HAGGAI SUMMARIES
Author: Haggai 1:1 identifies the author of the Book of Haggai as the Prophet Haggai.
Date of Writing: The Book of Haggai was written in approximately 520 B.C.
Purpose of Writing: Haggai sought to challenge the people of God concerning their priorities. He called them to reverence and glorify God by building the Temple in spite of local and official opposition. Haggai called them not to be discouraged because this Temple would not be quite as richly decorated as Solomon's. He exhorted them to turn from the uncleanness of their ways and to trust in God's sovereign power. The Book of Haggai is a reminder of the problems the people of God faced at this time, how the people courageously trusted in God and how God provided for their needs.
Key Verses: Haggai 1:4, "Is it a time for you yourselves to be living in your paneled houses, while this house remains a ruin?"
Haggai 1:5-6, "Now this is what the LORD Almighty says: 'Give careful thought to your ways. You have planted much, but have harvested little. You eat, but never have enough. You drink, but never have your fill. You put on clothes, but are not warm. You earn wages, only to put them in a purse with holes in it.'"
Haggai 2:9, "'The glory of this present house will be greater than the glory of the former house,' says the LORD Almighty. 'And in this place I will grant peace,' declares the LORD Almighty."
Brief Summary: Will the people of God reconsider their priorities, take courage, and act on the basis of God's promises? God sought to warn the people to heed His words. Not only did God warn them, but He also offered promises through His servant Haggai to motivate them to follow Him. Because the people of God reversed their priorities and failed to put God in first place in their lives, Judah was sent into Babylonian exile. In response to Daniel's prayer and in fulfillment of God's promises, God directed Cyrus the Persian king to allow the Jews in exile to go back to Jerusalem. A group of Jews returned to their land with great joy, put God first in their lives, worshiped Him and began to rebuild the Temple of Jerusalem without the aid of the local people who lived in Palestine. Their courageous faith was met with opposition from the local people as well as the Persian government for approximately 15 years.
Foreshadowings: As with most of the books of the minor prophets, Haggai ends with promises of restoration and blessing. In the last verse, Haggai 2:23, God uses a distinctly messianic title in reference to Zerubbabel, "My Servant" (Compare 2 Samuel 3:18; 1 Kings 11:34; Isaiah 42:1-9; Ezekiel 37:24,25). Through Haggai, God promises to make him like a signet ring, which was a symbol of honor, authority, and power, somewhat like a king's scepter used to seal letters and decrees. Zerubbabel, as God's signet ring, represents the house of David and the resumption of the messianic line interrupted by the Exile. Zerubbabel reestablished the Davidic line of kings which would culminate in the millennial reign of Christ. Zerubbabel appears in the line of Christ on both Joseph's side (Matt. 1:12) and Mary's side (Luke 3:27).
Practical Application: The Book of Haggai draws attention to common problems most people face even today. Haggai asks us 1) to examine our priorities to see if we are more interested in our own pleasures than doing the work of God; 2) to reject a defeatist attitude when we run into opposition or discouraging circumstances; 3) to confess our failures and seek to live pure lives before God; 4) to act courageously for God because we have the assurance that He is with us always and is in full control of our circumstances; and 5) to rest secure in God's hands knowing that He will abundantly bless us as we faithfully serve Him.
by Paul R. Van Gorder
HAGGAI
This prophet, whose name means ''festive'' or ''festival of the Lord,'' was the first of the post-exile prophets. About 50,000 Jews had come back from Babylon after 70 years of captivity. The task before these people was the rebuilding of the wall and city of Jerusalem, the restoration of the temple, and the reviving of its religious activities.
In spite of the noble endeavor before them, they soon forgot the Lord. As the book of Haggai begins, 15 months have already elapsed since their return. The temple remains in ruins, and no one has attempted to repair it. Jehovah, therefore, raised up two prophets, Haggai and Zechariah, so that His name and His house might not be kept in dishonor. [Ezra 5:1-3]
Haggai was the first of these prophets. He is called ''Jehovah's messenger.'' Although his style was plain and his language simple, God placed upon him the high honor of being His spokesman.
Haggai preached four sermons to this returned remnant, during a period of three months. They give us the structure of the book.
OUTLINE OF THE BOOK--
THE NEGLECT OF GOD'S HOUSE (ch. 1)
Haggai's initial sermon was delivered on the first day of September, 520 B.C. He appealed to the people's sense of shame. God's house was in ruins while they lived in comfortable homes. They had shamefully neglected the house of the Lord. You may excuse them, saying, ''They had been there only a few months.'' The Bible clearly tells us, however, to seek ''first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness'' (Mat 6:33).
What bearing does Haggai's message have on us today? Paul said in Romans 15:4, ''For whatever things were written in earlier times were written for our learning.'' It is impossible to ignore God and His interests without reaping the consequences. The people had sowed very little and were reaping little. They ate, but they were not filled. They drank, but they were not satisfied. They put on clothes, but they were not warm. They received wages for their labor, but they had a hole in their pocketbooks. They gathered wood, but God's breath of judgment was upon it. As a result, the dew from heaven had been withheld, and the fields that produced their food had failed (1:6).
The intervention of God is strikingly expressed in verse 11, ''And I called for a drought upon the land, upon the mountains, and upon the grain, and upon the new wine, and upon the oil, and upon that which the ground bringeth forth, and upon men, and upon cattle, and upon all the labor of the hands.'' The Jews had put God and His work in second place, and had given priority to themselves. God had responded in judgment.
Haggai's sermon was effective, for we learn that the temple was soon repaired (1:14).
DISSATISFACTION (2:1-9)
This produced the need for Haggai's second sermon. The people had worked hard on the temple and finished it. But the restored temple was not nearly as good or as beautiful or as grand as the old temple. The prophet observed, ''Is it not in your eyes in comparison with it as nothing?'' (2:3) [cp. Ezra 3:12]. The Jews were comparing the present with the past. The prophet had a message from God for the complainers, and it had four parts:
1. Jehovah said, ''I am with you'' (v.4).
2. Jehovah gave the assurance of His presence (v.5).
3. God predicted that He would ''shake all nations'' (v.7).
4. God promised that the glory of the heavenly temple would be much greater than the one they were weeping over (v.9).
MORAL CONDITIONS OF ISRAEL (2:10-19)
The picture Haggai gave was taken from the law of Moses. It referred to the regulation Jehovah had given to His people Israel about touching a dead body, thus producing ceremonial uncleanness (Haggai 2:11-13). The prophet applied it to the people of his day, saying, ''So is this people, and so is this nation before Me, saith the Lord'' (v.14). Their hearts were wrong. Haggai was given the spiritual perception to see that the neglect of the Lord's house and the terrible complaining had come from within. Nothing that the people could do would be pleasing to God until they established a right heart condition. They could not see this, however, even though God's stern hand of judgment had come upon them. The moral condition of the Jews in that day pictures the moral degradation of the days in which we are living.
FUTURE JUDGMENT AND GLORY (2:20-23)
On the same day [that] he gave his third message, the prophet delivered still another sermon. But this time, he spanned the ages and declared the word of the Lord concerning the endtime (2:20-23). We know that he leaped the centuries and saw the future, because the inspired penman of the epistle to the Hebrews quoted Haggai's prophecy as follows: ''Whose voice then shook the earth; but now He hath promised, saying, Yet once more I shake not the earth only, but also heaven'' (Hebrews 12:26). The book of Hebrews gave the same warning to the church in this age that Haggai gave to the Jews.
What will this day of judgment be like? It will mean the overturning of the nations, for the age will end in terrible conflict (see Revelation 19:17-20). Following this, God's chosen One will sit on the throne of His glory and rule in peace and righteousness. Zerrubbabel became a type of the Lord Jesus Christ in this respect, for the Lord said to him through Haggai, ''I... will make thee as a signet; for I have chosen thee'' (Hag 2:23). Zerrubbabel, therefore, is a reflection of Christ in His princely office. [Zerrubbabel, a descendant of king David, is also in the lineage leading to the birth of the great King. Mat 1:12,13]
The words of Psalm 2 are echoed at the conclusion of Haggai's prophecy:
''Yet have I set My king upon My holy hill of Zion.
I will declare the decree: The Lord hath said unto Me,
Thou art My Son; this day have I begotten Thee.
Ask of Me, and I shall give Thee the nations for Thine inheritance,
and the uttermost parts of the earth for Thy possession.'' (Psalm 2:6-8).
In Acts 13, the apostle Paul, in the synagogue at Antioch, quoted these words, declaring to all that they refer to the Lord Jesus Christ.
Haggai
Who wrote the book?
The prophet Haggai recorded his four messages to the Jewish people of Jerusalem in 520 BC, eighteen years after their return from exile in Babylon (538 BC). Haggai 2:3 seems to indicate that the prophet had seen Jerusalem before the destruction of the temple and the exile in 586 BC, meaning he was more than seventy years old by the time he delivered his prophecies. From these facts, the picture of Haggai begins to come into focus. He was an older man looking back on the glories of his nation, a prophet imbued with a passionate desire to see his people rise up from the ashes of exile and reclaim their rightful place as God's light to the nations.
Where are we?
Haggai's prophecy came at a time when the people of Judah were extremely vulnerable. They had been humbled by their exile to Babylon, hopeful in their return to their Promised Land, and then so discouraged by opposition in their rebuilding of the temple that they had quit (Ezra 4:24). Now, sixteen years later, with Haggai blaming their lack of food, clothing, and shelter on their failure to rebuild the temple, the Jews were receptive to his message of rebuilding the Lord's house.
Unlike most of the other prophets, Haggai explicitly dated his prophecies, down to the day. He gave four separate messages, the first on August 29, 520 BC (Haggai 1:1); the second on October 17, 520 BC (2:1); and the final two on December 18, 520 BC (2:10, 20). These messages encouraged the people of Judah to finish building the temple and to have hope in God for the promise of blessings in the future.
Why is Haggai so important?
After thousands of years, the book of Haggai remains largely unique among the books of Old Testament prophets for one key reason: the people of Judah listened! Haggai's message to rebuild the temple was passionate, simple, and straightforward (Haggai 1:8). No one could mistake whether or not his direction had been followed-the results would be evident for all the people to see. Through the physical act of rebuilding the temple, the people began to indicate a shift in their spiritual lives: from devotion to self toward devotion to God.
What's the big idea?
Haggai had an important message for the Jews who had recently returned from exile. They had forgotten their God, choosing instead to focus on their own interests, so it was time for them to "consider [their] ways" (Haggai 1:5, 7). Nothing was more important for the Jews than to show that the Lord was at the center of their thoughts and actions, so Haggai directed them to finish rebuilding God's temple.
However, rather than leaving them alone with the task of rebuilding, Haggai continued to preach to the Jews, encouraging them with the hope of future glory in the temple and a victory to come over the enemies of God's people (2:7-9, 21-22). According to Haggai's message, if the people would place God at the center of their lives, they would realize the future blessings that God had in store for His people.
How do I apply this?
The Jews who emigrated from Babylon to their original homeland of Judah faced intense opposition, both external and internal. Ezra 4:1-5 records the external resistance to the project of rebuilding the temple. The enemies of Judah first attempted to infiltrate the ranks of the builders, and when that didn't work, they resorted to scare tactics. Haggai, on the other hand, focused on the internal opposition they faced, namely from their own sin. The Jews had thoughtlessly placed their own interests before the Lord's interests, looking after their own safety and security without giving consideration to the status of the Lord's house.
Haggai's encouragement to rebuild the temple in the face of the Jews' neglect brings to mind the apostle Paul's exhortation to Christians to build our lives on the foundation of Jesus Christ (1 Corinthians 3:10-17). Are you building a life that reflects your status as a temple of the Holy Spirit, leaving a legacy that will stand the test of time? Find encouragement for that construction project in the four passionate sermons from this Old Testament prophet.
Haggai Summary
The book of Haggai is Narrative History and Prophetic Oracle. The prophet Haggai wrote it approximately 520 B.C. Haggai is among the most carefully and precisely dated books in the entire Bible. It is a post-exilic book, meaning it was written after (post) the captivity (exile) in Babylon. Key personalities are Haggai, Zerubbabel, and Joshua.
The purpose of this book was that Haggai was called by God to encourage the people to finish the construction of the temple in Jerusalem. The construction had ceased because of opposition and because the neighboring countries, and the Jews were frightened.
• In chapter 1, God called on Haggai to deliver His message. The Jews were living in their comfortable houses while the temple, the house of God, sat unfinished, "Thus says the LORD of hosts, 'This people says, "The time has not come, even the time for the house of the LORD to be rebuilt" (1:2). The Jews began working 24 days after Haggai's message (vs. 15).
• In chapter 2, Haggai motivated the Jews to continue building the temple, and that God will bless them, "As for the promise which I made you when you came out of Egypt, My Spirit is abiding in your midst; do not fear!" (2:5). The building of the temple in Jerusalem was completed in 515 B.C.
The Old Testament - A Brief Overview
Bible Survey - Haggai
Hebrew Name - Chahggay "Festive Joy"
Greek Name - Aggaeus (Greek form of the Hebrew)
Author - Haggai (According to Tradition)
Date - 520 BC Approximately
Theme - The Rebuilding of the Temple
Types and Shadows - In Haggai Jesus is the Desire of all Nations
Summary of The Book of Haggai
Quick Overview of Haggai. - - 1:1-6 - - Haggai calls Israel to stop neglecting the Temple - - 1:7-11 - - he declares the Lord's judgment - - 1:12-15 - - the people respond - - 2:1-9 - - the prophecy of the Temple - - 2:10-19 - - their own obedience would bring future blessing - -2:20-22- - God will shake the nations - - 2:23 - - the future glories of Zerubbabel.
Haggai prophesied to the Jews who had returned from captivity. The time was 520 BC, 18 years after the king of Persia allowED them to return to rebuild the Temple. Samaritans from the north had caused all the work in the Temple to come to a halt. 16 years had gone by and people were more interested in working on their houses than rebuilding the Temple. The prophet Haggai encouraged God's people to finish rebuilding the Temple that Zerubbabel had started. Haggai also said that the recent problems they were experiencing is because of their laziness in the things of God. The prophet Zechariah encouraged them as well and within four years the Temple was completed. Haggai also told them to "be strong" and promised them that because of their obedience the blessings of God would come to them from that day forward, and "the glory of this latter house shall be greater than of the former." Haggai made the glorious promise that the people of the world will come to the "Desire of All Nations", referring to the Messiah, and God will fill the Temple with glory.
The prophet Haggai was the first of the three prophets during the Persian period who prophesied to the Jews who had returned from captivity, the other two prophets were Zechariah and Malachi. Haggai was also mentioned by Ezra as a co-worker with Zechariah in prophesying to the people and they prospered in completing the construction of the Second Temple.
"And the elders of the Jews builded, and they prospered through the prophesying of Haggai the prophet and Zechariah the son of Iddo. And they builded, and finished [it], according to the commandment of the God of Israel, and according to the commandment of Cyrus, and Darius, and Artaxerxes king of Persia." Ezra 6:14
The prophecies in the book of Haggai were delivered in a four month period in 520 BC, "the second year of Darius the King" (Haggai 1:1).
In 536 BC, 70 years after the Babylonian captivity began, the Persian ruler Cyrus gave permission for the Jews to return to Judah and rebuild their temple. Zerubbabel was the governor, and Jeshua what was the high priest. Soon after their return they began to rebuild the Temple of Solomon which had been demolished. The foundation stone was laid in the second month of the second year after the return (Ezra 3:8-10). Those who opposed the construction of the Temple were the Samaritans, they were the descendants of the foreigners from around the Assyrian Empire who had been placed in Samaria after the Assyrian captivity in 722 BC (2 Kings 17:24-41). The Samaritans caused all the work on the Temple to stop, people have become lazy after this and focused more under houses. They allowed the Lords Temple to go unfinished for 16 years, and this is when Haggai began to prophesy. The focus of Haggai was to wake them from their sleep, and realize who they were and the great opportunity the Lord had given them to rebuild His Temple.
"For thus says the LORD of hosts: "Once more (it is a little while) I will shake heaven and earth, the sea and dry land; 'and I will shake all nations, and they shall come to the Desire of All Nations, and I will fill this temple with glory,' says the LORD of hosts. Haggai 2:6-7
The contents of the book may be analyzed further as follows :
Outline of the Book of Haggai
The first of Haggai's four prophecies (Haggai 1:1-15) was delivered on the first day of the sixth month of the second year of Darius - about August-September, 520 BC. This was addressed to the leaders, rebuking them for the spiritual lethargy which had allowed the temple to lie unfinished for such a long time. Haggai cites this lethargy as a chief cause for God's having withheld His blessings from the people (Haggai 1:6). Haggai's words were so effective that it was only twenty-four days later that the work of rebuilding the temple was begun.
Haggai' second message (Haggai 2:1-9), was delivered about a month later (October), which was designed to encourage those who were despondent over the disparity in glory between the former temple and the new one they were erecting. Haggai assured them that a greater glory than that of the past temple was to come to the house of Israel. In this connection, he speaks of the "desire of all nations" (Haggai 2:7), referring to the Messiah.
Two months after the second message, Haggai spoke to the people for a third time. In this section (Haggai 2:10-19), Haggai informs the people that their past indifference had kept them from accomplishing the things which they set out to do but that God would bless their future.
The last of the prophecies contained in the book was delivered the same day as the third and is found in Haggai 2:20-23. In this, the prophet speaks of the establishment of Zerubbabel, a symbol of the idea that God's people were to stand, just as the power of the heathen nations was completely broken.
