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Haggai 2: What the Passage Says

77 claims across 23 verses, in the order the chapter makes them.

Not a sermon outline. What Haggai 2 says, and what its hard words meant. The reading of it is yours.

The Chapter in a Sentence

On three dated occasions in the second year of Darius, the LORD speaks through the prophet Haggai to Zerubbabel the governor, Joshua the high priest, and the people rebuilding the temple. He tells Zerubbabel, Joshua and all the people of the land to be strong and work, promises to shake the nations and fill this house with glory and peace, and uses a ruling from the priests about clean and unclean to explain their poor harvests. He then promises blessing from the day the foundation was laid, and tells Zerubbabel that when he overturns kingdoms he will make him like his signet ring.

Claim by Claim

  1. 2:1
    • In the seventh month, on the twenty-first day of the month, the word of the LORD came through Haggai the prophet.
    • The word came in order to be spoken.
  2. 2:2
    • The LORD told Haggai to speak to Zerubbabel son of Shealtiel.
    • Zerubbabel was governor of Judah.
    • The LORD told Haggai to speak to Joshua son of Jehozadak.
    • Joshua was the high priest.
    • The LORD told Haggai to speak to the remnant of the people.
  3. 2:3
    • The LORD asked who among them was left who had seen this house in its former glory.
    • The LORD asked how they see the house now.
    • The LORD asked whether the house is not like nothing in their eyes by comparison.
  4. 2:4
    • The LORD told Zerubbabel to be strong.
    • The LORD told Joshua son of Jehozadak, the high priest, to be strong.
    • The LORD told all the people of the land to be strong.
    • The LORD told them to work.
    • The LORD of hosts said he is with them.
  5. 2:5
    • The LORD referred to the word he covenanted with them when they came out of Egypt.
    • The LORD said his spirit remains among them.
    • The LORD told them not to fear.
  6. 2:6
    • The LORD of hosts said that once more, in a little while, he will shake the heavens.
    • He will shake the earth.
    • He will shake the sea.
    • He will shake the dry land.
  7. 2:7
    • The LORD will shake all the nations.
    • The desire of all nations will come.
    • It is unresolved whether what comes is a single desired one or the desirable treasures of the nations.
    • The LORD will fill this house with glory.
    • The LORD of hosts said this.
  8. 2:8
    • The LORD of hosts said the silver belongs to him.
    • The LORD of hosts said the gold belongs to him.
  9. 2:9
    • The latter glory of this house will be greater than its former glory.
    • It is unresolved whether 'latter' describes the house or its glory.
    • The LORD of hosts said this.
    • In this place the LORD will give peace.
  10. 2:10
    • On the twenty-fourth day of the ninth month, in the second year of Darius, the word of the LORD came to Haggai the prophet.
  11. 2:11
    • The LORD of hosts told Haggai to ask the priests for a ruling from the law.
  12. 2:12
    • The question was posed: if a man carries consecrated meat in the fold of his garment, and with that fold touches bread, stew, wine, oil, or any food, does that food become holy?
    • The priests answered no.
  13. 2:13
    • Haggai then asked whether, if someone unclean from contact with a dead body touches any of these, it becomes unclean.
    • The priests answered that it becomes unclean.
  14. 2:14
    • Haggai answered that this people is so.
    • Haggai said this nation is so before the LORD.
    • The LORD declared it.
    • Haggai said every work of their hands is so.
    • Haggai said that what they offer there is unclean.
  15. 2:15
    • Haggai told them to consider carefully from this day onward.
    • The time in view is before a stone was laid on a stone in the temple of the LORD.
  16. 2:16
    • In those days one came to a heap expecting twenty measures and there were ten.
    • One came to the wine vat to draw fifty measures from the press and there were twenty.
  17. 2:17
    • The LORD struck them with blight.
    • The LORD struck them with mildew.
    • The LORD struck them with hail.
    • The striking fell on all the work of their hands.
    • They did not turn to the LORD.
  18. 2:18
    • Haggai told them to consider from this day onward.
    • The day in view is the twenty-fourth day of the ninth month.
    • That is the day the foundation of the LORD's temple was laid.
    • Haggai repeated the command to consider.
  19. 2:19
    • Haggai asked whether the seed is still in the barn.
    • The vine has not yielded.
    • The fig tree has not yielded.
    • The pomegranate has not yielded.
    • The olive tree has not yielded.
    • The LORD said that from this day he will bless them.
  20. 2:20
    • The word of the LORD came to Haggai a second time.
    • It came on the twenty-fourth day of the month.
  21. 2:21
    • The LORD told Haggai to speak to Zerubbabel, governor of Judah.
    • The LORD said he will shake the heavens and the earth.
  22. 2:22
    • The LORD will overthrow the throne of kingdoms.
    • The LORD will destroy the strength of the kingdoms of the nations.
    • The LORD will overthrow the chariots and those who ride in them.
    • The horses and their riders will come down.
    • Each will fall by the sword of his brother.
  23. 2:23
    • On that day the LORD of hosts will take Zerubbabel son of Shealtiel.
    • The LORD calls Zerubbabel his servant.
    • The LORD will make Zerubbabel like a signet ring.
    • The LORD has chosen Zerubbabel.
    • The LORD of hosts declared this.

Words Worth Explaining

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

2:1
The seventh month of the Hebrew calendar falls in our September–October; this is 520 BC. The twenty-first day was the last day of the Feast of Tabernacles, a week-long autumn harvest festival kept at the sanctuary, so the crowd Haggai addresses is standing at a half-built temple during the very festival Solomon had once used to dedicate the first one.
2:2
Zerubbabel was the Persian-appointed governor of Judah, which was at this date a small province of the Persian empire; he was also a descendant of the old royal house of David. "Josedech" is the King James spelling of Jehozadak. The high priest was the chief priest, in charge of the temple, its sacrifices and its personnel. "The rest of the people who are left" refers to the remnant who had returned from exile in Babylon, where the population of Judah had been deported some sixty-six years earlier.
2:3
The first temple was the one built by Solomon, destroyed by the Babylonian army in 586 BC, sixty-six years before this speech. Anyone who could actually remember it would have been at least seventy years old.
2:4
"LORD of Hosts" translates a title meaning roughly "the LORD of armies", the massed forces of heaven at his command. It recurs throughout this chapter as a formal, weighty way of naming God. "People of the land" here simply means the ordinary population, as opposed to the two leaders just named.
2:5
The reference is to the agreement (covenant) God made with Israel after bringing them out of slavery in Egypt, centuries before, a binding arrangement with obligations on both sides, the founding event of the nation.
2:6
Shaking heaven, earth, sea and dry land is stock language in Hebrew poetry for God intervening visibly in the world; it pictures the whole created order trembling, as at an earthquake or storm, when God acts.
2:7
The Hebrew phrase behind "what all the nations desire" is genuinely ambiguous, and translators divide over it. The noun is singular ("the desirable thing" or "the treasure") but the verb attached to it is plural, so it may mean the desirable goods, the wealth, of all the nations flowing in, or a single desired object or person coming. The King James keeps the singular; most modern versions take it as treasure.
2:8
This lands on a practical worry. The returned community was poor, and Solomon's temple had been famous for its gold. The claim that the metals already belong to God answers the objection that there is not enough money to build anything worth looking at.
2:9
"Peace" translates shalom, which covers far more than the absence of fighting: wholeness, safety, prosperity, everything being as it should be.
2:10
The ninth month falls in our November–December; Darius is Darius I, king of Persia, and his second year is 520 BC. This message comes about three months after the one in verse 1.
2:11
Priests served as the legal authorities on questions of ritual purity, and a formal question put to them for a binding answer was a recognized procedure. Haggai is not asking for an opinion but requesting an official ruling from the law of Moses.
2:12
"Meat set apart for God" is flesh from a sacrificed animal, which became holy, restricted to sacred use and to the priests. Robes of the period had no pockets; a loose fold of cloth at the chest or hem was used to carry things. The question is technical: does holiness pass on at second hand, from the meat to the cloth to something the cloth touches? The priests rule that it does not.
2:13
Contact with a human corpse was the most serious form of ritual uncleanness in Israelite law, leaving a person unclean for seven days and requiring a specific washing ritual to remove it. Unlike holiness, that uncleanness did spread by contact, which is the point of the contrast.
2:14
"Whatever they offer there" means the sacrifices being made at the altar on the temple site, where offerings had resumed even though the building itself lay unfinished.
2:15
The Hebrew reads literally "from this day and upward," an idiom meaning to look back over the time already past, not forward.
2:16
The King James "twenty measures" and "fifty vessels" render two standard units. The grain measure is the ephah, roughly twenty liters or half a bushel; the liquid measure is the bath, roughly twenty-two liters or six gallons. The winepress was a hewn stone basin where grapes were trodden, with the juice running off into a lower vat to be drawn out.
2:17
Blight is crop damage from scorching dry wind, mildew a fungal rot from damp; together with hail these three form a standard list of agricultural disasters in Israel's law, named there as consequences of breaking the covenant.
2:18
Work on the rebuilding had already restarted some three months earlier. This date probably marks a formal ceremony of refounding or rededicating the building rather than the first stone being moved.
2:19
In December the autumn sowing is done, so the grain bins are empty and the seed is in the ground; the vine, fig, pomegranate and olive, the standard fruit crops of the region, are months away from bearing. At this moment in the year there is nothing yet visible to judge the coming harvest by.
2:22
Chariots were the elite strike force of ancient armies, the most expensive and prestigious part of a kingdom's military. "Each one by the sword of his fellow soldier" describes an army thrown into panic and cutting itself to pieces, a recurring picture in Israel's battle stories of an enemy destroyed without Israel having to fight.
2:23
A signet ring carried an engraved seal that its owner pressed into soft clay or wax to stamp documents with his personal mark. It functioned as a signature and a delegation of authority, was kept on the hand or on a cord at the neck, and was never lent out. A century earlier the prophet Jeremiah had said of Zerubbabel's grandfather, King Jehoiachin, that even if he were a signet ring on God's right hand he would be pulled off and handed to the Babylonians; the image here reverses that wording.

Read Haggai 2