He was the first of the three
(Zechariah, his contemporary, and Malachi, who was about one hundred years later,
being the other two) whose ministry belonged to the period of Jewish history which
began after the return from
captivity in
personal history. He may have been
one of the captives taken to
Nebuchadnezzar. He began his ministry about sixteen years after the Return.
The work of rebuilding the temple had been put a stop to through the intrigues
of the Samaritans. After having been suspended for fifteen years, the work was
resumed through the efforts of Haggai and Zechariah ( Ezra 6:14 ), who by their
exhortations roused the people from their lethargy, and induced them to take
advantage of the favorable opportunity that had arisen in a change in the policy
of the Persian government. (Smith’s Bible Dictionary)
FROM the time when Zephaniah prophesied of judgment to come
to the
day
when Haggai lifted up his voice, some hundred years or more had
elapsed. In this interval God had not left Himself without
witness; the
prophets Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel had carried on the torch of
prophecy, and had not suffered the light of inspiration to be
extinguished.
Meanwhile startling events had happened. That which earlier
seers had
foretold had come to pass; warnings unheeded had ripened bitter
fruit.
fate. For seventy years she had sat weeping by the waters of
learning a hard lesson
and profiting thereby. But the period of punishment
came to an end at the appointed moment. God stirred up the spirit of Cyrus
King of Elam, to allow and to urge the return of the
Hebrews to their own
land and the rebuilding of their temple. Not that Cyrus was a monotheist,
who
believed in one supreme God. This idea, which has long obtained, is
proved to be erroneous by the inscriptions which have been
discovered,
and
which may be read in Professor Sayce’s ‘Fresh Light
from the
Monuments,’ pp. 142, etc. From these it is clear that he was a worshipper
of
Bel-Merodach, the patron god of
care on the capture of that city to reinstate its deities in their shrines,
so his
edict respecting the rebuilding of the temple at
his
usual policy to adopt the gods of conquered countries, and to win their
favor by supporting their worship. That God used him as his
instrument
for
the restoration of the Hebrews proves nothing concerning his personal
religion. Unworthy agents often perform most important service.
Obeying
the
king’s edict, many of the Jews, assisted by donations and bearing with
them the rifled treasures of the temple, B.C. 536, prepared to return to
their native land under the leadership of Zerubbabel,
a prince of the house
of
David, and Joshua the high priest They were, indeed, but a small body,
amounting, according to the enumeration of Ezra (2:64-65), to
42,360,
exclusive of menservants and maidservants reckoned at 7337. But they
set
to
work with vigor on their arrival at
Cyrus, B.C. 534, erected the great altar in its old place,
and established
regular worship according to the Mosaic ritual. They then
proceeded to lay
the
foundations of a new temple in the second year after their arrival. The
prosecution of this undertaking met with unexpected obstacles. The
mixed
population which had been settled by the Assyrian conquerors in
Central
work. Such a claim could not be entertained. These Samaritans, as they are
named, were not of the holy seed, did not worship Jehovah with
pure
worship, mixed idolatrous rites with their devotions to the true
God. It
would have been an abandonment of their unique position, treason
to their
Lord, for the Israelites to have admitted such syncretists to a participation
in
the erection of the temple. Zerubbabel, therefore,
rightly declined their
offered assistance. This rejection was bitterly resented. By
representations
made at court, they endeavored to hinder the work, and were so
successful in their opposition that the building was stopped during
the
remainder of the life of Cyrus, and during the reign of his
successors,
Cambyses and Pseudo-Smerdis
(Artaxerxes I.). Other causes combined to
bring about the suspension of operations. The zeal with which
the labor
was
begun grew cold. The exiles had returned with high hope of happiness
and
prosperity; they had expected to enter into possession of a home
prepared and ready for their reception; in their fervid imagination
peace
and
plenty awaited them, and the blessings promised to obedience in their
old
Law were to be theirs with little labor or delay. A very different state
of
things awaited them. Cities ruined and desolate, a land sterilized by want
of
cultivation, neighbors unfriendly or openly hostile, scantiness of bread,
danger, toil, — these were the objects which they had to contemplate.
And
though the spirit that animated their first enterprise, and the
enthusiasm
that accompanied a great national movement, excited them to commence
the
work with earnestness and ardor, their hearts were not sufficiently
engaged in its prosecution to enable them to rise superior to
inward
distraction and outward opposition; and so they grew less interested
in the
completion of the undertaking, and they acquiesced with stolid
complacency in its enforced cessation. They learned to look on the
ruins of
their holy house with a certain desponding equanimity, and turned to the
furtherance of their own personal concerns, contentedly leaving the
restoration of the temple to other times and stronger hands than
theirs. But
a
happier condition of affairs arrived under the rule of Darius, the son of
Hystaspes, who succeeded to the throne of
which had stopped the building of the temple was removed, the
original
decree of Cyrus was discovered and reenacted, and every
assistance was
given to the Jews to carry out their original design. Nothing
but the will
was
now wanting. It was the design of Haggai’s prophecy to inspire this
will, to shame the people into a display of energy and self-denial, and to
encourage them to continue their efforts till the whole work was
satisfactorily completed.
Steiner and others have questioned the fact that the
rebuilding of the
temple was begun under Cyrus. They say that no genuine passage in
the
Book of Ezra gives any countenance to the statement, and
that it was only
in
consequence of the interference of Haggai and Zechariah that the work
was
first commenced in the second year of Darius, being then carried on
without interruption till it was completed four years afterwards.
Haggai
himself does not expressly mention any earlier attempt at laying
the
foundation, and indeed places this event in the four and twentieth
day of
the
ninth month of the second year of Darius (ch.2:18). But this
passage is capable of another interpretation; and the direct statement
of
Ezra 3:8, that “in the second year of their coming… they
began to set
forward the work of the house of the Lord,” and “the foundation of the
house of the Lord was laid” (v. 11), can only be surmounted by
arbitrarily denying the genuineness of this chapter and the
authenticity of
its
details. The grounds of this rejection are weak and inconclusive. When
we
consider the enormous importance attached to the rebuilding of the
temple — which, indeed, was the test of fidelity to the Lord, and
the desire
to
abide by the covenant — it is inconceivable that the good men who
guided the nation should allow some sixteen years to elapse
before making
any
attempt to set in hand the good work; so that the very nature of the
case confirms the statement of Ezra, while nothing in the books of Haggai
and
Zechariah really militates against it. On the contrary, there are passages
in
Haggai which distinctly involve its truth. Thus in ch.2:14 it is
implied that formal sacrifices were offered before Haggai’s public
interference, and in ibid. v.3
that the temple was already so far built
that its future appearance and condition could be conceived.
The book comprises four discourses, which make natural
divisions, and are
accurately dated. The first, uttered on the first day of the sixth
month of
Darius’s second regnal year,
contains an exhortation to Zerubbabel and
Joshua to take in hand at once the
rebuilding of the temple. The people
are
sternly reproached for their indifference, which they think to
excuse by
affirming that the time for this work has not yet come, while they
expend
their energies in increasing their own material comfort. The
prophet shows
them that the barrenness of their land and the distress which they suffer
are
a
chastisement for this neglect. He concludes with an account of the effect
of
this expostulation, how that the chiefs and all the people listened to his
words, and “came and did work in the house of the Lord of hosts”
(ch. 1.).
The following month witnessed the second address, wherein
the prophet
comforts those who, contrasting the new with the former temple,
depreciated the present undertaking, and assures them that, although
its
appearance is humbler, the glory of the latter house shall far exceed
that of
the
former, because of the splendid donations of princes, and because of
Messiah’s presence there (ch.2:1-9). The third exhortation
was
uttered in the four and twentieth day of the ninth month. By
certain legal
questions concerning the communication of holiness and pollution,
Haggai
demonstrates that the people’s tendency to rest in external
righteousness is
sinful, and that their lukewarmness in
the holy work before them vitiated
their worship and occasioned want and misery, which would only
be
relieved by their strenuous efforts to finish the temple (ch.2:10-19).
The
prophecy ends with a promise to the scion of the house of David,
that amid the destruction of the powers of the world, his throne should be
exalted and glorified, “for I have chosen thee, sayeth
the Lord of hosts”
(ibid.
vs. 20-23).
The reason why the rebuilding of the temple is made of such
singular
importance is found in the light in which the house of God is
regarded, and
the opportunity thus afforded for displaying zeal and
fidelity towards God.
The temple is the visible token of the Lord’s presence with
His people, the
material sign of the covenant; its restoration showed that the
Israelites
desired to maintain this relation with Jehovah, and to do their
part in the
matter. Here alone could the federal relation be renewed and
sustained;
here alone could the daily worship be duly offered. While the temple lay in
ruins, the covenant was, as it were, suspended; for its
reestablishment the
Lord’s house must be rebuilt and adapted to Divine service.
And yet this
covenant was not simply a revival of the old one in its Sinaitic form; it was
a
new one, without the visible cloud of glory, without the ark and mercy
seat and the tables of the Law, but one attested
by the very presence of
Messiah Himself, and
the laws of which were written in the heart and mind
of the faithful.
Of this the material building was a symbol, and therefore its
reconstruction was an imperative duty.
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