In the second year of Darius the king, in the sixth month, on the first day of the month, came the word of Jehovah by the prophet Haggai unto Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and to Joshua the son of Jehozadak, the high priest, saying,
Haggai opens with a date, not a vision. He counts the year by a foreign king's reign, and names a governor and a high priest. Behind them stands a people who had come home from exile and then stopped building God's house. Three questions follow, and the book answers them. Why is the year counted by a Gentile king? Why did the work stop? And why does God speak now?
The date is not decoration. It shows God standing by His own act of government.
His prophecy carries a careful date... The first thing to say is that God always treats His own acts of government as valid. He had set Israel aside as a nation, and the times of the Gentiles had begun. So the date follows the ruling Gentile power, not the Jews.
The building had stopped long before this message came. One writer names how long, and why.
The work on the temple had stopped for fifteen years, from the second year of Cyrus to the second year of Darius the Persian (Ezra 4:24; Haggai 1:1). Four years later they finished the house of God. How much harm such delays do! They come from the fear of man, and from the lack of confidence in the Lord that the fear of man always brings.
Ezra and Haggai cover the same years. Why does Haggai never mention the enemies Ezra describes?
The history of these times, as the book of Ezra gives it, shows the enemies stopping the building of the house, but says nothing about the condition of the people. Haggai never mentions the enemies. He goes straight to the low moral state of the remnant. History deals with events; prophecy deals with the moral state behind what the people of God do.
Haggai's own name carried a message to a discouraged people.
Haggai means "festive". The name suggests that the prophet God raised up at that time would help the people see they were living in joyful days — if they had the faith and energy to respond to God's Word. That Word came to them, as we read, "by the hand of Haggai the prophet".
Later in the chapter God gives him a title. No prophet before him had ever carried it.
How gracious it is to see the special care God takes for a day of weakness. As far as I know, no prophet before him ever carried the name "the LORD's messenger". Haggai is the shortest of the prophets who came after the captivity, and the first of them in time; yet he is the one given this rare name of honour. Men would never have chosen him for it... This prophet handles the plainest things — their panelled houses, their sowing much, their bags with holes, nothing but the most ordinary appeals, as it might seem — and he was the LORD's messenger.
The word goes to two named men. Their family lines matter as much as their offices.
Zerubbabel and Joshua were the leading men of that day, in government and in religion. Zerubbabel was the son of Shealtiel (which means asking of God in prayer). Zerubbabel (sown in Babylon) came of royal blood, in direct descent from David... [Joshua] was the first high priest after the captivity, and Ezra and Nehemiah call him Jeshua... He and Zerubbabel are prophetic pictures of our Lord as the King-Priest.
God starts at the top, yet the message does not stop there.
God speaks first to the leaders of the people, Zerubbabel the governor and Joshua the high priest. But leaders alone did not carry this work, for He speaks to "the remnant of the people" as well. We must not think that leaders alone carry on the work of the Lord... let us be careful not to think that they are the only ones with work to do, and so leave it all to them.
- Word. Everything here starts with God speaking. The word of the LORD came, and a work stalled for fifteen years began again.
- Date. God dates His word by a foreign king's reign. He stands by the government He Himself set in place.
- Delay. The building stopped for fifteen years. Ezra blames the enemies; Haggai points to fear of man and cold hearts.
- Messenger. God gave His own message to the plainest speaker of them all — a prophet whose name means festive.
- Everyone. Governor and high priest hear first. The rest of the people hear too, so no one can leave the work to the leaders.
Thus speaketh Jehovah of hosts, saying, This people say, The time is not come, the time that Jehovah's house should be built.
God's first word through Haggai does not name the enemies who had stopped the work. It names a sentence the people kept repeating about timing. The building of His house had stood still for years. God sends the prophet to show them where the real blockage lay.
The history of that time records how enemies halted the work. Haggai looks past them to the words of the builders themselves.
If we judge by the history alone, we might conclude that what the enemies said stopped the building of the house. From the word of the LORD, through the prophet, we learn the true reason: it lies in what the people said... For twelve years they had stopped doing the one thing for which God had delivered them from Babylon. They try to excuse their failure by saying that "the time has not yet come" to build the LORD's house.
The wording of the message carries its own rebuke. God does not call them by the warm name He might have used.
His message starts with the excuse the people offered for their apathy in the things of God... The Lord does not address them as "My people." He speaks of them in a way that shows His disapproval. Their excuse, that His time had not yet come, was empty. In reality they were cold towards the cause of the Lord, and sought their own things instead of it.
They read "the time" off the state of things around them: enemies nearby, and no peace. One writer asks what such a delay is waiting for.
The Lord had worked in the heart of Cyrus, and had stirred up the spirit of His people, to carry out His purpose of rebuilding His house. Now they had forgotten the purpose of their return, and they claimed to see that this was not a suitable time for their work. And what led them to this conclusion? There were enemies, and the times were not peaceful. As if enemies to the Lord's work would ever cease! As if the time would ever come when the natural eye would see the right moment for work for the Lord! Ah, we all have to learn the lesson that the Word — the mind of the Lord — is our authority for service.
Was the official ban on building the real cause? One writer compares the dates and finds that the people had already stopped long before any ban existed.
There were enemies in the land who made them afraid, and so stopped their building... The ban only came two reigns later. The Jews had already given up building through fear of their enemies... And they did not start building again because a king's decree reached them. They started again because they feared the LORD and did not fear the king's command, as people who see Him who is invisible. God was no more to be feared in the reign of Darius than in the reign of Cyrus or Artaxerxes. Their weakness came from having forgotten God.
The excuse did not mean idleness. These people were busy — just not with the work they came back to do.
Divine energy will never lose its purpose for God. Human energy will say, "The time has not yet come to build the Lord's house," and will keep itself busy with its vineyards, its fields and its houses. It wastes the time. It does not press on with tireless energy in the settled purpose of the soul, through all the difficulties and dangers that may threaten or oppose.
The plea that God's moment has not arrived is not confined to one generation of builders.
This is a common excuse — a lack of care for the glory of the Lord, on the plea that His time has not come. We find exactly the same pretence today, and it misuses the coming of the Lord Jesus. It says that the time has not come for glory to set things right by divine power, so we may give in easily to the moral confusion, the disorder, and the departure from the will of God found at this present moment.
- The saying. God quotes their own words back to them, not their enemies' threats. Their saying is why the house lay unbuilt.
- The naming. He calls them "this people," not "My people." The cool distance matches their coldness toward His cause.
- The reason. Fear of enemies and forgetting God lay behind the talk of timing. They had stopped building long before any decree forbade it.
- The cost. Human energy still works hard on vineyards, fields and houses. It spends the very time it says has not yet come.
- The remedy. The mind of the Lord, not good circumstances, is our authority for service. Once He has spoken, the number of enemies settles nothing.
And the word of Jehovah came by Haggai the prophet, saying,
The people had just excused themselves: the time to rebuild had not come. Verse 3 is the turn — God answers that excuse by sending a word through a prophet. So who decides when God's work is due: the circumstances, or the word of the LORD?
This verse stands between what the people said and God's answer. One writer sets the two side by side, and God's reply comes as a question:
So when they said, "The time has not come for the LORD's house to be built," the word of the LORD comes through the prophet and says, "Is it a time for you yourselves to live in your panelled houses, while this house lies in ruins?" In this there was a serious forgetfulness of the glory of the LORD. It was all the more painful because they had begun better.
Read the history alone and you would blame the opposition. The word that arrives here points somewhere else:
Judging only by the history, we might conclude that the enemies' words stopped the building of the house. The word of the LORD through the prophet teaches us something else: the true reason lies in what the people said. So the message opens with the words, "This people say, The time has not come for the LORD's house to be built." For twelve years they had stopped doing the one thing God had brought them out of Babylon to do.
Scripture records the opposite case: a man judged it was time to build, and a prophet forbade him. The contrast shows that timing is not ours to decide:
David planned to build a house for the ark of God, a house of cedars, costly and lasting. But the word of a prophet forbade him; the time had not come... In the day of Haggai we find the opposite. A prophet rebukes Israel for not building the house of the Lord. David was wrong in saying the time had come for such a work; the returned captives are now wrong in saying the time has not come. And the Spirit of the Lord knew the times, and what Israel ought to do, whether to build or not to build.
The people judged by what they could see. Another writer shows what should have guided them instead:
And what led them to this conclusion? There were enemies, and the times were not peaceful. As if enemies to the Lord's work would ever stop! As if the time would ever come when the natural eye would see the right moment to work for the Lord! Ah, we all have to learn the lesson. The Word — the mind of the Lord — is our warrant for service. When He speaks, we have only to go forward, whatever the circumstances and however many the enemies.
One writer names the real weakness behind the delay, and the grace in this word:
God was no more to be feared in the reign of Darius than in the reign of Cyrus or Artaxerxes. The source of their weakness was that they had forgotten God. This shows the great grace of God in awakening them by the mouth of Haggai.
When the work began again, the cause was not a change in politics:
The building of the house, as I noted, had stopped for about fourteen years. It is a happy thing to find that the work started again — not by force of a decree from the great Persian king who ruled the Jews at that time, but by the voice of God's prophets, Haggai and Zechariah. The Lord did move the heart of the king; but not until His prophet had moved the heart of Israel... The Lord turned the heart of the king, their master, to favour them, when they had taken again the place of faith and obedience.
One writer finds the same excuse among Christians in his own day:
The people took a fatalistic attitude, saying, "the time has not come… for the Lord's house to be built"; and started to build up their own affairs. Some sixty years ago we heard Christians saying, despite the Lord's words in Acts 1:8, that the time had not come to take the gospel to distant nations. They settled down to build up their own spiritual affairs, as they saw them. It was not wrong for these Jews to build themselves houses. It was wrong to settle down to that and leave the house of God in ruins.
- The word comes. God answers an excuse about timing. He does not change their circumstances; He sends a word through His prophet.
- The word exposes. History blames the enemies. The word points to what the people themselves said.
- The word decides. A prophet stopped David from building. A prophet now sends this generation to build. The mind of the Lord, not the outlook, is our warrant for service.
- The word is grace. After years of neglect, God awakens His people rather than dropping them.
- The word moves hearts. The work resumed through the prophets' voice, and only then did the king's favour follow.
Is it time for you that ye should dwell in your wainscoted houses, while this house lieth waste?
The people had laid the temple's foundations, then let the work stop while they finished comfortable homes of their own. God's question through Haggai is not about timing. It asks what their building and decorating show about what they love.
The word describes more than bare shelter.
Covering the roof of a room with wood, shaped into patterns. Some panels were fir, as in 2 Chronicles 3:5; others were cedar, and painted.
The timeline makes the contrast sharper. Something had to fill the years when the work stood still.
After the first burst of enthusiasm, when the people were as one man, they lose confidence in God's power and the work stops. Fifteen years go by. Only the foundations of the temple have been laid. All building has come to a halt. During these long years the people have to be doing something. And when the Lord no longer has His place in the heart, what fills a person's time if not his own interests?
The people had said the time had not come to build. The prophet turns their own words back on them.
They had begun well, as we read in Ezra 3, when they set the altar on its bases. But now they had given up that effort. Their interest in the one thing had faded, and selfish aims took their place. They were living in luxurious houses, while His house lay neglected and in ruins. So their empty excuse was shown to be insincere.
The history seems to say that enemies stopped the work. One writer compares the dates in the prophets and blames the returned exiles — the remnant — themselves.
I have examined the prophecies that throw so much light on the history of that time, and I have compared their dates. From this it seems clear to me that the true hindrance was a lack of faith in the remnant… They did not start building again because the king's decree reached them. They started again because they feared the Lord and did not fear the king's command, as seeing Him who is invisible. God was no more to be feared in the reign of Darius than in the reign of Cyrus or Artaxerxes. Their weakness came from having forgotten God.
There is a reason the private project advanced while the public one stalled.
How could they claim this was a good moment to put their own interests first and neglect the Lord's claims? The secret was simple: building and decorating their own houses raised no opposition. Doing good to themselves would sooner win the approval of their enemies. Only testimony for the Lord — in word, work, and life — stirs up the hostility of the world. So they had chosen the path of selfish ease and self-interest, minding their own things, and not the things of the Lord.
The verses that follow show the outcome of the arrangement they had chosen.
They were diligent for themselves. And what was the result? "You eat, but you never have enough; you drink, but you never have your fill; you clothe yourselves, but no one is warm." Bitter disappointment, as always, must be the portion of God's people who live for themselves instead of trusting Him who takes special care of the faithful. Our business is to care for His things. His gracious work is to care for us in our own things, and indeed in all things.
Another writer asks who made the holes in the bag.
In Haggai's day the people were living in paneled houses, while the house of God lay in ruins. Self was uppermost, but God was watching over His people. His hand was on them, so we read, "He who earns wages does so to put them into a bag with holes." How did the holes get there? I believe the Lord cut them.
The same question reaches us. One writer names what our excuses hide.
Whatever excuses we make about the time not being right, the real reason we neglect the principles of God's house is that we are taken up with our own things. Even in the Apostle's day we read of believers that "they all seek their own interests, not those of Jesus Christ" (Philippians 2:21). One has said, "It is an inevitable alternative that we must be occupied either with the Lord's things, or with our own."
- Excuse. They said the time had not come. God's question points to what they had found time to build. That showed the excuse was insincere.
- Cause. The work stopped because faith was weak, not because enemies were strong. Their weakness came from having forgotten God.
- Comfort. Their own houses went up with no opposition. Only testimony for the Lord stirs up the world's hostility, so self-interest is the cheaper road.
- Cost. They ate and drank and were never satisfied. Those who live for themselves instead of trusting Him meet bitter disappointment. One writer says the Lord Himself cut the holes in their bag.
- Choice. The choice is unavoidable: either the Lord's things fill our time, or our own do. There is no third house.