Haggai 2:21

The whole message builds to verse 23, the last verse of the book. “In that day” looks ahead to the day of God’s shaking in verses 21–22, the decisive time when he acts in judgment and sets up his kingdom. Into that day God names one man: “will I take thee, O Zerubbabel, my servant, the son of Shealtiel”. The verb “take”, lâqach, is God’s own act of taking hold of Zerubbabel and raising him up, and he calls him by his name and by his father’s name.

The year is about 520 BC, in the reign of Darius I of Persia. The exiles had come home from Babylon under the decree of Cyrus, led by Zerubbabel as governor and Joshua as high priest. The foundation of the temple was laid, but the work had stalled for years, through opposition from their neighbours and through the people’s own apathy, as they saw to their own houses first. God raised up Haggai, and Zechariah with him, to stir them to finish the work. Judah was a small Persian province, short of money, discouraged, and surrounded by larger nations.

Zerubbabel was the civil leader of the returned exiles and a descendant of King David. As a grandson of King Jehoiachin he was a rightful heir to David’s throne, and his name stands in both genealogies of Jesus (Matthew 1:12, Luke 3:27). The message comes to him because he led the rebuilding, and because God’s covenant with David rested on his family. It encouraged him in the task in front of him and assured him that God had a future for David’s house.

God tells Haggai to “Speak to Zerubbabel, governor of Judah”, and the message begins with God’s own act: “I will shake the heavens and the earth”. The verb râʻash means to tremble or quake. It is used of the ground shaking in an earthquake, and also of nations and people trembling before God’s judgment or his presence. Shâmayim is the sky and everything above it, where the clouds move and the stars turn, and ʼerets is the earth, a land, or the ground. Heaven and earth together name the whole created order, and the verse places every part of it, and every power on it, in God’s hand.

Haggai has already spoken of this shaking earlier in the chapter (Haggai 2:6–9). There God promised to shake heaven and earth and all nations, so that the desire of all nations would come and the latter temple would be filled with glory. That word was about the temple. This one carries the shaking on to the thrones and armies of the nations and to the man God has chosen.

“I will overthrow the throne of kingdoms” uses hâphak, to turn about or turn over, and so to overturn or change completely. The throne stands for the ruling power of the nations, the seat of authority that looks so permanent to human eyes, and God says he will turn it upside down. “And I will destroy the strength of the kingdoms of the heathen” names chôzeq, strength or power, everything that makes a kingdom mighty. “Heathen” is gôwy, a nation, and especially a foreign nation, the Gentiles. In the prophets it often means the nations set against God and his people.

Then the verse turns to their armies. Chariots were the great weapons of war in that day, and horses and riders were a vital part of every army. God will overthrow the chariots and those who ride in them, and the horses and their riders “shall come down”. The verb yârad is the ordinary word for going down, and here it is a fall from power in defeat. For a small province afraid of the powers around it, this was God’s own word that every empire answered to him.

Daniel says the same of God: “he removeth kings, and setteth up kings” (Daniel 2:21), and “the God of heaven set up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed” (Daniel 2:44). The repeated “I will” in Haggai’s verse puts all of it in God’s hands.

God’s promise to Zerubbabel reaches past Zerubbabel himself to the one he foreshadowed. Jesus, born of Zerubbabel’s line, is the true Son of David and the chosen servant. Matthew applies Isaiah’s words to him: “Behold my servant, whom I have chosen” (Matthew 12:18). He is the one through whom God’s authority is made known and his kingdom established, the living signet who bears God’s seal. God has highly exalted him and given him “a name which is above every name” (Philippians 2:9–11), and every promise God has made is settled in him: “For all the promises of God in him are yea, and in him Amen” (2 Corinthians 1:20).

The word that came so often to the prophets has now come in person. God, who spoke “at sundry times and in divers manners” by the prophets, “Hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son” (Hebrews 1:1–2), the Word who “was made flesh, and dwelt among us” (John 1:14). He is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29). Zerubbabel rebuilt a temple of stone, and through his life, death and resurrection Jesus built a living temple, his church, and established the new covenant.

The shaking of nations also comes to its end in Christ. His kingdom came among us at his first coming (Luke 17:20–21), and when he returns every power that stands against him will fall before the rider whose name is King of kings and Lord of lords (Revelation 19:11–16). Daniel saw one like the Son of man receive “an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away” (Daniel 7:13–14), and after the shaking comes “a new heaven and a new earth” (Revelation 21:1).

These four verses were spoken to the governor of a poor province, to people who were tired and afraid of their neighbours, and God answered their smallness with his own greatness. The thrones and armies that loomed over Judah stood in his hand, and he could bring them down at a word. He still remembered David’s house after the exile, and he took up again the very picture of judgment he had once used against it. What God chooses, he keeps.

The God who will shake everything that can be shaken is the same God who gives his people a kingdom which cannot be moved. In Christ, his chosen servant, we belong to that kingdom, and our hope rests where Zerubbabel’s did, on the word of the LORD of hosts.