Israel had seen a long period of humiliation and spiritual anxiety through the seventy years of the Exile prior to Haggai's ministry. One must know something of these trying years and the events at their close which issued in the return of the Jews to Canaan in order to understand the problems faced by this postexilic prophet.1
A. THE HISTORICAL SETTING
Through a decree of Cyrus, the Persian conqueror of the Babylonian Empire, the Babylonian Captivity came to an end. At least the Jews were no longer forbidden to return to their homeland. Cyrus made a positive declaration giving them permission to return to reestablish their nation and to restore their worship. Many of the Jews were so rooted in Babylon that they were not interested in returning. But there was a group of some fifty thousand who returned with high hopes under the leadership of Zerubbabel. “The select company that followed Zerubbabel must have consisted of the most earnest, godly and enterprising members of the captive nation.”2
However, due to the opposition which they faced in their homeland, chiefly from the neighboring Samaritans, they were unable to carry out their plans of rebuilding the Temple and restoring the city.
Upon the ascent to the Persian throne of Darius Hystaspes the decree which had stopped the work was reviewed and reversed. Therefore “the prophets Haggai and Zechariah strongly urged their countrymen to resume the work. … The work of rebuilding the temple was accordingly resumed.”3 This new impetus came after a period of about seventeen years during which the work had been at a standstill. It is against the background of this situation that Haggai's ministry is to be seen and understood.
B. THE PROPHET
Of Haggai's personal life, little is known. The name means “The Festal” or if abbreviated from Haggiah (I Chron. 6:30), “feasts of Jehovah.”4 Unlike Zephaniah, no genealogy is attached to his name and he is mentioned outside his own book only in Ezra 5: land 6:14.
Haggai's chief work, along with Zechariah, was in providing the challenge to resume the restoration of the Temple. “One might almost say: ‘No Haggai—no temple.’” 5 It is generally agreed that he was an old man when he prophesied. This is inferred from the indication in 2:3 that he still remembered Solomon's Temple, which had been destroyed nearly seventy years before.
Talmudic tradition lists Haggai with Zechariah and Malachi as the founders of “the Great Synogague,” an assembly of Jewish scholars and rabbis originating in Ezra's time. Several psalms in the Septuagint are attributed to him. He stands with these other two as the last of the prophets. The Talmud declares that with their death the Holy Spirit departed from Israel.6
C. THE BOOK
This prophecy is composed of four messages which Haggai preached. The “sermons” are carefully dated and all were delivered within a brief period of four months. Each one was a further step in the process of encouraging Zerubbabel and the faithful to finish the Temple, and each came at a period when the work lagged. The four messages form the natural outline of the book.
Outline
C. Attack upon the Delay, 1:3-6
E. Response to the Challenge, 1:12-15
II. The Call to Courage, 2:1-9