Haggai
God is with us?!

Week of Monday, August 19, 2002

Haggai brings us to the first of the three “post-exilic” prophets who ministered to the remnant of Israel that returned to Jerusalem from exile in Babylon. Next to Obadiah it is the shortest book in the Old Testament with just thirty-eight verses. Gone is the prophetic poetry to which we have become accustomed. Even though it is classified among the prophets, Haggai reads like straightforward, historical prose. It is impossible to understand his message without a brief history.

In 586 BC, Babylon vanquished the southern kingdom of Judah and deported her people. The prophets Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Daniel ministered during this period, and God's message, if unwelcomed, was clear: buy houses, plant crops, marry and bear children. In short, seek the prosperity of the foreign power to which I have banished you (Jeremiah 29:7). That sounded lofty, but to the average Hebrew deportation must have felt like the most catastrophic failure imaginable. God had called Abraham from Ur of the Chaldees (Genesis 12:3), not far at all from the land of exile in which Israel then found itself. He formed a people for His own possession, and eventually a nation flourished under David and Solomon. But now, some 1500 years later, everything lay in ruins. Seek the welfare of Babylon?!

History moved on. Babylon fell to Persia and King Cyrus in 539 BC. Details of this period are best recounted in Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, and the two other post-exilic prophets, Zechariah and Malachi. In 536 Cyrus permitted the Hebrews to return to their ruined lands to resettle and rebuild their temple. That work began in the second year of their return or about 534, but it was disrupted and came to a halt (Ezra 3:8ff., 4:24).

Why did work on the temple cease? A generation had been born in Babylon that knew nothing of the splendor of Solomon's day. Many had grown accustomed to worshiping Yahweh in Babylon with no temple at all. It is easy to imagine the disillusionment that set in when the returning Jews experienced the devastation of their former homeland. Difficult economic times were a given. Fields and buildings languished in desolation. So the work to rebuild the temple ground to a halt. Cyrus died in 529, and his eventual successor King Darius Hystaspes reissued the permit to rebuild. Work began in the second year of Darius, in 520, after some fourteen years of inactivity.

Enter Haggai the prophet. He delivers four very specific “prophecies” in just four brief months, each of which bears a specific date. During this short period Yahweh had several important words of energizing hope that He spoke to His returned remnant through Haggai.

Haggai's first message challenged the Hebrews to move beyond their understandable dejection, self-absorbtion and complacency. There was little movement or motivation to rebuild the temple, Haggai tells us. People were consumed with their daily affairs, perhaps too much so. God even linked their meager subsistence in devastated Jerusalem with their unwillingness to rebuild the temple. But through Haggai God gave the call, “Build the house!” (1:8). Sometimes, it seems, God calls us to look beyond our present circumstances, however grim, and to reach further than we imagine we might be able to go.

Remarkably, “the people obeyed the voice of the Lord their God and the message of the prophet Haggai” (1:12). The civic leader Zerubbabel, the high priest Joshua, and the beleaguered remnant came together as God had “stirred up their spirit.” Work began anew on the temple, Haggai tells us, “on the twenty-fourth day of the sixth month in the second year of King Darius” (1:15). At this juncture God had another word for his people. If his first word was a challenge to move forward, His second word was a vigorous assurance: “I am with you” (1:13, 2:4). If you had been living in exile under a foreign power that had just destroyed your country and people, and then returned to your ruined city, it would have been be easy to think the exact opposite, that Yahweh was decidedly not with us. He left us. We are very much alone and adrift. That is why we were deported. But no, two times Haggai delivers a word of confidence and encouragement, “I am with you.”

One month later, according to Haggai's dates, he received a third message for God's remnant. Having started to rebuild the temple in a devastated, war-torn city, it was inevitable that people would make comparisons with the original temple in all its former splendor. Surely, some would have thought, the rebuilt temple is a pale, meager imitation. In a sense that was true: “does it not seem like nothing?” (2:3). Haggai repeats his third word three times: “Be strong and work, for my Spirit remains among you. Do not fear” (2:4–5). With this third word came an improbable promise, too, that “the glory of this present house will be greater than the glory of the former house, and in this place I will grant peace” (2:9). I am reminded by Haggai that outward appearances can sometimes be an unreliable indicator of what God cares about and what He considers a success. From an architectural vantage point the rebuilt temple was “nothing.” But from God's perspective it was exactly what He intended to bless. It was where His Spirit intended to dwell.

About two months later, Haggai prophesies another word to the people. Whether out of ignorance, apathy or neglect, there occurred problems of ritual uncleanness and defilement surrounding temple worship: “whatever they do and whatever they offer there is defiled” (2:14). So what does Yahweh say through Haggai? A word of rebuke and shame, punishment and anger? No, here is the shocking part. In a phrase he repeats five times in his little book Haggai tells the people to “give careful thought” (1:5, 7, 2:15, 18). Then three times he tells them to note the date, the time, and their circumstances when they laid the foundation of the new temple. Why? Because “from this day on” (2:15, 18, 19) He has special intentions for this tiny remnant. Despite defilement, “from this day on I will bless you” (1:19). Even amidst ritual uncleanness, God said, “I will bless you.” Mark this date and see for yourself: I will bless you.

When I think of the unique historical circumstances of the Hebrew remnant, and then listen to the prophet Haggai, I stand amazed and encouraged. Here is a people living in desolation, fear, poverty, discouragement, disillusionment and even ritual defilement. And what does Yahweh say to them?

* Do not fear
* I am with you (2 times)
* I will bless you (2 times)
* Be strong (3 times)
* Work, rebuild
* My Spirit remains among you
* I will grant peace
* The glory of the rebuilt temple will outshine the glory of the former temple

Haggai reminds us that God meets us where we are. He works in our midst even when we might not feel like it or even see it. Haggai reminds us that a major aspect of the prophetic task is what Brueggemann calls energizing hope. His word to them and to us, then, is precisely this: “Give careful thought. Despite outward appearances, I am working. Believe it. See it. Be strong, for my Spirit is with you. I want to bless you.”

The Journey with Jesus: Notes to Myself Copyright ©2002 by Dan Clendenin. All Rights Reserved.