Haggai 2:2

Haggai dates this message exactly: “In the seventh month, in the one and twentieth day of the month”. That is the twenty-first day of Tishri, the last day of the Feast of Tabernacles (Leviticus 23:34). Tabernacles was a pilgrimage feast. The people gathered in Jerusalem to give thanks for the harvest and to remember how God had provided for Israel during the forty years in the wilderness, when they lived in temporary shelters. So God spoke when many of his people were together and already thinking about his faithfulness in the past and his promises for the future.

The setting is Judah around 520 BC, in the second year of Darius I of Persia. God had brought his people back after the seventy years of exile in Babylon (Jeremiah 29:10). Cyrus had decreed their return in 538 BC (Ezra 1:1–4), and the returned exiles had rebuilt the altar and laid the temple’s foundation (Ezra 3:1–13). Then the work stopped for about sixteen years, under opposition from the surrounding peoples (Ezra 4), hard times, and the people’s own neglect. They lived in ceiled houses while the LORD’s house lay waste (Haggai 1:4). Haggai’s first message (Haggai 1) called them to consider their ways. They had sown much and brought in little (Haggai 1:6), and God had called for a drought on the land because his house was neglected (Haggai 1:9–11). The people obeyed, the LORD stirred up their spirit, and on the twenty-fourth day of the sixth month they began to work (Haggai 1:12–15). This second of Haggai’s four messages comes less than a month later.

“Came the word of the LORD by the prophet Haggai” tells us whose message this is. The Hebrew dâbâr means word or speech, and it can also mean a matter or thing, but here it is the message God gives. Yᵉhôvâh, written “the LORD” in the KJV, is God’s own covenant name, the name of the God who bound himself to Israel and keeps his promises. Haggai is the nâbîyʼ, the prophet, one who speaks on God’s behalf, so what follows is God’s word carried by a man. Scripture uses the same opening for Jeremiah (Jeremiah 1:4), Ezekiel (Ezekiel 1:3) and Haggai’s fellow prophet Zechariah (Zechariah 1:1).

God opens his message with three questions: “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?” He asks what he already knows, and in asking he names the grief of his people before he answers it.

The word for house, bayith, covers a dwelling, a household, a palace or a temple, and here it is the temple. God speaks of “this house” in her first glory, so the house they are building stands in line with the one Solomon built. The word for glory, kâbôwd, means glory, honour, splendour and wealth. Solomon’s temple, finished around 960 BC, was famous for its cedar, gold and costly stones (1 Kings 6, 2 Chronicles 3), and at its dedication the glory of the LORD filled it so that the priests could not stand to minister (1 Kings 8:10–11). The Babylonians destroyed it in 586 BC (2 Kings 25:8–10).

Some of those standing before Haggai had seen that house with their own eyes, and they were old now. Ezra tells us that when the foundation of the new house was laid, many of the old men who had seen the first house wept with a loud voice while others shouted for joy (Ezra 3:12). A small and poor community could build only a modest house, and kᵉmôw, “as” or “like”, sets the two side by side: “in comparison of it as nothing”. The words “in your eyes” show that God is speaking of how the house looked to them.

The LORD answered the same discouragement through Zechariah: “For who hath despised the day of small things?” (Zechariah 4:10). God’s measure of glory differs from ours. Paul says that “God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty … That no flesh should glory in his presence” (1 Corinthians 1:27–29).

“Yet now” turns from their grief to God’s command. Three times he says “be strong”: to Zerubbabel, to Joshua, and to “all ye people of the land”. The verb châzaq means to be or make strong and firm, and it is the word used for strengthening or encouraging someone. Its threefold use shows how low their spirits had sunk, and it calls every part of the community, leaders and people together, to take heart.

Then comes a plain task, “and work”, and the reason for it: “for I am with you, saith the LORD of hosts”. Their strength rests on his presence. God gave the same assurance to Moses (Exodus 3:12) and to Joshua as he led Israel into the land (Joshua 1:9), and Moses told all Israel, “Be strong and of a good courage” (Deuteronomy 31:6). Isaiah gives it too: “Fear thou not; for I am with thee” (Isaiah 41:10). What God commands, he gives strength to do, as Paul says: “I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me” (Philippians 4:13).

“Saith the LORD” sounds three times in this one verse. The title “LORD of hosts” joins God’s name to tsâbâʼ, a word for an army or host, for war and service, and for the host of heaven. The God who stood with this small and struggling people commands all the armies of heaven and rules every power on earth, and no opposition could stop the work he had told them to do.

“For thus saith the LORD of hosts” gives the reason the builders can take heart: God is about to act. “Yet once, it is a little while” points to one decisive act, and mᵉʻaṭ, “a little while”, is a short span of time whose length God has kept to himself. The verb râʻash means to quake or tremble, a violent shaking, and God lists “the heavens, and the earth, and the sea, and the dry land”, so every part of creation is included. In the next verse the shaking reaches “all nations”, the kingdoms and powers of the world.

Joel speaks the same way of the day when “the heavens and the earth shall shake” as the LORD roars out of Zion (Joel 3:16), and Zechariah looks to the day when “the LORD shall be king over all the earth” (Zechariah 14:9). The letter to the Hebrews quotes this verse and explains it: “And this word, Yet once more, signifieth the removing of those things that are shaken, as of things that are made, that those things which cannot be shaken may remain” (Hebrews 12:26–29). Hebrews then tells us that we receive a kingdom which cannot be moved. The shaking clears away everything temporary so that God’s kingdom alone stands.

God has shaken the nations many times in history, and the coming of Christ shook the world. The final shaking comes when he returns and brings in the new heavens and the new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness (2 Peter 3:10–13, Revelation 21:1). For the builders in Haggai’s day, this meant their plain house stood inside a far greater plan.

“The desire of all nations shall come” promises that something all the nations count precious will come to God’s house. The word chemdâh comes from a root meaning to delight, and it means a delight, a precious thing or a treasure. The phrase in Hebrew is chemdath kol-goyim, “the desire of all the nations”.

Believers differ on what that precious thing is. On one reading it is the wealth and treasures of the nations, brought in to adorn the house, and the next verse, where God says the silver and the gold are his, fits that reading well. On the other reading the desire of all nations is a person, the Messiah, the one whom every people needs and for whom the world longs. This reading has been held most widely among believers. It joins Haggai to the prophecies of the nations flowing to the mountain of the LORD’s house (Isaiah 2:2–4) and of God’s servant as “a light to the Gentiles” (Isaiah 49:6), and to the Samaritans who confessed Jesus as “the Saviour of the world” (John 4:42). On both readings the glory comes from God, who brings the nations’ best into his house.

Then God says, “and I will fill this house with glory”. The word is kâbôwd again. The glory that filled Solomon’s house at its dedication (1 Kings 8:10–11) will fill this one too, because God himself will fill it.

Verse 8 is a single claim, made twice and sealed with God’s name: “The silver is mine, and the gold is mine, saith the LORD of hosts.” The word for silver, keçeph, is named for its pale colour, and by implication it means money, since silver was the common currency. The word for gold, zâhâb, comes from a root meaning to shimmer, and gold was the most prized metal of all. Together they stand for every kind of wealth. “Saith” here is nᵉʼum, an utterance or declaration, the word prophets use to mark a statement as God’s.

The returned exiles were poor, and they could not hope to match Solomon’s gold. God tells them that all the gold already belongs to him, so their poverty sets no limit on what he will do with his house. They were called to build in faith before they felt they had enough. Scripture says the same many times: “The earth is the LORD’S, and the fulness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein” (Psalm 24:1). Every beast of the forest is his, and the cattle upon a thousand hills (Psalm 50:10–12). David confessed that riches and honour come from the LORD (1 Chronicles 29:11–12), and Paul writes that “of him, and through him, and to him, are all things” (Romans 11:36). What we hold, we hold as stewards of what is his.

“The glory of this latter house shall be greater than of the former” sets the second temple beside Solomon’s. The second house was smaller and poorer, and it never matched the first in gold or grandeur. So the greater glory God promises is the glory of his own presence.

That promise was kept in Jesus Christ. Malachi foretold that “the Lord, whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to his temple” (Malachi 3:1). The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory (John 1:14). The only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, has declared him (John 1:18). He walked and taught in the courts of this second temple, and he said, “in this place is one greater than the temple” (Matthew 12:6). No gold could give the house a glory like that. Jesus also spoke of his own body as a temple: “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up” (John 2:19–21). God’s dwelling with men is finally in his Son.

“And in this place will I give peace” adds a second promise, and “saith the LORD of hosts” seals both. The place is the temple and, with it, Jerusalem. The word shâlôwm names completeness, soundness, welfare, peace and safety, which a people worn down by exile, foreign rule and hardship longed for. God gives it as a gift. It comes in Christ, who is the Prince of Peace (Isaiah 9:6), who “is our peace” and by his cross has broken down the middle wall of partition, reconciling Jew and Gentile to God in one body (Ephesians 2:14–16). His peace passes all understanding (Philippians 4:7). Haggai’s last message in this chapter returns to the shaking of the nations and gives a promise to Zerubbabel (Haggai 2:20–23).

The whole passage points ahead to Jesus. The word of the LORD that came “by the prophet Haggai” came at last in the Son. The Word was with God and was God, and all things were made by him (John 1:1–3), and God, who spoke by the prophets, “hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things” (Hebrews 1:1–2). God sent his Son when the fulness of the time was come (Galatians 4:4), as precisely as he timed this word for the last day of the feast.

The two leaders point to him as well. Zerubbabel stood in David’s line, to whom God promised a kingdom established for ever (2 Samuel 7:12–16), and Matthew applies to Jesus the prophecy of “a Governor, that shall rule my people Israel” (Matthew 2:6). Joshua was high priest, and Jesus is our great high priest (Hebrews 4:14), who entered once into the holy place by his own blood, having obtained eternal redemption for us (Hebrews 9:11–12). He finished the work his Father gave him to do (John 19:30). He sent his disciples out with Haggai’s promise in his own words: “and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world” (Matthew 28:19–20).

The Spirit who remained among the builders was promised by Jesus as the Comforter who would abide with us for ever (John 14:16–17), and he was poured out at Pentecost (Acts 2:1–4). Under the new covenant in Christ’s blood (Luke 22:20) the Spirit dwells within every believer, and our bodies are his temple (1 Corinthians 6:19). That covenant has a glory that surpasses the old (2 Corinthians 3:7–11). God’s house is now built of people, a holy temple in the Lord with Christ as the chief corner stone (Ephesians 2:19–22), and believers are lively stones built up into a spiritual house (1 Peter 2:4–5).

Even the silver and gold find their place here. In Christ are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge (Colossians 2:3). God has chosen the poor of this world, rich in faith, to be heirs of the kingdom (James 2:5). Peter reminds us that we were redeemed “not … with corruptible things, as silver and gold” but “with the precious blood of Christ” (1 Peter 1:18–19).

The last fulfilment is still ahead. In Christ God reconciles all things to himself (Colossians 1:19–20), and he must reign until every enemy is put under his feet (1 Corinthians 15:25–28). Then the tabernacle of God will be with men (Revelation 21:3), and the holy city will need no temple, “for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple of it” (Revelation 21:22–24), lit by the glory of God.

God spoke these words to a small, poor and tired people who had started a work that looked like nothing. He gave them his presence, his Spirit, his covenant faithfulness and his promise, and they finished the house. The glory he promised came in a way none of them could see, when the Son of God walked in its courts.

The same God is with his people now, and his word is the same: “be strong … and work: for I am with you”. He owns the silver and the gold, and the glory of what he builds rests on his presence. He still gives peace in the place where he dwells, and the house he is building will be filled with his glory.