The Old Testament · The Prophetic Books · Book 44 of 73
Prophecy in Haggai
Two short chapters, four dated oracles, one task: rebuild the house of God. Haggai spoke to a discouraged people standing in the rubble of Solomon's Temple, and promised that the poor house they were building would one day hold a greater glory than the first.
In progress: 3 passages so far
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The book at a glance
Haggai is the most precisely dated of the prophets. His first word came “On the first day of the sixth month in the second year of Darius the king” (1:1), which the NABRE note places in August 520 BC, and all four of his oracles fall within a few months of that year. The exiles had come home from Babylon some twenty years earlier, but the Temple destroyed in 587 BC still lay in ruins. Haggai, with his contemporary Zechariah (Ezra 5:1; 6:14), urged the governor Zerubbabel and the high priest Joshua to rebuild it, and the work was finished in 515 BC. The book reports his words in the third person, and most scholars think a disciple or editor arranged them soon after; the Church receives it as inspired Scripture.
Haggai's prophecy is practical: put God first, and build. But the house he urged them to build points beyond itself. Its glory is promised in words that the Letter to the Hebrews reads as the final shaking of heaven and earth, and its builder, Zerubbabel, is named a chosen signet ring and appears in the genealogy of Jesus. In Christian reading the Temple is a type of Christ's own body and of the Church, and Haggai's promises look to the Messiah.
Key to the labels
How a passage stands
Fulfilled Accomplished in history, above all in Christ.
Unfolding Being worked out now in the life of the Church.
Future Clearly still to come at Christ's return.
Mystery Its meaning or moment is not yet settled.
What kind of passage it is
Prophecy God's word through a prophet, or Christ, about what will come.
Promise A pledge God makes, kept over generations.
Type A person or event that foreshadows Christ or the Church.
Image A picture Scripture returns to and completes at the end.
Apocalypse A vision unveiling history from heaven's side, in symbols.
More on the labels
| Passage | Subject | Standing |
|---|
| 1:2–15 | Rebuild the house | Fulfilled Unfolding |
| 2:3–9 | The shaking of the nations and the greater glory | Fulfilled Future |
| 2:20–23 | Zerubbabel the signet ring | Fulfilled |
The passages
“Is it time for you to dwell in your paneled houses while this house lies in ruins?”
- Reading
- The people have been saying that the time has not yet come to rebuild (1:2). Meanwhile they have sown much and harvested little, and their wages have gone into a bag with holes (1:6). Haggai names the cause: they have put their own houses before God's. His command is simple: “Go up into the hill country; bring timber, and build the house that I may be pleased with it, and that I may be glorified,” says the LORD (1:8). Remarkably, the leaders and people listen, and within weeks the work begins (1:12–15).
- Fulfilled
- The Second Temple was completed and dedicated in 515 BC (Ezra 6:15–16). It is the Temple in which Jesus was presented as a child (Luke 2:22–32), where he taught, and which he cleansed.
- Unfolding
- Jesus spoke of “the temple of his body” (John 2:21), and St. Paul tells the Church, “you are the temple of God” (1 Corinthians 3:16). Haggai's question still searches every Christian and every community: is God's house, his worship and his people, being built up first?
- See also
- The Temple of His Body; Matthew 6:33.
“For thus says the LORD of hosts: In just a little while, I will shake the heavens and the earth, the sea and the dry land.”
- Reading
- A month after the work begins, the old people weep. “Who is left among you who saw this house in its former glory? And how do you see it now? Does it not seem like nothing in your eyes?” (2:3). God answers with a promise. He will shake the whole creation and every nation, “so that the treasures of all the nations will come in. And I will fill this house with glory—says the LORD of hosts” (2:7). The NABRE note hears in this an echo of Isaiah's visions of the nations streaming to Jerusalem (Isaiah 2:2–4; 60:6–9). And then the boldest line: “Greater will be the glory of this house the latter more than the former” (2:9), for “in this place I will give you peace” (2:9).
- Fulfilled
- The Second Temple never had the gold of Solomon's, nor the ark. Its greater glory, the Fathers taught, was that the Lord himself entered it, carried there as a child and greeted by Simeon as “a light for revelation to the Gentiles” (Luke 2:32). The Latin Vulgate rendered 2:7 (2:8 in its numbering) as the coming of “the desired of all nations,” desideratus cunctis gentibus, and Christian tradition long read it of Christ. The Hebrew speaks of treasures rather than a person, as the NABRE shows, but the treasure the nations bring is finally themselves, gathered to Christ (Revelation 21:24–26).
- Future
- The Letter to the Hebrews quotes the promise: “His voice shook the earth at that time, but now he has promised, ‘I will once more shake not only earth but heaven’” (Hebrews 12:26). It reads “once more” as the removal of created things “so that what is unshaken may remain” (12:27), and concludes that “we who are receiving the unshakable kingdom should have gratitude” (12:28). The last shaking is still to come; the kingdom that survives it is already being given.
“On that day—oracle of the LORD of hosts—I will take you, my servant, Zerubbabel, son of Shealtiel—oracle of the LORD—and I will make you like a signet ring, for I have chosen you…”
- Reading
- Haggai's last oracle is addressed to the governor alone. Zerubbabel was a grandson of King Jehoiachin, also called Jeconiah or Coniah, of whom God had said through Jeremiah that even if he were the signet ring on God's right hand, he would be torn off (Jeremiah 22:24). The NABRE note explains that the promise to Zerubbabel reverses that punishment, and that a signet ring, used to seal documents, carried its owner's authority. The line of David, cut off at the exile, is taken up again. “My servant” and “I have chosen you” are royal and messianic titles.
- Fulfilled
- Zerubbabel never became king, and nothing more is heard of him after the Temple's completion. But the promise did not fall to the ground. Both genealogies of Jesus pass through him: “After the Babylonian exile, Jechoniah became the father of Shealtiel, Shealtiel the father of Zerubbabel” (Matthew 1:12; see also Luke 3:27). The seal of God's choice rests finally on the Son of David, on whom, as Jesus says, “the Father, God, has set his seal” (John 6:27).
- See also
- Zechariah 4:6–10; Sirach 49:11; Prophecy in Matthew.
Still to come on this pageFurther passages to add: “I am with you” (1:13; 2:4), “My spirit remains in your midst; do not fear!” (2:5), and the question of what is clean and unclean, with the blessing that begins on the day the foundation is laid (2:10–19).
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