TEXT [Commentary]

  III.   Third Message: The Call to Holiness (2:10-19)

10 On December 18[*] of the second year of King Darius’s reign, the LORD sent this message to the prophet Haggai: 11 “This is what the LORD of Heaven’s Armies says. Ask the priests this question about the law: 12 ‘If one of you is carrying some meat from a holy sacrifice in his robes and his robe happens to brush against some bread or stew, wine or olive oil, or any other kind of food, will it also become holy?’”

The priests replied, “No.”

13 Then Haggai asked, “If someone becomes ceremonially unclean by touching a dead person and then touches any of these foods, will the food be defiled?”

And the priests answered, “Yes.”

14 Then Haggai responded, “That is how it is with this people and this nation, says the LORD. Everything they do and everything they offer is defiled by their sin. 15 Look at what was happening to you before you began to lay the foundation of the LORD’s Temple. 16 When you hoped for a twenty-bushel crop, you harvested only ten. When you expected to draw fifty gallons from the winepress, you found only twenty. 17 I sent blight and mildew and hail to destroy everything you worked so hard to produce. Even so, you refused to return to me, says the LORD.

18 “Think about this eighteenth day of December, the day[*] when the foundation of the LORD’s Temple was laid. Think carefully. 19 I am giving you a promise now while the seed is still in the barn.[*] You have not yet harvested your grain, and your grapevines, fig trees, pomegranates, and olive trees have not yet produced their crops. But from this day onward I will bless you.”

NOTES

2:12 stew. The word nazid [TH5138, ZH5686] occurs elsewhere only in Gen 25:29, 34; and 2 Kgs 4:38-40, where context suggests a boiled dish—something akin to lentil soup or vegetable stew.

2:14 Everything they do and everything they offer is defiled by their sin. The LXX expands here: “Because of their early profits, they shall be pained because of their toil, and you have hated those who reprove in the gates” (Petersen 1984:71).

2:16 winepress. The MT distinguishes between the “wine vat” (yeqeb [TH3342, ZH3676], “collecting unit, reservoir” [i.e., the lower chamber of the wine press]) and the ‘‘wine press” (purah [TH6333, ZH7053], “pressing chamber” or “trough of the wine-press”); cf. JPS: “and if one came to the vat . . . the press would yield only twenty.”

2:17 blight and mildew and hail. Two of the three natural disasters are listed in Deut 28:22 (shiddapon [TH7711A, ZH8730], “blight, scorching wind”; yeraqon [TH3420, ZH3766], “mildew”), further heightening the covenant implications of Haggai’s message.

you refused to return to me. This follows the ancient versions instead of the MT: “but you are not with me” (we’en-’ethekem ’elay; cf. Amos 4:9).

2:18 this eighteenth day of December, the day when the foundation of the LORD’s Temple was laid. The NLT understands “the day” (hayyom [TH3117, ZH3427]) as a reference back to the preceding date formula (the twenty-fourth day of the ninth month, or December 18; cf. 2:10) and equates that day with the laying of the foundation (yussad [TH3245, ZH3569]) for the second Temple (cf. Verhoef 1987:129). Merrill (1994:51) objects to this identification because the work on the Second Temple began on the twenty-fourth day of the sixth month (or September 21; cf. 1:15; Ezra 3:10-11). Baldwin (1972:52-53) discounts the issue of the timing of the laying of the Temple foundation stones by noting that the Hebrew verb yussad [TH3245, ZH3569] may be translated “build” or “rebuild” instead of “founded” (i.e., Zerubbabel and Jeshua only needed to raise a superstructure on the foundation that remained from Solomon’s Temple). Petersen (1984:93) suggests that Haggai made reference to the formal dedication (or ritual purification) of the Temple foundation in 2:18 as a distinct event from the beginning of the restoration project (1:15). Wolf (1976:49) and Merrill (1994:51-52) prefer rendering the compound preposition (lemin- [TH3807.1/480, ZH4200/4946]) as “since” or “to the time from the day when the Temple of the LORD was founded” (so NRSV; cf. Kautzsch 1910:119c[n. 2]).

2:19 I am giving you a promise now while the seed is still in the barn. This is an expansion of the rhetorical question found in the MT: “Is there still seed in the barn?” (cf. NLT mg). Rather than implying that there is still seed in the barn, however, the rhetorical question suggests the answer “No!” because the seed has already been planted. The implied negative answer to the prophet’s question is deduced from the crop failure mentioned in v. 18 and the timing of the third oracle. According to Meyers and Meyers 1987:64, the summer wheat harvest must provide enough grain both for consumption and fall planting. The prophet’s message is dated to the month of December, after the first winter rains (Oct–Nov) but prior to early spring harvest. The blighted summer harvest threatens famine conditions in Judah (on the agricultural cycle in Palestine see further Meyers and Meyers 1987:64, who comment that household granaries must hold enough grain sufficient for sustenance and planting so “the question of ‘seed in the storehouse’ epitomizes the fragile dividing line in Palestine between need and plenty”). On the rhetorical question, see also the notes on 1:4 and 2:3.

COMMENTARY [Text]

Two months had elapsed since Haggai’s second sermon (October 17; see 2:1), and the community was now three months into the Temple restoration project (September 21; see 1:15). The ninth month of the Hebrew calendar (Kislev, overlapping the Julian months of November and December) was the time for sowing the late season crops like wheat and barley (sesame, millet, lentils, and garden vegetables were planted from January until early March). The early rains of the winter season (falling from mid-October to early November) would have prepared the soil for planting. The latter rains of the winter season (arriving in early April) provided the necessary moisture for the maturation of the cereal crops (cf. ABD 5.612). Haggai hinted that the seed for the winter crops had been planted (see note on 2:19), so the farming community had to wait with patience for the latter rains to ripen the fields for harvest. It was during this time of uncertainty, especially given the fragile agricultural economy of Palestine, that God’s messenger called his people to covenant faith by boldly predicting a bumper crop for the winter season harvest.

Theologically, the prophet’s third message assumes God’s sovereignty over the realm of nature as Creator (perhaps recalling Habakkuk’s prayer in Hab 3:17-19). He also presumes the audience’s knowledge of the agricultural blessings and curses associated with the “penalty clause” of the Mosaic treaty (cf. Deut 28:4-6, 11-12, 18, 22, 39-40).

Haggai’s third speech consists of a warning oracle (2:10-14) and an oracle of blessing (2:15-19). The warning speech has a didactic thrust in that the priests are asked to answer two questions related to ritual purity. According to Craigie (1984:148), by responding to the questions the priests “would learn from their answers something more than they knew.” Such is often the case with dialogical speech, especially those discussions including rhetorical questions like those Haggai posed to the priests. These religious leaders would have had little difficulty in answering the hypothetical questions of the prophet given their professional knowledge. Yet the quizzing of the priests is typical of the prophetic method and important to Haggai’s message because the exchange prepares the audience to receive divine instruction. This kind of dialogical speech belongs to the Hebrew wisdom tradition and is a form of “indirect communication.” It also reveals one of the pedagogical techniques employed by God as “the master teacher” for delivering a new insight or further illumination (cf. Baldwin 1972:50). As Ellul (1990:118) has observed, sometimes “indirect communication is the only possibility, because it is the only accessible, bearable communication.”

Applying the concepts of the holy, common, clean, and unclean to the physical, moral, and spiritual realms of life was basic to the ancient Hebrew worldview. These distinctions were grounded in the law of Moses and enabled the people to order their relationship to the natural world in such a way that they might indeed “be holy” as the Creator is holy (Lev 11:44). The distillation of Haggai’s exchange with the priests on the question of ritual purity is the theological truth that holiness is not transferable, while impurity is transferable. The prophet then drew the logical and disturbing conclusion that the work and the worship of the people were defiled by virtue of impurity contaminating the community (2:14). Haggai’s audience assumed that their service and sacrificial offerings were made pure and acceptable to God as a result of “contact” with the ordained priesthood and Yahweh’s holy Temple. Here the prophet had to correct wrong thinking and bad theology!

The issue was not one of ritual pollution due to contact with “contaminated” people groups within the community (whether Samaritans or non-Yahwists among the Hebrews; see the discussions in Smith 1984:160-161; Verhoef 1987:112-120) or even an unconsecrated Temple site (cf. Petersen 1984:79-85). Rather, the real concern was the failure of the Hebrew community to fully “return” to Yahweh (2:17). In fact, the impurity compromising Hebrew worship, which Haggai decries here, was made public and denounced in a message delivered by Zechariah—the failure to be honest and just, the failure to show mercy and kindness, and the ongoing practice of oppression aimed at the socially disadvantaged (Zech 7:1, 8-11).

The prophet understood the value of reflection upon the past. Four times he instructed his audience to “think about” the past or assess the current situation (1:5, 7; 2:15, 18). Previously, Haggai called attention to the Exodus from Egypt (2:5). Then he exhorted the people to take another look back to their more immediate past: the two decades prior to the commencement of the Temple reconstruction project (2:15). This appeal to the past even included the citation of a portion of an earlier prophetic message addressing a similar situation (2:16-17, cf. Amos 4:8-9; see the discussion in Verhoef 1987:126-129).

Numerous theological insights may be extracted from Haggai’s emphasis on the past, including the fact that history is the arena of God’s redemptive activity (cf. Dan 2:20-23; Hab 3:16-19). For the Hebrews, the lessons learned from history were vital to the success of the next generation (Deut 4:9-14). Haggai also reminds us that there is great value in revisiting the word of God spoken to a bygone era. The psalmist recognized the importance of transmitting the records of the past for instilling faith in the next generation (Ps 78:1-8; cf. 1 Cor 10:11, “they [i.e., events of Israelite history] were written down to warn us”). We also benefit from observing the pattern of exhortation in Haggai. The prophet sustained the initiative to rebuild the Temple (1:14-15) by offering words of encouragement one month later (2:1-3) and again after three months had elapsed (2:10). The New Testament advocates this kind of exhortation on a daily basis (cf. 2 Cor 13:11; 1 Thess 5:11; Heb 3:13). Finally, any look back to the past must prompt a look ahead to the future. For Haggai the past was a springboard into God’s plan for Israel’s future—“but from this day onward I will bless you” (2:19).

The message of Haggai to rebuild the Temple and thus revive the flow of God’s covenantal blessings to Israel should not be understood as a contradiction to the words of Jeremiah. By the time of Jeremiah (c. 627–582 BC), the Temple had become a talisman or a “lucky charm” of sorts. The people of Judah assumed that the mere association of Yahweh’s Temple with Jerusalem and the people of God guaranteed divine protection and blessing. Jeremiah indignantly condemned such misplaced trust in a work of architecture and even predicted its eventual destruction (Jer 7–10, esp. 7:1-11).

Haggai called the people to rebuild the Temple for the purpose of the proper worship of God; he was not encouraging blind faith in a religious superstructure. The prophet also presupposed that the appropriate attitudes of reverence, humility, and unfeigned behavior demonstrating obedience to the law of God would naturally accompany the initiative to reconstruct the Jerusalem sanctuary. Only then would this second Temple again symbolize the covenant presence of Yahweh among his people and stamp the Hebrew repatriates as the elect of God among the nations.

The phrasing of the promise of blessing (“I will bless you,” 2:19) echoes the language of the covenant God established with Abraham (“I will bless you,” Gen 12:2) and the affirmation of that covenant with Isaac (combining divine blessing with the land of covenant promise, Gen 26:3). The construction emphasizes God as the source of this blessing and the reality that his grace is not subject to manipulation by human endeavor (cf. Mal 3:14). The only condition attached to divine favor is the “return” to God—repentance characterized by the fear of the Lord and obedience to his commands (2:17; cf. 1:12-13). The divine blessing of Haggai’s promise is more than the crass materialism of a “prosperity theology.” Granted, economic blessing in the form of agricultural bounty constitutes the tangible evidence of God’s favor in context. The river of God’s blessing, however, runs much wider and deeper than mere surplus of foodstuffs.

The parallels between Haggai 2:10-19 and Zechariah 8:9-23 are well documented (e.g., Smith 1984:159-160). The complementary message of Zechariah, Haggai’s contemporary, outlines benefits of God’s blessing far surpassing the anticipated agricultural prosperity, including peace (Zech 8:12), honor among the nations as a symbol and source of divine blessing (Zech 8:13), joyous worship (Zech 8:19), glory as the place where all peoples will worship the Lord Almighty (Zech 8:20-22), and the very presence of God in the midst of his people Israel (Zech 8:23; cf. Hag 2:4-5).