They had hardly commenced building, however, when the
Samaritans came with a request that they might take part in the building of the temple, because they also sought the God of the Jews. Now, when the chiefs of Judah refused to grant them this request, as being a mixed people, composed of the heathen colonists who had been transplanted into the kingdom of the ten tribes and a few Israelites who were left behind in the land, whilst their worship of God was greatly distorted by heathenism (see at 2 Kings xvii. 24-41), they endeavoured to disturb the work already begun, and to prevent its continuation and completion. They made the hands of the people of Judah idle, as we read in Ezra iv. 4, 5, frightening them while building, and hiring counsellors against them to frustrate their design, the whole of the still remaining time of Cyrus, and even till the reign of king Darius of Persia, so that the work at the house of God at Jerusalem ceased and was suspended till the second year of the reign of this king (Ezra iv. 24). But even if these machinations of the adversaries of Judah furnished the outward occasion for the interruption and suspension of the work they had begun, we must not seek for the sole and sufficient reason for the breaking off of the work in these alone. Nothing is recorded of any revocation of the edict issued by Cyrus during his reign; and even if the letter to Artachsata given in Ezra iv. 7 sqq. referred, as is generally assumed, to the building of the temple, and the reply of this king, which prohibited the continuation of the building, was issued by ' Pseudo-Smerdis, this only took place under the second successor of Cyrus, twelve years after the laying of the foundation-stone of the temple. What the enemies of Judah had previously undertaken and accomplished consisted simply in the fact that they made the hands of the Jewish people idle, frightening them while building, and frustrating their enterprise by hiring counsellors." The latter they would hardly have succeeded in, if the Jews themselves had taken real
1 So much is evident from the account in the book of Ezra, concerning the machinations of the Samaritans to frustrate the building. The more precise determination of what they did—namely, whether they obtained a command from the king to suspend the building—depends upon the explanation given to the section in Ezra (iv. 6-23), into which we need not enter more minutely till we come to our exposition of the book itself, inasmuch as it is not important to decide this question in order to understand our prophet.
pleasure in the continuation of the work, and had had firm confidence in the assistance of God. These were wanting. Even at the ceremony of laying the foundation-stone, many of the old priests, Levites and heads of tribes, who had seen the first temple, spoiled the people’s pleasure by loud weeping. This weeping can hardly be explained merely from the recollection of the trials and sufferings of the last fifty years, which came involuntarily into their mind at that moment of solemn rejoicing, but was no doubt occasioned chiefly by the sight of the miserable circumstances under which the congregation took this work in hand, and in which they could not help saying to themselves, that the execution of the work would not correspond to the hopes which might have been cherished from the restoration of the house of God. But such thoughts as these would of necessity greatly detract from their pleasure in building, and as soon as outward difficulties were also placed in their way, would supply food to the doubt whether the time for carrying on this work had really come. Thus the zeal for building the house of God so cooled down, that they gave it up altogether, and simply began to provide for their own necessities, and to establish themselves comfortably in the land of their fathers, so far as the circumstances permitted (Hag. i. 4). This becomes perfectly intelligible, if we add that, judging from the natural character of sinful men, there were no doubt a considerable number of men among those who had returned, who had been actuated to return less by living faith in the Lord and His word, than by earthly hopes of prosperity and comfort in the land of their fathers. As soon as they found themselves disappointed in their expectations, they became idle and indifferent with regard to the house of the Lord. And the addresses of our prophet show clearly enough, that one principal reason for the suspension of the work is to be sought for in the lukewarmness and indifference of the people.
The contents and object of these addresses, viz. the circumstance that they are chiefly occupied with the command to build the temple, and attach great promises to the performance of this work, can only be explained in part, however, from the fact that the fidelity of the nation towards its God showed itself in zeal for the house of God. The deeper and truer explanation is to be found in the significance which the temple possessed in relation to the kingdom of God in its Old Testament form. The covenant of grace, made by the God of heaven and earth with the nation of Israel which He had chosen for His own peculiar possession, required, as a visible pledge of the real fellowship into which Jehovah had. entered with Israel, a place where this fellowship could be sustained. For this reason, directly after the conclusion of the covenant at Sinai, God commanded the tabernacle to be erected, for a sanctuary in which, as. covenant God, He would dwell among His people in a visible symbol; and, as the sign of the fulfilment of this divine promise, at the dedication of the tabernacle, and also of the temple of Solomon which took its place, the glory of Jehovah in the form of a cloud filled the sanctuary that had been built for His name. Hence the continuance of the ancient covenant, or of the kingdom of God in Israel, was bound up with the temple. When this was destroyed the covenant was broken, and the continuance of the kingdom of God suspended. If, therefore, the covenant which had been dissolved during the exile was to be renewed, if the kingdom of God was to be re-established in its Old Testament form, the rebuilding of the temple was the first and most important prerequisite for this; and the people were bound to pursue the work of building it with all possible zeal, that they might thereby practically attest their desire and readiness to resume the covenant fellowship which had been interrupted for a time. After the people had thus fulfilled the duty that devolved upon them, they might expect from the faithfulness of the Lord, their covenant God, that He would also restore the former gracious connection in all its completeness, and fulfil all His covenant promises. It is in this that the significance of Haggai’s prophecies consists, so far as they have regard to the furthering of the work of building the temple. And this object was attained. The building of the temple was resumed in consequence of his admonition, and at the end of four years and a half—namely, in the sixth year of the reign of Darius— the work was finished (Ezra vi. 14, 15). But at its dedication the new temple was not filled with the cloud of the glory of Jehovah; yea, the most essential feature in the covenant made at Sinai was wanting, viz. the ark with the testimony, i.e. the tables of the law, which no man could restore, inasmuch as the ten words of the covenant had been written upon the tables by God Himself. The old covenant was not to be restored in its Sinaitic form; but according to the promise made through Jeremiah (xxxi. 31 sqq.), the Lord would make a new covenant with the house of Israel and Judah; He would put His law into their heart, and write it in their minds. The people, however, were not sufficiently prepared for this. Therefore those who had returned from Babylon were still to continue under the rule of the heathen powers of the world, until the time had arrived for the conclusion of the new covenant, when ‘the Lord would come to His temple, and the angel of the covenant would fill it with the glory of the heathen. Thus the period of Zerubbabel’s temple was a time of waiting for Judah, and a period of preparation for the coming of the promised Saviour. To give the people a pledge during that period of the certainty of the fulfilment of the covenant grace of God, was the object of Haggai’s two promises of salvation.
So far as the form is concerned, the prophecies of Haggai have not the poetical swing of the earlier prophetical diction. They are written in the simplest rhetorical style, and never rise very far above the level of good prose, although vivacity is sates to “ie pep by the frequent use of interrogatives (cf. ch. i. 4, 9, ii. 8, 12, 13, 19), and it by no means infrequently ones into i aiaonioal rhythm (cf. ch. 1. 6, 9-11, ii. 6-8, 22). One characteristic of Hageai’s mode of deserts tion is the peculiar habit to which Naspelsbach has called attention—namely, of uttering the main thought with concise and nervous brevity, after a long and verbose introduction (cf. ch. i. 26, i. 120, ii. 5d, ii. 19D); so that it might be said that he is accustomed “to conceal a small and most intensive kernel under a broad and thick shell.” His language is tolerably free from Chaldzeisms.
For the exegetical literature, see my Lehrbuch der Linleitung, p. 808; to which add Aug. Koehler’s die Weissagungen Hagga’’s erklart, Erlangen 1860.
Haggai, having reproved the people for their indifference with regard to the rebuilding of the temple, and pointed to the failure of their crops for want of rain as a divine chastisement consequent upon it, admonishes Zerubbabel the governor, Joshua the high priest, and the people generally, to resume the building of the temple (vers. 2-11), and then describes the way in which his appeal was responded to (vers. 12-15).
In ver. 1 this address is introduced by a statement of the time at which it had been delivered, and the persons to whom it was addressed. The word of Jehovah was uttered through the prophet in the second year of king Darius, on the first day of the sixth month. 77 answers to the name Ddryavush or Ddarayavush of the arrow-headed inscriptions; it is derived from the Zendic dar, Sanskrit dhri, contracted into dhar, and is correctly explained by Herodotus (vi. 98) as signifying ép&eins = coércitor. It is written in Greek Aapetos (Darius). The king referred to is the king of Persia (Ezra iv. 5, 24), the first of that name, i.e. Darius Hystaspes, who reigned from 521 to 486 B.c. That this is the king meant, and not Darius Nothus, is evident from the fact that Zerubbabel the Jewish prince, and Joshua the high priest, who had led back the exiles from Babylon to Judea in the reign of Cyrus, in the year 5386 (Kzra i. 8, ii. 2), might very well be still at the head of the returned people in the second year of the reign of Darius Hystaspes, 7.2. in the year 520, but could not have been still living in the reign of Darius Nothus, who did not ascend the throne till 113 years after the close of the captivity. Moreover, in ch. ii. 3, Haggai presupposes that many of his contemporaries had seen the temple of Solomon. Now, as that temple had been destroyed in the year 588 or 587, there might very well be old men still living under Darius Hystaspes, in the year 520, who had seen that temple in their early days; but that could not be the case under Darius Nothus, who ascended the Persian throne in the year 423. The prophet addresses his word to the temporal and spiritual heads of the nation, to the governor Zerubbabel and the high priest Joshua. 2230 is written in many codd. 22201, and is either formed from 223 WM, an Babyloniam dispersus, or as the child, if born before the dispersion in Babylonia, would not have received this name proleptically, probably more correctly from >23 ym, nm Babylonia satus s. genitus, in which case the » was assimilated to the 2 when the two words were joined into one, and 2 received a dagesh. Zerubbabel (LXX. ZopoBaBer) was the son of Shealtiél. 5s*ndNw is written in the same way in ch. ii. 23, 1 Chron. iii. 17, Ezra iii. 2, and Neh. xii. 1; whereas in vers. 12 and 14, and ots ii. 2, it is contracted into Dn, She aliv’él, i.e. the prayer of Gea, or one asked of God in prayer, was, according to 1 Chron. iii. 17, if we take ’assir as an Apalldtines a son of Jeconiah (Jehoiachin), or, if we take ‘assir aS a proper name, a son of Assir the son of Jeconiah, and therefore a grandson of Jehoiachin. But, according to 1 Chron. iii. 19, Zerubbabel was a son of Pedaiah, a brother of Shealtiel. And lastly, according to the genealogy in Luke iil. 27, Shealtiel was not a son of either Assir or Jeconiah, but of Neri, a descendant of David through hisson Nathan. These three divergent accounts, according to which Zerubbabel was (1) a son of Shealtiél, (2) a son of Pedaiah, the brother of Shealtiél, and a grandson of Assir or Jeconiah, (3) a son of Shealtiél and grandson of Neri, may be brought into harmony by means of the following combinations, if we bear in mind the prophecy of Jeremiah (Jer. xxii. 30), that Jeconiah would be childless, and not be blessed with having one of his seed sitting upon the throne of David and ruling over Judah. Since this prophecy of Jeremiah was fulfilled, according to the genealogical table given by Luke, inasmuch as Shealtiél’s father there is not Assir or Jeconiah, a descendant of David in the line of Solomon, but Neri, a descendant of David’s son Nathan, it follows that neither of the sons of Jeconiah mentioned in 1 Chron. iii. 17, 18 (Zedekiah and Assir) had a son, but that the latter had only a daughter, who married a man of the family of her father’s tribe, according to the law of the heiresses, Num. xxvii. 8, xxxvi. 8, 9—namely Neri, who belonged to the tribe of Judah and family of David. From this marriage sprang Shealtiél, Malkiram, Pedaiah, and others. The eldest of these took possession of the property of his maternal grandfather, and was regarded in law as his (legitimate) son. Hence he is described in 1 Chron. iii. 17 as the son of Assir the son of Jeconiah, whereas in Luke he is described, according to his lineal descent, as the son of Neri. But Shealtiél also appears to have died without posterity, and simply to have left a widow, which necessitated a Levirate marriage on the part of one of the brothers (Deut. xxv. 5-10; Matt. xxii. 24-28). Shealtiél’s second brother Pedaiah appears to have performed his duty, and to have begotten Zerubbabel and Shimei by this sister-in-law (1 Chron. iii. 19), the former of whom, Zerubbabel, was entered in the family register of the deceased uncle Shealtiél, passing as his (lawful) son and heir, and continuing his family. Koehler holds essentially the same views (see his comm. on ch. ii. 23). Zerubbabel was pechah, a Persian governor. The real meaning of this foreign word is still a disputed point.’ In addition to his Hebrew name, Zerubbabel also bore the Chaldsean name Sheshbazzar, as an officer of the Persian king, as we may see by comparing Ezra i. 8, 11, v. 14, 16, with Ezra i. 2, ii. 2, 8, and v. 2. For the prince of Judah, Sheshbazzar, to whom Koresh directed the temple vessels brought from Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar to be delivered, and who brought them back from Babylon to Jerusalem (Ezra i. 8, 11, v. 14), and who laid the foundation for the house of God, according to ch. vy. 16, is