HAGGAI 2 — THE LATTER GLORY, THE UNCLEAN OFFERING, AND THE SIGNET RING

Chapter 2 contains three messages. The first (verses 1–9) was given on the twenty-first day of the seventh month, which is the last day of the Feast of Tabernacles (the Feast of Booths), in October 520 BC, about a month after the work began. The people had been building, but the work was modest, and the feast, which celebrated the harvest and recalled the wilderness, would have drawn attention to the gap between what was being built and what had been lost. The second and third messages (verses 10–19 and 20–23) were both given on the twenty-fourth day of the ninth month, December 520 BC, nearly three months after the work began. Solomon's temple, which had been destroyed in 586 BC, had been gold-plated and richly decorated (1 Kings 6–7), and the elderly who had seen it must have looked at the new foundation with mixed feelings (Ezra 3:12–13). Haggai addresses this discouragement directly. The chapter uses images that link this small project to God's purposes for the nations, and the book ends with a promise that looks past the immediate setting. The temple was an important sign of God's presence. In the prophets, the temple's restoration is tied to the coming of the Messianic age (Isaiah 2:2–4; Ezekiel 40–48; Zechariah 6:12–15), and the New Testament uses Haggai 2:6 to describe the final shaking that leaves only the unshakable kingdom of God (Hebrews 12:26–28). The chapter also contains two features that need careful explanation: a priestly ruling about holiness and uncleanness (verses 10–14) and the promise to Zerubbabel (verses 20–23).

The book of Haggai contains a notable amount of historical detail in a very small space, and its four messages fit the Persian-period context. The dates correspond to specific days in the Babylonian-Persian calendar, which was used throughout the empire, and when converted, they fall in August, September, October, and December of 520 BC. The Behistun Inscription and Babylonian records from the reign of Darius I establish the chronology, and the book of Ezra places the completion of the temple on the third day of the month of Adar in Darius's sixth year, around March 515 BC (Ezra 6:15). The close agreement between a short prophetic book and a larger historical work, each dated by the Persian royal calendar, supports the claim that these books record real events. Haggai's use of the ritual law is also consistent with the Torah's categories of holiness and uncleanness. The principle that holiness could pass to objects by direct contact but not by indirect contact, and that uncleanness could spread more widely, matches the law in Leviticus and Numbers, and it indicates that the community in the sixth century BC understood and applied the Pentateuch. The prophecy that the nations' power would be broken has also been repeatedly confirmed in the history of ancient empires: Persia fell to Alexander in the fourth century BC, and Alexander's empire was divided and later absorbed by Rome. The prophet's emphasis on the Davidic line was affirmed by the early Christian community, which preserved the genealogies in Matthew and Luke that list Zerubbabel, and these genealogies were presented in a society that valued the descent of the Messiah from David.