'In the seventh month, in the one and twentieth day of the month,
came the word of the Lord by the prophet Haggai, saying, 2. Speak
now to Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and to
Joshua the son of Josedech, the high priest, and to the residue of
the people, saying, 3. 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? 4. Yet now be strong, O Zerubbabel,
saith the Lord; and be strong, O Joshua, son of Josedech, the high
priest; and be strong, all ye people of the land, saith the Lord,
and work: for I am with you, saith the Lord of Hosts: 5. According
to the word that I covenanted with you when ye came out of Egypt,
so My Spirit remaineth among you: fear ye not. 6. 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; 7.
And I will shake all nations, and the desire of all nations shall
come; and I will fill this house with glory, saith the Lord of
Hosts. 8. The silver is Mine, and the gold is Mine, saith the Lord
of Hosts. 9. The glory of this latter house shall be greater than
of the former, saith the Lord of hosts: and in this place will I
give peace, saith the Lord of Hosts.'--HAGGAI ii. 1-9.
The second year of Darius, in which Haggai prophesied, was 520 B.C.
Political intrigues had stopped the rebuilding of the Temple, and the
enthusiasm of the first return had died away in the face of prolonged
difficulties. The two brave leaders, Zerubbabel and Joshua, still
survived, and kept alive their own zeal; but the mass of the people were
more concerned about their comforts than about the restoration of the
house of Jehovah. They had built for themselves 'ceiled houses,' and
were engrossed with their farms.
The Book of Ezra dwells on the external hindrances to the rebuilding.
Haggai goes straight at the selfishness and worldliness of the people as
the great hindrance. We know nothing about him beyond the fact that he
was a prophet working in conjunction with Zechariah. He has been thought
to have been one of the original company who came back with Zerubbabel,
and it has been suggested, though without any certainty, that he may
have been one of the old men who remembered the former house. But these
conjectures are profitless, and all that we know is that God sent him to
rouse the slackened earnestness of the people, and that his words
exercised a powerful influence in setting forward the work of
rebuilding. This passage is the second of his four short prophecies. We
may call it a vision of the glory of the future house of Jehovah.
The prophecy begins with fully admitting the depressing facts which were
chilling the popular enthusiasm. Compared with the former Temple, this
which they had begun to build could not but be 'as nothing.' So the
murmurers said, and Haggai allows that they are quite right. Note the
turn of his words: 'Who is left ... that saw this house in its former
glory?' There had been many eighteen years ago; but the old eyes that
had filled with tears then had been mostly closed by death in the
interval, and now but few survived. Perhaps if the eyes had not been so
dim with age, the rising house would not have looked so contemptible.
The pessimism of the aged is not always clear-sighted, nor their
comparisons of what was, and what is beginning to be, just. But it is
always wise to be frank in admitting the full strength of the opinions
that we oppose; and encouragements to work will never tell if they blink
difficulties or seek to deny plain facts. Haggai was wise when he began
with echoing the old men's disparagements, and in full view of them,
pealed out his brave incitements to the work.
The repetition of the one exhortation, 'Be strong, be strong, be
strong,' is very impressive. The very monotony has power. In the face of
the difficulties which beset every good work the cardinal virtue is
strength. 'To be weak is to be miserable,' and is the parent of
failures. One hears in the exhortation an echo of that to Joshua, to
whom and to his people the command 'Be strong and of good courage' was
given with like repetition (Joshua i.).
But there is nothing more futile than telling feeble men to be strong,
and trembling ones to be very courageous. Unless the exhorter can give
some means of strength and some reason for courage, his word is idle
wind. So Haggai bases his exhortation upon its sufficient ground, 'For I
am with you, saith Jehovah of hosts.' Strength is a duty, but only if we
have a source of strength available. The one basis of it is the presence
of God. His name reveals the immensity of His power, who commands all
the armies of heaven, angels, or stars, and to whom the forces of the
universe are as the ordered ranks of His disciplined army; and who is,
moreover, the Captain of earthly hosts, ever giving victory to those who
are His 'willing soldiers in the day of His power.' It is not vain to
bid a man be strong, if you can assure him that God is with him. Unless
you can, you may save your breath.
Here is the temper for all Christian workers. Let them realise the duty
of strength; let them have recourse to the Fountain of strength; let
them mark the purpose of strength, which is 'work,' as Haggai puts it so
emphatically. We have nothing to do with the magnitude of what we may be
able to build. It may be very poor beside the great houses that greater
ages or men have been able to rear. But whether it be a temple brave
with gold and cedar, or a log, it is our business to put all our
strength into the task, and to draw that strength from the assurance
that God is with us.
The difficulties connected with the translation of verse 5 need not
concern us here. For my purpose, the general sense resulting from any
translation is clear enough. The covenant made of old, when Israel came
from an earlier captivity, is fresh as ever, and God's Spirit is with
the people; therefore they need not fear. 'Fear ye not' is another of
the well-meant exhortations which often produce the opposite effect from
the intended one. One can fancy some of the people saying, 'It is all
very well to talk about not being afraid; but look at our feebleness,
our defencelessness, our enemies; we cannot but fear, if we open our
eyes.' Quite true; and there is only one antidote to fear, and that is
the assurance that God's covenant binds Him to take care of me. Unless
one believes that, he must be strangely blind to the facts of life if he
has not a cold dread coiled round his heart and ever ready to sting.
The Prophet rises into grand predictions of the glory of the poor house
which the weak hands were raising. Verses 6-9 set things invisible over
against the visible. In general terms the Prophet announces a speedy
convulsion, partly symbolical and partly real, in which 'all nations'
shall be revolutionised, and as a consequence, shall become Jehovah's
worshippers, bringing their treasures to the Temple, and so filling the
house with glory. This shall be because Jehovah is the true Possessor of
all their wealth. But the scope of verse 9 seems to transcend these
promises, and to point to an undescribed 'glory,' still greater than
that of the universal flocking of the nations with their gifts, and to
reach a climax in the wide promise of peace given in the Temple, and
thence, as is implied, flowing out 'like a river' through a
tranquillised world.
'Yet once, it is a little while.' How long did the little while last?
There were, possibly, some feeble incipient fulfilments of the prophecy
in the immediate future; for, after the exile, there were convulsions in
the political world which resulted in security to the Jews, and the
religion of Israel began to draw some scattered proselytes. But the
prophecy is not completely fulfilled even now, and it covers the entire
development of the 'kingdom that cannot be moved' until the end of time.
The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews thus understands the prophecy
(Hebrews xii. 26, 27), and there are echoes of it in Revelation xxi.,
which describes the final form of the Holy City, the New Jerusalem. So
the chronology of prophecy is not altogether that of history; and while
the events stand clear, their perspective is foreshortened. All the ages
are but 'a little while' in the calendar of heaven. In regard to the
whole of the prophetic utterances, we have often to say with the
disciples, 'What is this that he saith, a little while?' Eighteen
centuries have rolled away since the seer heard, 'Behold, I come
quickly,' and the vision still tarries.
The old interpretation of 'the desire of all nations' as meaning Jesus
Christ gave a literal fulfilment of the prophecy by His presence in the
Temple; but that meaning of the phrase is untenable, both because the
verb is in the plural, which would be impossible if a person were meant,
and because the only interpretation which gives relevancy to verse 8 is
that the expression means the silver and gold, there declared to be
Jehovah's. That venerable explanation, then, cannot stand. There were
offerings from heathen kings, such as those from Darius recorded in Ezra
vi. 6-10, and the gifts of Artaxerxes (Ezra vii. 15), which may be
regarded as incipient accomplishments; but such facts as these cannot
exhaust the prophecy.
It must be admitted that nothing happened during the history of that
Temple to answer to the full meaning of this prophecy. But was it
therefore a delusion that God spoke by Haggai? We must distinguish
between form and substance. The Temple was the centre point of the
kingdom of God on earth, the place of meeting between God and men, the
place of sacrifice. The fulfilment of the prophecy is not to be found in
any house made with hands, but in the true Temple which Jesus Christ has
builded. He in His own humanity was all that the Temple shadowed and
foretold. It is in Him, and in the spiritual Temple which He has reared,
that Haggai's vision will find its full realisation, which is yet
future. The powers that issue from Him shattered the Roman empire, have
ever since been casting earth's kingdoms into new moulds, and have still
destructive work to do. The 'once more' began when Jesus came, but the
final 'shaking' lies in front still. Every smaller revolution in thought
or sweeping away of institutions is a prelude to that great 'shaking'
when everything will go except the kingdom that cannot be moved. Its
result shall be that the treasures of the nations shall be poured at His
feet who is 'worthy to receive riches,' even as other prophecies have
foretold that 'men shall bring unto Thee the wealth of the nations'
(Isaiah lx. 11; Revelation xxi. 24, 26).
In that true Temple the glory of the Shechinah, which was wanting in the
second, for ever abides, 'the glory as of the only-begotten of the
Father'; and in it dwells for ever the dove of peace, ready to glide
into every heart that enters to worship at the shrine. Jesus Christ is
not the 'desire of all nations' which shall come to the Temple, but is
the Temple to which the wealth of all nations shall be brought, in whom
the true glory of a manifested God abides, and from whom the peace of
God which passeth all understanding, and is His own peace too, shall
enter reconciled souls, and calm turbulent passions, and reconcile
contending peoples, and diffuse its calm through all the nations of the
saved who there 'walk in the light of the Lord.'
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