After the seventy years’ captivity in Babylon, three prophets speak to the restored remnant in Jerusalem: Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi. Haggai exhorts the people to finish the work of rebuilding the Temple.
It is in the second year of king Darius of Persia. In Jerusalem, the returned exiles are saying, The time is not come, the time that the Lord’s house should be built.1:2 But the word of the Lord comes to Haggai the prophet: Is it time for you, O ye, to dwell in your ceiled houses, and this house lie waste? . . . Consider your ways. Ye have sown much, and bring in little; ye eat, but ye have not enough; ye drink, but ye are not filled with drink; ye clothe you, but there is none warm; and he that earneth wages, earneth wages to put it into a bag with holes.
Go up to the mountain, and bring wood, and build the house; and I will take pleasure in it, and I will be glorified, saith the Lord.1:4–8
The Lord tells Haggai to speak to Zerubbabel, the governor, and to Joshua, the high priest, and to the people: Be strong, all ye people of the land, saith the Lord, and work: for I am with you. . . . My spirit remaineth among you: fear ye not.2:4–5