_HAGGAI AND THE BUILDING OF THE TEMPLE_
HAGGAI i., ii.
We have seen that the most probable solution of the problems presented
to us by the inadequate and confused records of the time is that a
considerable number of Jewish exiles returned from Jerusalem to Babylon
about 537, upon the permission of Cyrus, and that the Satrap whom he
sent with them not only allowed them to raise the altar on its ancient
site, but himself laid for them the foundation-stone of the Temple.[657]
We have seen, too, why this attempt led to nothing, and we have
followed the Samaritan obstructions, the failure of the Persian
patronage, the drought and bad harvests, and all the disillusion of the
fifteen years which succeeded the Return.[658] The hostility of the
Samaritans was entirely due to the refusal of the Jews to give them a
share in the construction of the Temple, and its virulence, probably
shown by preventing the Jews from procuring timber, seems to have
ceased when the Temple works were stopped. At least we find no mention
of it in our prophets; and the Jews are furnished with enough of timber
to panel and ciel their own houses.[659] But the Jews must have feared
a renewal of Samaritan attacks if they resumed work on the Temple, and
for the rest they were too sodden with adversity, and too weighted with
the care of their own sustenance, to spring at higher interests. What
immediately precedes our prophets is a miserable story of barren
seasons and little income, money leaking fast away, and every man’s
sordid heart engrossed with his own household. Little wonder that
critics have been led to deny the great Return of sixteen years back,
with its grand ambitions for the Temple and glorious future of Israel.
But the like collapse has often been experienced in history when bands
of religious men, going forth, as they thought, to freedom and the
immediate erection of a holy commonwealth, have found their unity
wrecked and their enthusiasm dissipated by a few inclement seasons on a
barren and a hostile shore. Nature and their barbarous fellow-men have
frustrated what God had promised. Themselves, accustomed from a high
stage of civilisation to plan still higher social structures, are
suddenly reduced to the primitive necessities of tillage and defence
against a savage foe. Statesmen, poets and idealists of sorts have to
hoe the ground, quarry stones and stay up of nights to watch as
sentinels. Destitute of the comforts and resources with which they have
grown up, they live in constant battle with their bare and
unsympathetic environs. It is a familiar tale in history, and we read
it with ease in the case of Israel. The Jews enjoyed this advantage,
that they came not to a strange land, but to one crowded with inspiring
memories, and they had behind them the most glorious impetus of
prophecy which ever sent a people forward to the future. Yet the very
ardours of this hurried them past a due appreciation of the
difficulties they would have to encounter, and when they found
themselves on the stony soil of Judah, which they had been idealising
for fifty years, and were further afflicted by barren seasons, their
hearts must have suffered an even more bitter disillusion than has so
frequently fallen to the lot of religious emigrants to an absolutely
new coast.
1. THE CALL TO BUILD (Chap. i.).
It was to this situation, upon an autumn day, when the colonists felt
another year of beggarly effort behind them and their wretched harvest
had been brought home, that the prophet Haggai addressed himself.
With rare sense he confined his efforts to the practical needs of
the moment. The sneers of modern writers have not been spared upon a
style that is crabbed and jejune, and they have esteemed this to be
a collapse of the prophetic spirit, in which Haggai ignored all the
achievements of prophecy and interpreted the word of God as only a call
to hew wood and lay stone upon stone. But the man felt what the moment
needed, and that is the supreme mark of the prophet. Set a prophet
there, and what else could a prophet have done? It would have been
futile to rewaken those most splendid voices of the past, which had in
part been the reason of the people’s disappointment, and equally futile
to interpret the mission of the great world powers towards God’s
people. What God’s people themselves could do for themselves—that was
what needed telling at the moment; and if Haggai told it with a meagre
and starved style, this also was in harmony with the occasion. One does
not expect it otherwise when hungry men speak to each other of their
duty.
Nor does Haggai deserve blame that he interpreted the duty as the
material building of the Temple. This was no mere ecclesiastical
function. Without the Temple the continuity of Israel’s religion could
not be maintained. An independent state, with the full courses of civic
life, was then impossible. The ethical spirit, the regard for each
other and God, could prevail over their material interests in no other
way than by common devotion to the worship of the God of their fathers.
In urging them to build the Temple from their own unaided resources, in
abstaining from all hopes of imperial patronage, in making the business
one, not of sentiment nor of comfortable assurance derived from the
past promises of God, but of plain and hard duty—Haggai illustrated at
once the sanity and the spiritual essence of prophecy in Israel.
Professor Robertson Smith has contrasted the central importance which
Haggai attached to the Temple with the attitude of Isaiah and Jeremiah,
to whom “the religion of Israel and the holiness of Jerusalem have
little to do with the edifice of the Temple. The city is holy because
it is the seat of Jehovah’s sovereignty on earth, exerted in His
dealings with and for the state of Judah and the kingdom of
David.”[660] At the same time it ought to be pointed out that even to
Isaiah the Temple was the dwelling-place of Jehovah, and if it had been
lying in ruins at his feet, as it was at Haggai’s, there is little
doubt he would have been as earnest as Haggai in urging its
reconstruction. Nor did the Second Isaiah, who has as lofty an idea of
the spiritual destiny of the people as any other prophet, lay less
emphasis upon the cardinal importance of the Temple to their life, and
upon the certainty of its future glory.
_In the second year of Darius[661] the king, in the sixth month and
the first day of the month_—that is, on the feast of the new moon—_the
word of Jehovah came by[662] Haggai the prophet to Zerubbabel, son
of She’altî’el,[663] Satrap of Judah, and to Jehoshua‘, son of
Jehoṣadaḳ,[664] the high priest_—the civil and religious heads of the
community—_as follows_[665]:—
_Thus hath Jehovah of Hosts spoken, saying: This people have said, Not
yet[666] is come the time for the building of Jehovah’s House.
Therefore Jehovah’s word is come by Haggai the prophet, saying: Is it a
time for you—you[667]—to be dwelling in houses cieled with planks,[668]
while this House is waste? And now thus saith Jehovah of Hosts: Lay to
heart how things have gone with you.[669] Ye sowed much but had little
income, ate and were not satisfied, drank and were not full, put on
clothing and there was no warmth, while he that earned wages has earned
them into a bag with holes._
_Thus saith Jehovah of Hosts:[670] Go up into the mountain_—the
hill-country of Judah—_and bring in timber, and build the House, that
I may take pleasure in it, and show My glory, saith Jehovah. Ye looked
for much and it has turned out little,[671] and what ye brought home I
puffed at. On account of what?—oracle of Jehovah of Hosts—on account
of My House which is waste, while ye are hurrying every man after his
own house. Therefore[672] hath heaven shut off the dew,[673] and earth
shut off her increase. And I have called drought upon the earth, both
upon the mountains,[674] and upon the corn, and upon the wine, and upon
the oil, and upon what the ground brings forth, and upon man, and upon
beast, and upon all the labour of the hands._
For ourselves, Haggai’s appeal to the barren seasons and poverty of the
people as proof of God’s anger with their selfishness must raise
questions. But we have already seen, not only that natural calamities
were by the ancient world interpreted as the penal instruments of the
Deity, but that all through history they have had a wonderful influence
on the spirits of men, forcing them to search their own hearts and to
believe that Providence is conducted for other ends than those of our
physical prosperity. “Have not those who have believed as Amos believed
ever been the strong spirits of our race, making the very disasters
which crushed them to the earth the tokens that God has great views
about them?”[675] Haggai, therefore, takes no sordid view of Providence
when he interprets the seasons, from which his countrymen had suffered,
as God’s anger upon their selfishness and delay in building His House.
The straight appeal to the conscience of the Jews had an immediate
effect. Within three weeks they began work on the Temple.
_And Zerubbabel, son of She’altî’el, and Jehoshua‘, son of Jehoṣadaḳ,
the high priest, and all the rest of the people, hearkened to the
voice of Jehovah their God, and to the words of Haggai the prophet, as
Jehovah their God had sent him; and the people feared before the face
of Jehovah. [And Haggai, the messenger of Jehovah, in Jehovah’s mission
to the people, spake, saying, I am with you—oracle of Jehovah.][676]
And Jehovah stirred the spirit of Zerubbabel, son of She’altî’el,
Satrap of Judah, and the spirit of Jehoshua‘, son of Jehoṣadaḳ, the
high priest, and the spirit of all the rest of the people; and they
went and did work in the House of Jehovah of Hosts, their God, on the
twenty-fourth day of the sixth month, in the second year of Darius the
king._[677]
Note how the narrative emphasises that the new energy was, as it could
not but be from Haggai’s unflattering words, a purely spiritual result.
It was the _spirit_ of Zerubbabel, and the _spirit_ of Jehoshua, and
the _spirit_ of all the rest of the people, which was stirred—their
conscience and radical force of character. Not in vain had the people
suffered their great disillusion under Cyrus, if now their history was
to start again from sources so inward and so pure.
2. COURAGE, ZERUBBABEL! COURAGE, JEHOSHUA AND
ALL THE PEOPLE! (Chap. ii. 1-9).
The second occasion on which Haggai spoke to the people was another
feast the same autumn, the seventh day of the Feast of Tabernacles,[678]
the twenty-first of the seventh month. For nearly four weeks the work
on the Temple had proceeded. Some progress must have been made, for
comparisons became possible between the old Temple and the state of
this one. Probably the outline and size of the building were visible.
In any case it was enough to discourage the builders with their efforts
and the means at their disposal. Haggai’s new word is a very simple one
of encouragement. The people’s conscience had been stirred by his
first; they needed now some hope. Consequently he appeals to what he
had ignored before, the political possibilities which the present state
of the world afforded—always a source of prophetic promise. But again
he makes his former call upon their own courage and resources. The
Hebrew text contains a reference to the Exodus which would be
appropriate to a discourse delivered during the Feast of Tabernacles,
but it is not found in the Septuagint, and is so impossible to construe
that it has been justly suspected as a gloss, inserted by some later
hand, only because the passage had to do with the Feast of Tabernacles.
_In the seventh_ month, _on the twenty-first day of the month, the word
of Jehovah came by[679] Haggai the prophet, saying_:—
_Speak now to Zerubbabel, son of She’altî’el, Satrap of Judah, and to
Jehoshua‘, son of Jehoṣadaḳ, the high priest, and to the rest of the
people, saying: Who among you is left that saw this House in its former
glory, and how do ye see it now? Is it not as nothing in your
eyes?[680] And now courage,[681] O Zerubbabel—oracle of Jehovah—and
courage, Jehoshua‘, son of Jehoṣadaḳ, O high priest;[682] and courage,
all people of the land!—oracle of Jehovah; and get to work, for I am
with you—oracle of Jehovah of Hosts[683]—and My Spirit is standing in
your midst. Fear not! For thus saith Jehovah of Hosts: It is but 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 costly
things[684] of all nations shall come in, and I will fill this House
with glory, saith Jehovah of Hosts. Mine is the silver and Mine the
gold—oracle of Jehovah of Hosts. Greater shall the latter glory of this
House be than the former, saith Jehovah of Hosts, and in this place
will I give peace[685]—oracle of Jehovah of Hosts._
From the earliest times this passage, by the majority of the Christian
Church, has been interpreted of the coming of Christ. The Vulgate
renders ver. 7_b_, _Et veniet Desideratus cunctis gentibus_, and so a
large number of the Latin Fathers, who are followed by Luther, _Der
Trost aller Heiden_, and by our own Authorised Version, _And the Desire
of all nations shall come_. This was not contrary to Jewish tradition,
for Rabbi Akiba had defined the clause of the Messiah, and Jerome
received the interpretation from his Jewish instructors. In itself the
noun, as pointed in the Massoretic text, means _longing_ or _object of
longing_.[686] But the verb which goes with it is in the plural, and by
a change of points the noun itself may be read as a plural.[687] That
this was the original reading is made extremely probable by the fact
that it lay before the translators of the Septuagint, who render: _the
picked_, or _chosen, things of the nations_.[688] So the old Italic
version: _Et venient omnia electa gentium_.[689] Moreover this meaning
suits the context, as the other does not. The next verse mentions
silver and gold. “We may understand what he says,” writes Calvin, “of
Christ; we indeed know that Christ was the expectation of the whole
world; ... but as it immediately follows, _Mine is the silver and Mine
is the gold_, the more simple meaning is that which I first stated:
that the nations would come, bringing with them all their riches, that
they might offer themselves and all their possessions a sacrifice to
God.”[690]
3. THE POWER OF THE UNCLEAN (Chap. ii. 10-19).
Haggai’s third address to the people is based on a deliverance which he
seeks from the priests. The Book of Deuteronomy had provided that, in
all difficult cases not settled by its own code, the people shall seek
a _deliverance_ or _Torah_ from the priests, _and shall observe to do
according to the deliverance which the priests deliver to thee_.[691]
Both noun and verb, which may be thus literally translated, are also
used for the completed and canonical Law in Israel, and they signify
that in the time of the composition of the Book of Deuteronomy that Law
was still regarded as in process of growth. So it is also in the time
of Haggai: he does not consult a code of laws, nor asks the priests
what the canon says, as, for instance, our Lord does with the question,
_how readest thou_? But he begs them to give him _a_ Torah or
_deliverance_,[692] based of course upon existing custom, but not yet
committed to writing.[693] For the history of the Law in Israel this
is, therefore, a passage of great interest.
_On the twenty-fourth of the ninth month, in the second year of Darius,
the word of Jehovah came to[694] Haggai the prophet, saying: Thus saith
Jehovah of Hosts, Ask, I pray, of the priests a deliverance,[695]
saying:—_
_If a man be carrying flesh that is holy in the skirt of his robe, and
with his skirt touch bread or pottage or wine or oil or any food, shall
_the latter_ become holy? And the priests gave answer and said, No! And
Haggai said, If one unclean by a corpse[696] touch any of these, shall
_the latter_ become unclean? And the priests gave answer and said, It
shall._ That is to say, holiness which passed from the source to an
object immediately in touch with the latter did not spread further; but
pollution infected not only the person who came into contact with it,
but whatever he touched.[697] “The flesh of the sacrifice hallowed
whatever it should touch, but not further;[698] but the human being who
was defiled by touching a dead body, defiled all he might touch.”[699]
_And Haggai answered and said: So is this people, and so is this nation
before Me—oracle of Jehovah—and so is all the work of their hands, and
what they offer there_—at the altar erected on its old site—_is
unclean_.[700] That is to say, while the Jews had expected their
restored ritual to make them holy to the Lord, this had not been
effective, while, on the contrary, their contact with sources of
pollution had thoroughly polluted both themselves and their labour and
their sacrifices. What these sources of pollution are is not explicitly
stated, but Haggai, from his other messages, can only mean, either the
people’s want of energy in building the Temple, or the unbuilt Temple
itself. Andrée goes so far as to compare the latter with the corpse,
whose touch, according to the priests, spreads infection through more
than one degree. In any case Haggai means to illustrate and enforce the
building of the Temple without delay; and meantime he takes one
instance of the effect he has already spoken of, _the work of their
hands_, and shows how it has been spoilt by their neglect and delay.
_And now, I pray, set your hearts backward from to-day,[701] before
stone was laid upon stone in the Temple of Jehovah: ...[702] when one
came to a heap of grain of twenty measures, and it had become ten, or
went to the winevat to draw fifty measures,[703] and it had become
twenty. I smote you with blasting and with withering,[704] and with
hail all the work of your hands, and ...[705]—oracle of Jehovah. Lay
now your hearts _on the time_ before to-day[706] (the twenty-fourth day
of the ninth month[707]), before the day of the foundation of the
Temple of Jehovah[708]—lay your hearts_ to that time! _Is there yet_
any _seed in the barn[709]? And as yet[710] the vine, the fig-tree, the
pomegranate and the olive have not borne_ fruit. _From this day I will
bless thee._
This then is the substance of the whole message. On the twenty-fourth
day of the ninth month, somewhere in our December, the Jews had been
discouraged that their attempts to build the Temple, begun three months
before,[711] had not turned the tide of their misfortunes and produced
prosperity in their agriculture. Haggai tells them, there is not yet
time for the change to work. If contact with a holy thing has only a
slight effect, but contact with an unclean thing has a much greater
effect (verses 11-13), then their attempts to build the Temple must
have less good influence upon their condition than the bad influence
of all their past devotion to themselves and their secular labours.
That is why adversity still continues, but courage! from this day on
God will bless. The whole message is, therefore, opportune to the date
at which it was delivered, and comes naturally on the back of Haggai’s
previous oracles. Andrée’s reason for assigning it to another writer,
on the ground of its breaking the connection, does not exist.[712]
These poor colonists, in their hope deferred, were learning the old
lesson, which humanity finds so hard to understand, that repentance and
new-born zeal do not immediately work a change upon our material
condition; but the natural consequences of sin often outweigh the
influence of conversion, and though devoted to God and very industrious
we may still be punished for a sinful past. Evil has an infectious
power greater than that of holiness. Its effects are more extensive and
lasting.[713] It was no bit of casuistry which Haggai sought to
illustrate by his appeal to the priests on the ceremonial law, but an
ethical truth deeply embedded in human experience.
4. THE REINVESTMENT OF ISRAEL’S HOPE (Chap. ii. 20-23).
On the same day Haggai published another oracle, in which he put the
climax to his own message by re-investing in Zerubbabel the ancient
hopes of his people. When the monarchy fell the Messianic hopes were
naturally no longer concentrated in the person of a king; and the
great evangelist of the Exile found the elect and anointed Servant of
Jehovah in the people as a whole, or in at least the pious part of
them, with functions not of political government but of moral influence
and instruction towards all the peoples of the earth. Yet in the Exile
Ezekiel still predicted an individual Messiah, a son of the house of
David; only it is significant that, in his latest prophecies delivered
after the overthrow of Jerusalem, Ezekiel calls him not _king_[714] any
more, but _prince_.[715]
After the return of Sheshbazzar to Babylon this position was virtually
filled by Zerubbabel, a grandson of Jehoiakin, the second last king
of Judah, and appointed by the Persian king Peḥah or Satrap of Judah.
Him Haggai now formally names the elect servant of Jehovah. In that
overturning of the kingdoms of the world which Haggai had predicted two
months before, and which he now explains as their mutual destruction by
war, Jehovah of Hosts will make Zerubbabel His signet-ring, inseparable
from Himself and the symbol of His authority.
_And the word of Jehovah came a second time to[716] Haggai on the
twenty-fourth day of the_ ninth _month, saying: Speak to Zerubbabel,
Satrap of Judah, saying: I am about to shake the heavens and the
earth,[717] and I will overturn the thrones[718] of kingdoms, and will
shatter the power of the kingdoms of the Gentiles, and will overturn
chariots[719] and their riders, and horses and their riders will
come down, every man by the sword of his brother. In that day—oracle
of Jehovah of Hosts—I will take Zerubbabel, son of She’altî’el, My
servant—oracle of Jehovah—and will make him like a signet-ring; for
thee have I chosen—oracle of Jehovah of Hosts._
The wars and mutual destruction of the Gentiles, of which Haggai
speaks, are doubtless those revolts of races and provinces, which
threatened to disrupt the Persian Empire upon the accession of Darius
in 521. Persians, Babylonians, Medes, Armenians, the Sacæ and others
rose together or in succession. In four years Darius quelled them all,
and reorganised his empire before the Jews finished their Temple. Like
all the Syrian governors, Zerubbabel remained his poor lieutenant and
submissive tributary. History rolled westward into Europe. Greek and
Persian began their struggle for the control of its future, and the
Jews fell into an obscurity and oblivion unbroken for centuries. The
_signet-ring of Jehovah_ was not acknowledged by the world—does not
seem even to have challenged its briefest attention. But Haggai had at
least succeeded in asserting the Messianic hope of Israel, always
baffled, never quenched, in this re-opening of her life. He had
delivered the ancient heritage of Israel to the care of the new
Judaism.
* * * * *
Haggai’s place in the succession of prophecy ought now to be clear
to us. The meagreness of his words and their crabbed style, his
occupation with the construction of the Temple, his unfulfilled hope in
Zerubbabel, his silence on the great inheritance of truth delivered by
his predecessors, and the absence from his prophesying of all visions
of God’s character and all emphasis upon the ethical elements of
religion—these have moved some to depress his value as a prophet almost
to the vanishing point. Nothing could be more unjust. In his opening
message Haggai evinced the first indispensable power of the prophet: to
speak to the situation of the moment, and to succeed in getting men to
take up the duty at their feet; in another message he announced a great
ethical principle; in his last he conserved the Messianic traditions
of his religion, and though not less disappointed than Isaiah in the
personality to whom he looked for their fulfilment, he succeeded in
passing on their hope undiminished to future ages.
FOOTNOTES:
[657] See above, pp. 210-18, and emphasise specially the facts that
the most pronounced adherents of Kosters’ theory seek to qualify his
absolute negation of a Return under Cyrus, by the admission that
some Jews did return; and that even Stade, who agrees in the main
with Schrader that no attempt was made by the Jews to begin building
the Temple till 520, admits the probability of a stone being laid by
Sheshbazzar about 536.
[658] See above, pp. 218 ff.
[659] Hag. i. 4.
[660] Art. “Haggai,” _Encyc. Brit._
[661] Heb. Daryavesh.
[662] Heb. _by the hand of_.
[663] See above, pp. 199 f. and 221.
[664] See below, pp. 258, 279, 292 ff.
[665] Heb. _saying_.
[666] For לאֹ עֶת־בֹּא = _not the time of coming_ read with Hitzig and
Wellhausen לאֹ עַתָּ בָא, _not now is come_; for עַתָּ cf. Ezek. xxiii.
4, Psalm lxxiv. 6.
[667] The emphasis may be due only to the awkward grammatical
construction.
[668] ספונים, from ספן, _to cover_ with planks of cedar, 2 Kings
vi. 9: cf. iii. 7.
[669] Heb. _set your hearts_ (see Vol. I., pp. 258, 275, 321, 323)
_upon your ways_; but _your ways_ cannot mean here, as elsewhere, _your
conduct_, but obviously from what follows _the ways_ you have been
led, _the way_ things have gone with you—the barren seasons and little
income.
[670] The Hebrew and Versions here insert _set your hearts upon your
ways_, obviously a mere clerical repetition from ver. 5.
[671] For והנה למעט read with the LXX. והיה למעט or ויהי.
[672] The עליכם here inserted in the Hebrew text is unparsable, not
found in the LXX. and probably a clerical error by dittography from the
preceding על־כן.
[673] Heb. _heavens are shut from dew_. But perhaps the מ of מטל should
be deleted. So Wellhausen. There is no instance of an intransitive Qal
of כלא.
[674] Query?
[675] Vol. I., pp. 162 ff.
[676] See above, p. 227.
[677] The LXX. wrongly takes this last verse of chap. i. as the first
half of the first verse of chap. ii.
[678] Lev. xxiii. 34, 36, 40-42.
[679] _By the hand of._
[680] הֲלאֹ כָמֹהוּ כְאַיִן בְּעֵינֵיכֶם. Literally, _is not the like
of it as nothing in your eyes_? But that can hardly be the meaning.
It might be equivalent to _is it not, as it stands, as nothing in
your eyes?_ But the fact is that in Hebrew construction of a simple,
unemphasised comparison, the comparing particle כ stands before _both_
objects compared: as, for instance, in the phrase (Gen. xliv. 18)
כִּי כָמוֹךָ כְּפַרְעֹה, _thou art as Pharaoh_.
[681] Literally: _be strong_.
[682] It is difficult to say whether _high priest_ belongs to the text
or not.
[683] Here occurs the anacolouthic clause, introduced by an acc.
without a verb, which is not found in the LXX. and is probably a gloss
(see above, p. 241): _The promise which I made with you in your going
forth from Egypt_.
[684] Hebrew has singular, _costly thing_ or _desirableness_, חֶמְדַּת
(fem, for neut.), but the verb _shall come_ is in the plural, and the
LXX. has τα ἐκλεκτά, _the choice things_. See below, next page.
[685] The LXX. add a parallel clause καὶ εἰρήνην φυχῆς εἰς περιποίησιν
παντὶ τῷ κτίζοντι τοῦ ἀναστῆσαι τὸν ναὸν τοῦτον, which would read in
Hebrew וְשַׁלְוַת נֶפֶשׁ לְחַיּוֹת כָּל־הַיֹֹּסֵד לְקוֹמֵם הַהֵיכָל
הַזֶּה. On חיות Wellhausen cites 1 Chron. xi. 8, = _restore_ or
_revive_.
[686] = חֶמְדַּת _longing_, 2 Chron. xxi. 2, and _object of longing_,
Dan. xi. 37. It is the feminine or neuter, and might be rendered as a
collective, _desirable things_. Pusey cites Cicero’s address to his
wife: _Valete, mea desideria, valete_ (_Ep. ad Famil._, xiv. 2 fin.).
[687] חֲמֻדֹת plural feminine of pass. part., as in Gen. xxvii. 15,
where it is an adjective, but used as a noun = _precious things_, Dan.
xi. 38, 43, which use meets the objection of Pusey, _in loco_, where he
wrongly maintains that _precious things_, if intended, must have been
expressed by מַחֲמַדֵּי.
[688] ἥξει τὰ ἐκλεκτὰ πάντων τῶν ἐθνῶν. Theodore of Mopsuestia takes it
as _elect persons of all nations_, to which a few moderns adhere.
[689] Augustini _Contra Donatistas post Collationem_, cap. xx. 30
(Migne, _Latin Patrology_, XLIII., p. 671).
[690] Calvin, _Comm. in Haggai_, ii. 6-9.
[691] Deut. xvii. 8 ff.: עַל־פּי הַתּוֹרָה אֲשֶׁר יוֹרוּךָ. Compare the
expression כּוֹהֵן מוֹרֶה, in 2 Chron. xv. 3, and the duties of the
teaching priests assigned by the Chronicler (2 Chron. xvii. 7-9) to the
days of Jehoshaphat.
[692] Note that it is not _the Torah_, but _a Torah_.
[693] The nearest passage to the _deliverance_ of the priests to Haggai
is Lev. vi. 20, 21 (Heb.), 27, 28 (Eng.). This is part of the Priestly
Code not promulgated till 445 B.C., but based, of course, on long
extant custom, some of it very ancient. _Everything that touches the
flesh_ (of the sin-offering, which is holy) _shall be holy_—יִקְדַּשׁ,
the verb used by the priests in their answer to Haggai—_and when any
of its blood has been sprinkled on a garment, that whereon it was
sprinkled shall be washed in a holy place. The earthen vessel wherein
it has been boiled shall be broken, and if it has been boiled in a
brazen vessel, this shall be scoured and rinsed with water._
[694] So several old edd. and many codd., and adopted by Baer (see his
note _in loco_) in his text. But most of the edd. of the Massoretic
text read ביד after Cod. Hill. For the importance of the question see
above, p. 227.
[695] Torah.
[696] תְּמֵא נֶפֶשׁ.
[697] There does not appear to be the contrast between indirect contact
with a holy thing and direct contact with a polluted which Wellhausen
says there is. In either case the articles whose character is in
question stand second from the source of holiness and pollution—the
holy flesh and the corpse.
[698] See above, p. 245, n. 693.
[699] Pusey, _in loco_.
[700] The LXX. have here found inserted three other clauses: ἕνεκεν τὼν
λημμάτων αὐτῶν τῶν ὀρθρινῶν, ὀδυνηθήσονται ἀπὸ προσώπου πόνων αὐτῶν,
καὶ ἐμισεῖτε ἐν πύλαις ἐλέγχοντας. The first clause is a misreading
(Wellhausen), יַעַן לִקְחֹתָם שַׁחַר for יַעַן לְקַחְתֶּם שֹׁחַד,
_because ye take a bribe_, and goes well with the third clause,
modified from Amos v. 10: שָׂנְאוּ בַשַּׁעַר מוֹכִיחַ, _they hate him
who reproves in the gate_. These may have been inserted into the Hebrew
text by some one puzzled to know what the source of the people’s
pollution was, and who absurdly found it in sins which in Haggai’s time
it was impossible to impute to them. The middle clause, יִתְעַנּוּ
מִפְּנֵי עַצְבֵיהֶם, _they vex themselves with their labours_, is
suitable to the sense of the Hebrew text of the verse, as Wellhausen
points out, but besides gives a connection with what follows.
[701] From this day and onward.
[702] Heb. literally _since they were_. A.V. _since those days were_.
[703] Winevat, יֶקֶב, is distinguished from winepress, גת, in Josh.
ix. 13, and is translated by the Greek ὑπολήνιον Mark xii. I, ληνόν
Matt. xxi. 33, _dug a pit for the winepress_; but the name is applied
sometimes to the whole winepress—Hosea ix. 2 etc., Job xxiv. 11, _to
tread the winepress_. The word translated _measures_, as in LXX.
μετρητάς, is פּוּרָה, and that is properly the vat in which the grapes
were trodden (Isa. lxiii. 3), but here it can scarcely mean fifty
_vatfuls_, but must refer to some smaller measure—cask?
[704] See above, pp. 228 f., n. 625.
[705] The words omitted cannot be construed in the Hebrew,
וְאֵין־אֶתְכֶם אֵלַי, literally _and not you_ (acc.) _to Me_. Hitzig,
etc., propose to read אִתְּכם and render _there was none with you_ who
turned _to Me_. Others propose אֵינְכֶם, _as if none of you_ turned _to
Me_. Others retain אֶתְכֶם and render _as for you_. The versions LXX.
Syr., Vulg. _ye will not return_ or _did not return to Me_, reading
perhaps for לאֹ שָׁבְתֶּם ,אֵין אֶתְכֶם, which is found in Amos iv. 9,
of which the rest of the verse is an echo. Wellhausen deletes the whole
verse as a gloss. It is certainly suspicious, and remarkable in that
the LXX. text has already introduced two citations from Amos. See above
on ver. 14.
[706] Heb. _from this day backwards_.
[707] The date Wellhausen thinks was added by a later hand.
[708] This is the ambiguous clause on different interpretations
of which so much has been founded: לְמִן־הַיּוֹם אֲשֶׁר־יֻסַּד
הֵיכַל־יְהוָֹה. Does this clause, in simple parallel to the previous
one, describe the day on which the prophet was speaking, _the
twenty-fourth day of the ninth month_, the _terminus a quo_ of the
people’s retrospect? In that case Haggai regards the foundation-stone
of the Temple as laid on the twenty-fourth day of the ninth month 520
B.C., and does not know, or at least ignores, any previous laying
of a foundation-stone. So Kuenen, Kosters, Andrée, etc. Or does למן
signify _up to the time the foundation-stone was laid_, and state a
_terminus ad quem_ for the people’s retrospect? So Ewald and others,
who therefore find in the verse a proof that Haggai knew of an earlier
laying of the foundation-stone. But that למן is ever used for ועד
cannot be proved, and indeed is disproved by Jer. vii. 7, where it
occurs in contrast to ועד. Van Hoonacker finds the same, but in a more
subtle translation of מן .למן, he says, is never used except of a
date distant from the speaker or writer of it; למן (if I understand
him aright) refers therefore to a date previous to Haggai to which
the people’s thoughts are directed by the ל and then brought back
from it to the date at which he was speaking by means of the מן: “la
préposition ל signifie la direction de l’esprit vers une époque du passé
d’où il est ramené par la préposition מן.” But surely מן can be used
(as indeed Haggai has just used it) to signify extension backwards from
the standpoint of the speaker; and although in the passages cited by
Van Hoonacker of the use of למן it always refers to a past date—Deut.
ix. 7, Judg. xix. 30, 2 Sam. vi. 11, Jer. vii. 7 and 25—still, as it
is there nothing but a pleonastic form for מן, it surely might be
employed as מן is sometimes employed for departure from the present
backwards. Nor in any case is it used to express what Van Hoonacker
seeks to draw from it here, the idea of direction of the mind to a
past event and then an immediate return from that. Had Haggai wished
to express that idea he would have phrased it thus: למן היום אשר יסד
היכל יהוה ועד היום הזה (as Kosters remarks). Besides, as Kosters has
pointed out (pp. 7 ff. of the Germ. trans. of _Het Herstel_, etc.),
even if Van Hoonacker’s translation of למן were correct, the context
would show that it might refer only to a laying of the foundation-stone
since Haggai’s first address to the people, and therefore the question
of an earlier foundation-stone under Cyrus would remain unsolved.
Consequently Haggai ii. 18 cannot be quoted as a proof of the latter.
See above, p. 216.
[709] Meaning _there is none_.
[710] ועוד or וְעֹד for וְעַד, after LXX. καὶ εἰ ἔτι.
[711] The twenty-fourth day of the sixth month, according to chap. i.
15.
[712] See above, p. 228.
[713]
“For I believe the devil’s voice
Sinks deeper in our ear,
Than any whisper sent from heaven,
However sweet and clear.”
[714] Only in xxxiv. 24, xxxvii. 22, 24.
[715] נשׂיא: cf. Skinner, _Ezekiel_ (Expositor’s Bible Series), pp.
447 ff., who, however, attributes the diminution of the importance of
the civil head in Israel, not to the feeling that he would henceforth
always be subject to a foreign emperor, but to the conviction that in
the future he will be “overshadowed by the personal presence of Jehovah
in the midst of His people.”
[716] See above, p. 227.
[717] LXX. enlarges: _and the sea and the dry land_.
[718] Heb. sing. collect. LXX. plural.
[719] Again a sing. coll.
_ZECHARIAH_
(_I.-VIII._)
_Not by might, and not by force, but by My Spirit, saith Jehovah of
Hosts._
_Be not afraid, strengthen your hands! Speak truth, every man to his
neighbour; truth and wholesome judgment judge ye in your gates, and in
your hearts plan no evil for each other, nor take pleasure in false
swearing, for all these things do I hate—oracle of Jehovah._