Haggai 2:10

Haggai dates this message with care: “the four and twentieth day of the ninth month, in the second year of Darius”. Darius is Darius I, king of Persia, and the date falls in 520 BC, around December 18 by our calendar. It is the third of Haggai’s four messages. It comes a little over two months after his second, the promise of the future glory of the rebuilt temple (Haggai 2:1–9). The people had taken up the work on the temple again three months before, in the sixth month (Haggai 1:15).

By now the exiles had been home for about eighteen years. Cyrus had let them return to rebuild the house of the LORD (Ezra 1:1–4), and under Zerubbabel and Joshua they rebuilt the altar and laid the temple’s foundation soon after they came back (Ezra 3:8–13). Then opposition from the peoples around them (Ezra 4:1–5), and their own care for their own houses, brought the work to a halt for about sixteen years. God raised up Haggai and Zechariah to stir them again, and Haggai’s first message was a call to rebuild (Haggai 1:2–11).

“Came the word of the LORD” is the prophets’ usual way of saying that what follows is God’s own speech. The same words open the ministries of Jeremiah (Jeremiah 1:4) and Ezekiel (Ezekiel 1:3). The Hebrew dâbâr means a word or speech, and in a separate sense a matter or thing, and here it is the word God speaks. The name Yᵉhôvâh, written “the LORD”, is God’s covenant name, the name of the God who keeps his promises to Israel and holds his people to account.

The KJV’s “by Haggai” stands for a Hebrew phrase built on yâd, “hand”. The word comes by the prophet’s hand, so Haggai carries the message and the LORD is its source. “The prophet”, nâbîyʼ, marks him as God’s spokesman, one who declares God’s will to his people as well as what is to come. Amos says that the Lord GOD “revealeth his secret unto his servants the prophets” (Amos 3:7), and Peter says that “holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost” (2 Peter 1:20–21).

The care over the date matters too. God speaks into a real moment of history, to a particular people on a particular day, with a word fitted to where they stood.

“Thus saith the LORD of hosts” opens the message with God’s own authority. The verb ʼâmar, “saith”, is the ordinary word for saying, telling or commanding, and its weight here comes from the one who speaks. The title “LORD of hosts” joins Yᵉhôvâh to tsâbâʼ, a word for an army or host, for service, and for the host of heaven. Haggai uses the title fourteen times in two short chapters. To a small and discouraged people it said that the God who had called them to build commands every power in heaven and earth, and that he was with them as he had promised (Haggai 2:4–5).

“Ask now the priests concerning the law.” A kôhên is a priest, and the word for law, tôwrâh, comes from yârâh, to teach or instruct. It can mean the whole law of Moses, and here it means the laws of clean and unclean that the priests were charged to apply. God gave the priests this task when he told Aaron’s sons to “put difference between holy and unholy, and between unclean and clean”, and to teach Israel his statutes (Leviticus 10:10–11). Hard cases were brought to the priests for judgment (Deuteronomy 17:9–11), and Malachi, a little later, says, “the priest’s lips should keep knowledge, and they should seek the law at his mouth” (Malachi 2:7).

The LORD and his prophet already knew the answers. The questions put the law’s own verdict in the mouths of its appointed teachers, so that what God says next rests on ground everyone in Jerusalem already accepted. There are two questions, and the priests answer each at once.

Verse 14 is where the questions were heading: “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.” Haggai answers, and the LORD applies the priests’ ruling to the whole community. ʻam, “people”, is the ordinary word for a people bound together, and gôwy, “nation”, is the word most often used of the other nations. Together they take in the whole of Judah, and the repeated “so is” lays each part of its life beside the unclean man of verse 13.

“Every work of their hands” is maʻăseh, a word for a deed, a piece of work or a product. It covers their daily labour, their fields and vineyards, and the houses they had built for themselves. “That which they offer there” means the sacrifices on the altar at Jerusalem, which had stood since the return while the temple lay unbuilt. In the first case holy flesh left the food common, and in the same way their altar and sacrifices left them as they were. In the second case the unclean man defiled all he touched, and in the same way their own condition defiled all they did, their worship included.

The word for unclean is the same ṭâmêʼ the priests used in verse 13. Its roots are in the purity laws, and the LORD uses it here of a people’s whole standing before him. The cause is the one Haggai had already named. They had left God’s house in ruins while they lived in their own: “Is it time for you, O ye, to dwell in your cieled houses, and this house lie waste?” (Haggai 1:4). Their neglect of the temple showed hearts that had put themselves first, and that disobedience reached into everything they touched.

Scripture says the same in many places. “To obey is better than sacrifice” (1 Samuel 15:22), and “The sacrifice of the wicked is abomination” (Proverbs 21:27). Isaiah confesses, “But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags” (Isaiah 64:6). Worship pleases God when it comes from a heart that obeys him, which is why Jesus says, “seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness” (Matthew 6:33).

“And now, I pray you, consider”. The word “consider” is śîmû lēḇ, from sûwm, to put or set, and lêbâb, the heart, so the people are told to set their hearts on this. The little word rendered “I pray you” turns the command into an earnest plea. In this verse “from this day and upward” leads into a look back over the time “before a stone was laid upon a stone in the temple of the LORD”. A stone, ʼeben, is the simplest unit of building, and the picture is a building site standing idle. The temple is the hêykâl, a word for a palace or temple, a great public building. It was the LORD’s house, and it lay waste while the people finished their own.

Verse 16 shows what those years were like. “When one came to an heap of twenty measures, there were but ten.” A heap, ʻârêm, is a pile of grain, and the man who counted on twenty measures found half. “When one came to the pressfat for to draw out fifty vessels out of the press, there were but twenty.” The pressfat, yeqeb, is the vat below the treading floor of a winepress or olive press, where the juice or oil collected. The verb for drawing out, châsaph, means to strip off or lay bare, and here it is used of drawing off what lay in the vat. Where he looked for fifty vessels he found twenty, a loss of three parts in five. The KJV supplies the words “measures” and “vessels”, and the units in mind were probably dry measures such as the ephah or seah and liquid ones such as the bath or hin. Grain, wine and oil all failed together.

Haggai had told them this already: “Ye have sown much, and bring in little” (Haggai 1:6), “and he that earneth wages earneth wages to put it into a bag with holes”. The LORD had given the reason: “Ye looked for much, and, lo, it came to little ... Because of mine house that is waste, and ye run every man unto his own house” (Haggai 1:9). The whole of his first message (Haggai 1) sets their poor harvests beside his ruined house.

Verse 18 says “consider” twice, at its start and at its end, and between them it names a day: “from the four and twentieth day of the ninth month, even from the day that the foundation of the LORD’S temple was laid”. This is the day of the message itself. The ninth month is Kislev, around November and December. The verb yâçad means to set, found or establish, and the verse ties this date to the laying of the foundation. The people had returned to the work three months earlier, and the LORD makes this day the turning point. yôwm, “day”, can also mean a span of time, and here it is one particular day. In this verse “from this day and upward” looks forward, and God draws a line under the past and begins something new.

Verse 19 asks, “Is the seed yet in the barn?” zeraʻ means seed or grain, and the barn, mᵉgûwrâh, is a granary or storehouse. The question can be read two ways: the seed is still in storage and waiting to be sown, or the barn stands empty with no new harvest to fill it. On either reading there is still nothing to show. “Yea, as yet the vine, and the fig tree, and the pomegranate, and the olive tree, hath not brought forth.” The verb nâsâʼ means to lift, bear or carry, and the trees are still bare. With the grain, these trees are among the good things Moses promised of the land itself (Deuteronomy 8:8), signs of God’s favour on his people.

Then comes the promise: “from this day will I bless you.” To bless, bârak, comes from a word for kneeling and means to give good, favour and prosperity. God gives the promise while the fields are bare, so it rests on his word alone. The same LORD who struck their labours now promises to bless them, and the line between the two is this day.

The covenant had always set blessing for obedience (Deuteronomy 28:1–14) beside the curses for disobedience (Deuteronomy 28:15–24). Amos had seen famine sent to call Israel back (Amos 4:6–9). Proverbs promises that those who honour the LORD with their substance will see their barns “filled with plenty” (Proverbs 3:9–10), and Malachi, speaking to the same returned people, tells them that God will open the windows of heaven for those who bring the whole tithe (Malachi 3:8–12). The blessing flows from God’s covenant faithfulness to people who have turned back to him. He is just when he disciplines, and he is quick to bless when his people return.

The word of the LORD that came by Haggai came in full in Jesus, the Word who was with God and made all things (John 1:1–3) and who “was made flesh, and dwelt among us” (John 1:14). God, who spoke in times past by the prophets, has spoken to us by his Son (Hebrews 1:1–2), and the people were astonished that Jesus taught “as one having authority” (Matthew 7:28–29). Haggai’s carefully dated word belongs to the God who sent his Son “when the fulness of the time was come” (Galatians 4:4).

The people of Haggai’s day asked earthly priests about the law, and the law was itself “a shadow of good things to come” (Hebrews 10:1). We have a great high priest, Jesus the Son of God, through whom we come boldly to the throne of grace (Hebrews 4:14–16). He came to fulfil the law (Matthew 5:17). Hebrews sets the ashes of a heifer, which sanctified “to the purifying of the flesh”, beside the blood of Christ, which purges the conscience “from dead works to serve the living God” (Hebrews 9:13–14). His people are now a royal priesthood (1 Peter 2:9), and the Spirit of truth guides them into all truth (John 16:13).

Haggai’s two rulings describe a world where holiness stays where God puts it and uncleanness spreads. In Jesus the Holy One touches the unclean and makes it clean. He put forth his hand and touched a leper, “and immediately his leprosy was cleansed” (Matthew 8:1–3, Mark 1:40–42). He touched the eyes of the blind (Matthew 9:29), and he took a dead girl by the hand and raised her (Mark 5:41), reaching into the very uncleanness of Haggai’s second question and bringing life. He is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29). His blood cleanses us from all sin (1 John 1:7), and he presents us holy and unblameable in God’s sight (Colossians 1:22). So God’s word to his people stands: “Be ye holy; for I am holy” (1 Peter 1:15–16), and David’s prayer is ours: “Create in me a clean heart, O God” (Psalm 51:10).

The people of verse 14 could bring only unclean work and unclean offerings. In Christ we are a new creature (2 Corinthians 5:17), found in him with the righteousness which is of God by faith (Philippians 3:9), and built up as lively stones into a spiritual house, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God by Jesus Christ (1 Peter 2:5). He bore the smiting we deserved, for “he was wounded for our transgressions” (Isaiah 53:4–5), and he calls all people to repent and believe the gospel (Mark 1:15). Haggai’s hearers kept their old ways under discipline, and God promised a new covenant in which he would write his law in his people’s hearts (Jeremiah 31:33).

Jesus spoke of the temple of his body: “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up” (John 2:19–21). In him dwells all the fulness of the Godhead bodily (Colossians 2:9), and through him we enter God’s presence by a new and living way (Hebrews 10:19–22). Believers are built together on him, the chief corner stone, into a habitation of God through the Spirit (Ephesians 2:19–22). The barren years of the neglected temple answer to the barrenness of a life away from him. He is the true vine, and those who abide in him bear much fruit (John 15:5), the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22–23). He spoke of himself as a corn of wheat that falls into the ground and dies and brings forth much fruit (John 12:24), and in him God has blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places (Ephesians 1:3).

This passage shows us a God who tells his people the truth about themselves. He lets the law speak first, through priests the people trusted, and then he says plainly that their nation, their work and their offerings are unclean before him. It shows us a God who disciplines in order to bring his people home, and who grieves that they “turned not” to him.

It also shows us how ready he is to bless. On the day his people set their hands to his house, he names the date and promises blessing while the barn is still empty and the trees are still bare, so the promise rests on his word alone. Holy things kept close leave us as we are, and in Christ the Holy One himself has touched us and made us clean. The double “consider” of verses 15 and 18 stands over every day God gives, calling us to set our hearts on what he has done and on what he has promised from this day.