Haggai

Consider Your Ways

Haggai is two chapters long and dated to the day. It holds four short sermons preached over less than four months in 520 BC, and it did something most sermons never do: it got the people off their couches and back to work within about three weeks. The problem Haggai confronted was not open idolatry. It was misplaced priorities. God’s people had come home from exile, paneled their own houses, and left His house in ruins. They were working hard and getting nowhere, and they could not figure out why. Haggai told them. Then he told them that the glory to come would outshine anything they had lost.

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Authorship & Setting

Haggai is the first of the three prophets who preached after the exile, along with Zechariah and Malachi. In 538 BC Cyrus of Persia allowed the Jews to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the temple (Ezra 1:1–4). About fifty thousand came back under Zerubbabel, the governor, and Joshua the high priest. They built the altar and laid the temple’s foundation in 536 BC, and the old men who remembered Solomon’s temple wept aloud (Ezra 3:10–13). Then opposition came. The neighboring peoples discouraged them, hired counselors against them, and got the work stopped by royal order (Ezra 4:4–5, 24). The foundation sat bare for about sixteen years.

Haggai’s first message is dated “In the second year of Darius the king, in the sixth month, in the first day of the month” (1:1), which corresponds to late August of 520 BC. His other three messages follow in the seventh and ninth months. Ezra records that Haggai and Zechariah prophesied to the people and that the builders “prospered through the prophesying of Haggai the prophet and Zechariah the son of Iddo” (Ezra 6:14). The temple was finished in 516 BC, about seventy years after Solomon’s temple was destroyed.

Nothing is known of Haggai’s family. Some have suggested from 2:3 that he was an old man who had seen the first temple himself, but the text does not say so. His name comes from chag, “feast.” He may have been born on a feast day.

Key Figures

• Haggai — “the LORD’s messenger in the LORD’s message” (1:13), a prophet who preached short, pointed sermons and saw them obeyed.
• Zerubbabel — the governor of Judah, grandson of King Jehoiachin, heir of David’s line, whom God calls His signet ring (2:23).
• Joshua the high priest — the son of Josedech, who led the priesthood of the returned exiles alongside Zerubbabel.
• The remnant of the people — the returned exiles, who said the time had not come, then obeyed the voice of the LORD and feared before Him (1:12).

Hebrew Word Study

חַגַּי — Chaggai

“Festive” or “my feast,” from chag, the word for the pilgrimage feasts of Israel. It fits the book. Haggai’s second message was delivered on the twenty-first day of the seventh month (2:1), the seventh day of the Feast of Tabernacles, when Israel remembered God’s provision in the wilderness. The man named for a feast called a discouraged people back to the joy of God’s house.

שִׂימוּ לְבַבְכֶם — simu levavkhem

“Set your heart,” rendered in the KJV as “Consider your ways” (1:5, 7) and “consider”(2:15, 18). Literally, “put your heart on it.” It appears four times in two chapters. Haggai is not asking for a quick glance. He is telling the people to stop, take their hearts in hand, and set them down in front of the evidence of their lives. God often speaks through circumstances. We have to stop long enough to consider them.

כָּבוֹד — kavod

“Glory,” from a root meaning “heavy” or “weighty.” God’s glory is the weight of His presence. “I will fill this house with glory, saith the LORD of hosts” (2:7). “The glory of this latter house shall be greater than of the former” (2:9). The second temple was plain next to Solomon’s. It had no ark and no visible cloud of glory. But God promised it would have more weight than the first. It would, when the Lord Himself walked into it.

חוֹתָם — chotam

“Signet,” the seal ring a king used to stamp his authority on documents. God had once cursed Zerubbabel’s grandfather, Jehoiachin (Coniah): “though Coniah… were the signet upon my right hand, yet would I pluck thee thence” (Jeremiah 22:24). Haggai closes by reversing it: “I will make thee as a signet: for I have chosen thee, saith the LORD of hosts” (2:23). The ring thrown away was put back on. David’s line was not finished.

Eight-Movement Narrative Outline

MOVEMENT ONE

Not the Time? (1:1–4)

“This people say, The time is not come, the time that the LORD’s house should be built” (1:2). Opposition had stalled them, and sixteen years later the excuse had become a settled opinion. God answers with a question: “Is it time for you, O ye, to dwell in your cieled houses, and this house lie waste?” (1:4). Paneled houses take time and money. They had found both for themselves. It was never really a question of timing.

MOVEMENT TWO

Consider Your Ways (1:5–11)

“Consider your ways. Ye have sown much, and bring in little; ye eat, but ye have not enough; ye drink, but ye are not filled with drink; ye clothe you, but there is none warm; and he that earneth wages earneth wages to put it into a bag with holes”(1:5–6). They worked hard and it leaked away. God tells them why: “Because of mine house that is waste, and ye run every man unto his own house” (1:9). He withheld the dew and called for drought on the grain, the wine, and the oil. Their poor harvests were not bad luck. They were a message.

MOVEMENT THREE

The People Obey (1:12–15)

Then something rare happens in the prophets. The leaders and all the remnant “obeyed the voice of the LORD their God, and the words of Haggai the prophet… and the people did fear before the LORD” (1:12). God answers obedience with a promise: “I am with you, saith the LORD” (1:13). Then He “stirred up the spirit” of Zerubbabel, Joshua, and all the people, and they came and worked on the house (1:14). The work resumed twenty-three days after the first sermon.

MOVEMENT FOUR

As Nothing in Your Eyes (2:1–5)

About a month into the work, discouragement set in. “Who is left among you that saw this house in her first glory? and how do ye see it now? is it not in your eyes in comparison of it as nothing?”(2:3). God does not pretend the new building is grand. He tells them to keep going anyway: “Yet now be strong, O Zerubbabel, saith the LORD; and be strong, O Joshua… and be strong, all ye people of the land, saith the LORD, and work: for I am with you” (2:4). “My spirit remaineth among you: fear ye not” (2:5).

MOVEMENT FIVE

The Desire of All Nations (2:6–9)

“For thus saith the LORD of hosts; Yet once, it is a little while, and I will shake the heavens, and the earth, and the sea, and the dry land; And I will shake all nations, and the desire of all nations shall come: and I will fill this house with glory” (2:6–7). They worried about gold. God reminds them, “The silver is mine, and the gold is mine” (2:8). Then the promise that answers their tears: “The glory of this latter house shall be greater than of the former… and in this place will I give peace, saith the LORD of hosts” (2:9).

MOVEMENT SIX

Holiness Isn’t Contagious (2:10–14)

Haggai asks the priests two questions of the law. If holy meat touches bread, does the bread become holy? No. If a man unclean from touching a dead body touches the bread, does it become unclean? Yes (2:12–13). The point: “So is this people, and so is this nation before me, saith the LORD; and so is every work of their hands; and that which they offer there is unclean” (2:14). Standing near holy things does not make a person holy. But uncleanness spreads to everything it touches. Their offerings on the altar did not cleanse their neglect.

MOVEMENT SEVEN

From This Day Will I Bless You (2:15–19)

Haggai calls them to consider again. Before the work resumed, a heap of twenty measures yielded ten, and a press of fifty vessels yielded twenty. God struck them with blasting, mildew, and hail, “yet ye turned not to me” (2:17). Now the seed is not yet even in the barn, and the vine and the fig tree have not yet borne fruit. But God makes a promise dated to the day they obeyed: “from this day will I bless you”(2:19).

MOVEMENT EIGHT

The Signet Ring (2:20–23)

On the same day, a word for Zerubbabel alone. God will shake the heavens and the earth, overthrow the throne of kingdoms, and bring down chariots and riders, every one by the sword of his brother (2:21–22). And in that day, “will I take thee, O Zerubbabel, my servant, the son of Shealtiel, saith the LORD, and will make thee as a signet: for I have chosen thee” (2:23). The book ends with God choosing a son of David. Thrones would fall. His line would stand.

Christ Typology

The greater glory of the latter house. The second temple never had the ark or the visible cloud of glory. Herod later expanded and rebuilt it on a grand scale, but it was still the second temple, and it stood until AD 70. Into that house the infant Jesus was carried and presented (Luke 2:22–32). Simeon took Him in his arms and called Him “the glory of thy people Israel”. Jesus taught in its courts and cleansed it. The glory of the latter house was greater than the former because the Lord of the temple came to it (Malachi 3:1).

In this place will I give peace. God promised peace in that house (2:9). Jesus stood in its courts and offered peace with God through Himself, and said of His own body, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up”(John 2:19). The true temple, where God and man meet, is Christ. “For he is our peace”(Ephesians 2:14).

The desire of all nations. The KJV’s “the desire of all nations shall come” (2:7) has long been read as a title of the Messiah, the One all nations long for, whether they know it or not. Many translators render the Hebrew as the “treasures” or “wealth” of the nations coming into the house, in line with 2:8. Either way, the promise finds its fulfillment in Christ, whom the nations came to worship from the time of the wise men onward (Matthew 2:11), and in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge (Colossians 2:3).

The kingdom that cannot be shaken.Hebrews 12:26–28 quotes Haggai 2:6: “Yet once more I shake not the earth only, but also heaven.” The writer explains that God shakes created things so that “those things which cannot be shaken may remain”, and says that believers are “receiving a kingdom which cannot be moved.” Christ’s kingdom is what is left standing when everything else is shaken.

The Signet of David’s line. Zerubbabel appears in both genealogies of Jesus (Matthew 1:12–13; Luke 3:27). The curse on Jehoiachin seemed to end David’s royal line. God’s promise to make Zerubbabel His signet kept it alive. The ultimate chosen Servant of that line is Jesus, the Son of David, on whom the Father has “set his seal”(John 6:27).

Personal Application

“The time is not come” is one of the oldest excuses in the book, and it sounds reasonable every time. The people of Haggai’s day did not say no to God. They said not yet, and meanwhile they found time and money to panel their own houses. Consider your ways. If you have been waiting for a better season to do what God has already told you to do, look at where your time and money have gone in the meantime. The answer to “is it the right time?” is usually found in how easily we make time for ourselves.

Take the bag with holes seriously. Scripture never promises that obedience makes a person rich. But God does sometimes let our work leak away in order to get our attention. If you are working hard and never getting ahead, it is worth stopping to consider whether God is saying something about priorities, before blaming the economy.

And don’t let the small beginning discourage you. The old men wept because the new foundation looked like nothing next to what they remembered. God did not argue with them about the size of the building. He said, be strong, and work, for I am with you. What looks small in your eyes is not the measure of what God will do with it. The glory of the latter house was greater, not because of the stones, but because of the One who came into it.

TO GOD BE ALL THE GLORY · MARANATHA

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