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Haggai 1: What the Passage Says

60 claims across 15 verses, in the order the chapter makes them.

Not a sermon outline. What Haggai 1 says, and what its hard words meant. The reading of it is yours.

The Chapter in a Sentence

In the second year of King Darius, the prophet Haggai brings the LORD's word to Zerubbabel, the governor of Judah, and to Joshua the high priest. The people have been saying it is not yet time to rebuild the LORD's house, so the LORD tells them to think about their ways: their harvests, food, drink, clothing, and wages have all fallen short, and the LORD says the drought came because his house lies in ruins while each person tends his own. Haggai tells them to go get wood and build. The leaders and the people obey, the LORD tells them he is with them, and they begin work on the house on the twenty-fourth day of the sixth month.

Claim by Claim

  1. 1:1
    • In the second year of Darius the king, in the sixth month, on the first day of the month, the word of the LORD came through Haggai the prophet.
    • Haggai was a prophet.
    • The word came to Zerubbabel son of Shealtiel.
    • Zerubbabel was governor of Judah.
    • The word came also to Joshua son of Jehozadak.
    • Joshua was the high priest.
  2. 1:2
    • The LORD of hosts said this.
    • The LORD of hosts said that this people say the time has not come, the time for the house of the LORD to be built.
  3. 1:3
    • The word of the LORD came through Haggai the prophet.
  4. 1:4
    • The LORD asked whether it is a time for them themselves to dwell in their paneled houses.
    • The LORD said that this house lies in ruins.
  5. 1:5
    • The LORD of hosts said this.
    • The LORD of hosts told them to set their heart on their ways.
  6. 1:6
    • They have sown much.
    • They bring in little.
    • They eat but do not have enough to be satisfied.
    • They drink but are not filled with drink.
    • They clothe themselves but no one is warm.
    • The one who earns wages earns wages into a bag with holes.
  7. 1:7
    • The LORD of hosts said this.
    • The LORD of hosts told them to set their heart on their ways.
  8. 1:8
    • The LORD told them to go up to the mountain.
    • The LORD told them to bring wood.
    • The LORD told them to build the house.
    • The LORD said he will take pleasure in it.
    • The LORD said he will be glorified.
    • The LORD said this.
  9. 1:9
    • They looked for much.
    • It came to little.
    • When they brought it home, the LORD blew upon it.
    • The LORD of hosts asked why.
    • The LORD of hosts said the reason is his house, which lies in ruins.
    • The LORD of hosts said that each of them runs to his own house.
  10. 1:10
    • Therefore, on account of them, the heavens have withheld dew.
    • The earth has withheld its produce.
  11. 1:11
    • The LORD called for a drought upon the land.
    • The drought was upon the mountains.
    • The drought was upon the grain.
    • The drought was upon the new wine.
    • The drought was upon the fresh oil.
    • The drought was upon whatever the ground brings forth.
    • The drought was upon man.
    • The drought was upon livestock.
    • The drought was upon all the labor of the hands.
  12. 1:12
    • Zerubbabel son of Shealtiel obeyed the voice of the LORD their God.
    • Joshua son of Jehozadak the high priest obeyed the voice of the LORD their God.
    • All the remnant of the people obeyed the voice of the LORD their God.
    • They obeyed the words of Haggai the prophet.
    • The LORD their God had sent Haggai.
    • The people feared before the LORD.
  13. 1:13
    • Haggai was the LORD's messenger.
    • Haggai spoke to the people in the LORD's message.
    • Haggai said, I am with you.
    • The LORD declared, I am with you.
  14. 1:14
    • The LORD stirred up the spirit of Zerubbabel son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah.
    • The LORD stirred up the spirit of Joshua son of Jehozadak, the high priest.
    • The LORD stirred up the spirit of all the remnant of the people.
    • They came and did work on the house of the LORD of hosts, their God.
  15. 1:15
    • This was on the twenty-fourth day of the sixth month.
    • This was in the second year of Darius the king.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

1:1
Darius I ruled the Persian Empire; his second year was 520 BC. Judah was then a small province of that empire, so time is counted by the reign of the foreign king rather than by a king of Judah. The sixth Hebrew month (Elul) fell in late August and September; the first day of any month was the new moon, a holiday when people would already have been gathered. "The word of the LORD came by Haggai" means through him, the prophet speaks as a carrier of a message, not as its author. LORD printed in capitals stands in for the personal name of Israel's God, which Jewish readers did not say aloud. Zerubbabel, the Persian-appointed governor, and Joshua, the high priest, were the civil and religious heads of the community that had returned from exile in Babylon.
1:2
"The LORD of hosts" is a title: the LORD who commands the hosts, meaning armies, in most uses the armies of heaven. "The LORD's house" is the temple in Jerusalem, burned by the Babylonians in 587 BC. Returning exiles had laid a new foundation about 536 BC, but the work stopped, and the site had stood unfinished for roughly sixteen years by the time Haggai spoke.
1:4
"Cieled" in 1611 English meant panelled, walls lined with fitted wood, not "having a ceiling." Timber had to be cut and hauled or imported, so wood panelling marked a house as finished and expensive. The contrast is between completed private homes and a public ruin.
1:5
"Consider your ways" is literally "set your heart on your roads", take stock of how things have actually been going for you.
1:6
Coined money was only beginning to circulate in this period; wages were normally weighed-out pieces of silver carried home in a cloth purse. A purse with a hole in it loses them on the walk back, so the work is done and the pay is gone.
1:8
"The mountain" means the wooded hill country around Jerusalem. Building stone could be quarried nearby or salvaged from the ruins, but timber for roof beams, doors and scaffolding had to be cut and carried down, which is the labor being demanded.
1:9
"I did blow upon it" pictures a wind scattering a heap of threshed grain, so that what was carried home comes to nothing. "Ye run every man unto his own house" describes each person hurrying off to his own building project.
1:10
In this region rain falls only in the winter months. The heavy night dew is what keeps crops alive through the dry summer, so dew failing is as ruinous as rain failing.
1:11
"Corn" in 1611 English meant grain of any kind, here wheat and barley, not maize. Grain, new wine (freshly pressed grape juice, still fermenting) and olive oil were the three staple products of the land, and naming all three was the ordinary way of naming an entire year's harvest.
1:12
"The remnant of the people" means those left after the Babylonian conquest and deportations: the survivors and their descendants who had come back to Judah. "Did fear before the LORD" here carries the older sense of standing in awe or dread of a superior, not simple fright.
1:13
The Hebrew word for messenger, mal'ak, is the same word translated "angel" elsewhere; it means anyone sent to carry a message. The doubled phrase "the LORD's messenger in the LORD's message" underlines that both the sender and the words are the LORD's, not Haggai's.
1:14
The King James says God "stirred up the spirit" of these people. A person's spirit meant their inside self, where wanting and deciding begin.
1:15
Twenty-three days after the first message of verse 1, still within the same sixth month, around late September 520 BC. The gap covers the gathering of workers and materials.

Read Haggai 1