Haggai 2:10–23

2:10 The date of both oracles in this section is the twenty-fourth day of the ninth month in the second year of Darius (December 18, 520 BC). This pivotal date was the day the foundation of the house of the Lord was laid. This date is exactly three months after the people began work on the temple (1:15) and two months after Haggai encouraged them to be strong and persevere in that work (2:4).

2:11 The oracles thus far have been explicitly addressed to Zerubbabel, Joshua, and (usually) the people. Here the addressees are not named at the outset, although it becomes clear that all the people are being addressed (cf. comment on 2:14). This oracle begins with the Lord directing Haggai to ask the priests for a ruling from the law—these priests had a responsibility to provide instruction based on God’s law (Lev. 10:10–11; Deut. 17:9–11; Ezek. 44:23)

2:12–13 The priests are asked for two rulings about the transmission of holiness and uncleanness. The first scenario involves “holy meat” carried in the fold of a garment. In view are the peace offerings (thanksgiving, vow, and freewill offerings) described in Leviticus 7:14–20, the meat of which could be taken home by the worshiper to be consumed. According to Leviticus 6:25–27, the meat of a sacrifice offered to the Lord became holy, and whatever touched the meat (such as a garment) also became holy. The issue in this first scenario is whether the garment made holy by direct touch can pass that holiness to other objects that subsequently come into contact with the garment. The priests say no: holiness cannot be transmitted to the third degree. The second scenario involves someone who has become unclean by contact with a dead body (cf. Num. 19:11), and whether this defilement could be further transmitted by touch. The priests’ answer accords with Numbers 19:22: “Whatever the unclean person touches shall be unclean, and anyone who touches it shall be unclean until evening.” The priests’ rulings demonstrate that defilement can be transmitted by indirect contact to the third degree (and beyond), but holiness cannot be. Defilement is more contagious than holiness.

2:14 The principles of these rulings are now applied by analogy to “this people” and “this nation.” The Lord declares that “every work of their hands” and “what they offer there” is unclean. “Every work of their hands” includes both their work on the temple and the agricultural produce they offer there. There is no antecedent for the word “there,” but we know from Ezra 3:1–2 that an altar for sacrifices was reestablished in Jerusalem after the return from Babylon, and this is presumably where the people were presenting their sacrifices and offerings. However, their sacrifices and offerings are unacceptable to the Lord because the people themselves are unclean, and the implication of the priest’s second ruling is that the defilement of the people is transmitted to their gifts by direct contact. Furthermore, their work in building the temple is also tainted. The temple was to be the place where the contamination of sin was removed, but if the temple itself was contaminated, the people were in a hopeless situation. There is no way unclean offerings offered in an unclean temple could cleanse an unclean people. The Lord does not “take pleasure” in such sacrifices (cf. comment on Hag. 1:5–8). “This people” and “this nation” are used here in parallel to describe the same group (cf. Ex. 33:13; Deut. 4:6; 2 Sam. 7:23; Isa. 1:4; Jer. 33:24).

2:15–17 As Psalm 24:3–5 tells us, only those with “clean hands and a pure heart” may stand in God’s holy place: such a person “will receive blessing from the LORD.” The experience of Haggai’s audience was the corollary of this. Their unclean hands had offered unacceptable sacrifices, and instead of blessings they experienced curses. The people are invited to consider, “How did you fare?” Where they expected twenty measures of grain, only ten were found, and where there should have been fifty measures of wine, only twenty were found. This diminished yield was not the result of human mismanagement but was because the Lord had “struck” them with covenant curses of blight and mildew (cf. Deut. 28:22), compounded by destructive hail (cf. Ex. 9:18–26). The purpose of these curses was so that the people would turn to the Lord (cf. Amos 4:9), but they had not done so.

Even though, according to Haggai 1:12–14, the people began “obeying” and “fearing” the Lord in the sixth month (leading to the commencement of work on the house of the Lord), something was evidently still lacking in their “turning back” to the Lord. The prophet Zechariah, prophesying in the eighth month of the same year, began his prophetic ministry with a call to repentance: “Return to me, says the LORD of hosts, and I will return to you” (Zech. 1:3). It was in response to the combined prophetic ministry of Haggai and Zechariah that the people did “return to the LORD” (cf. Ezra 5:1), and this repentance is demonstrated particularly by their committing themselves to the reconstruction of the temple.

The critical turning point is the day when the “stone was placed upon stone in the temple of the LORD” (Hag. 2:15). Prior to this, the building has been described by Haggai as the “house” of the Lord. From this point onward it is called the “temple.”

2:18–19 The significance of this day is highlighted by a threefold reiteration in verse 18: the command to “consider from this day onward” (repeating v. 15); the date (the 24th day of the ninth month, mostly echoing v. 10); and the reference to temple-building (cf. v. 15). This repetition underscores the significance of laying the foundation of the Lord’s temple. Some work had apparently been done on the temple site by the first wave of returnees (c. 537 BC) under Sheshbazzar (cf. Ezra 5:16). But it is this current work in the ninth month of the second year of Darius, under the leadership of Joshua and Zerubbabel, that establishes the temple foundations.

The Lord promises (Hag. 2:19) that this day will mark a turnaround in the agricultural prosperity of the community. That year’s grain crop (harvested in May/June) was meager (v. 16). From that poor harvest, the next season’s crop would have been sown in October and November, after the early rains had softened the ground. Thus, at the date of this oracle (December 18), the seed is in the ground. The answer to the rhetorical question “Is the seed yet in the barn?” is no: it is in the ground. The community has very little to live on. It is similar with the produce from their orchards. The harvest from the “vine, the fig tree, the pomegranate, and the olive” has been collected, and the situation is grim—they “have yielded nothing.” But the people are given divine assurance that this is about to change. Haggai delivers the punch line to this oracle in the last clause of verse 19: “From this day on I will bless you.” Because they have turned to the Lord, the Lord is about to turn their curses into blessings. These blessings arrive long before the temple is completed—the temple is not finished until the sixth year of Darius (515 BC; cf. Ezra 6:15), whereas the blessings promised here are evident in bumper harvests the very next season. Their prosperity is not because a completed temple has led to an outpouring of God’s divine favor, or because a completed temple has made their offerings acceptable to God. They are—from that day onward—beginning to experience God’s divine favor (blessing) as a result of his unmerited mercy.

2:20–22 A second “word of the LORD” is given to Haggai the day the temple foundation is laid. As noted above, the two oracles should be taken as a pair, describing the immediate (vv. 10–19) and ultimate (vv. 20–23) implications of the restoration of God’s dwelling place. Whereas the focus of the first oracle is “this day” (the 24th day of the 9th month), the second oracle describes what will happen “on that day” (v. 23) when, at some future time, God will restore “kingdom” and “kingship” to his people.

This second oracle is addressed to Zerubbabel as the “governor of Judah” and focuses on the climactic promise given to Zerubbabel in verse 23, to which verses 21–22 are a necessary prelude. As the governor appointed by Darius, Zerubbabel is the highest-ranking official in the land. But God’s people, who know the promises of the earlier prophets, long for something more. Zerubbabel is also of the Davidic line, and the prophets had promised a day when God would raise up a righteous king from the descendants of David (Jer. 23:5–6). But at the time of Haggai’s writing, the king over them was not Zerubbabel but Darius (cf. Hag. 1:1).

In 2:21 the Lord promises, “I am about to shake the heavens and the earth.” Although Haggai’s hearers might have expected this to occur imminently, the promise must be understood in parallel with the “shaking” promised “in a little while” (v. 6). The promise to shake the heavens and the earth appears in other contexts to describe God’s end-time judgment on the nations (Isa. 13:13; Ezek. 38:20; Joel 3:16). Here the purpose of the shaking is to overthrow¹ thrones and kingdoms, so that the throne of David and the kingdom of Israel may be restored. The prophets promised a reciprocal reversal after the exile: the nations would be brought low so that the Lord could raise up his people and restore their fortunes (cf., e.g., Isa. 52:9–10; Jer. 30:16–17; 50:17–19; Joel 3:1–2; Mic. 5:9; Zech. 1:18–21).

Haggai 2:22 alludes to two episodes from Israel’s history to show what God will do to the “strength of the kingdoms.” As he did to Egypt in the exodus, he will “overthrow the chariots and their riders. And the horses and their riders shall go down” (cf. Ex. 14:23–25; 15:1–5). And as he did to the Midianites, the Lord will set the sword of each man against the other (Judg. 7:22).² In both of these episodes it was obvious even to God’s enemies that he was fighting for Israel (cf. Ex. 14:25; Judg. 7:2, 14–15): in each case the Lord is warrior and Israel is passive. These verses are calling Haggai’s generation not to take up arms in revolt against their Persian overlords but to wait for the day when God himself would overturn the political order.

The “shaking” and “overturning” is not described against any specific nation. It is expressed in nonspecific terms because the focus is on the implications this shaking will have for Israel. All other thrones and kingdoms are overturned to bring about the promise of Haggai 2:23.

2:23 Zerubbabel is identified here not as “governor of Judah” (as in v. 21) but as the “son of Shealtiel,” highlighting his Davidic ancestry. The promise that Zerubbabel will be like a “signet ring” must be understood in relation to a prior “signet ring” prophecy in Jeremiah 22:24–30, where God declares, “though Coniah the son of Jehoiakim, king of Judah, were the signet ring on my right hand, yet I would tear you off” (v. 24). The signet ring was a sign of royal authority, and tearing off the signet ring represented the Lord’s rejection of Coniah as king. This has implications not only for Coniah but also for his offspring. Jeremiah’s prophecy ends, “None of his offspring shall succeed in sitting on the throne of David and ruling again in Judah” (Jer. 22:30). This is especially significant for Haggai 2:23, because Coniah (also known as Jeconiah or Jehoiachin) was grandfather of Zerubbabel. Does this exclusion from the throne of David apply only to Coniah’s direct offspring (i.e., Shealtiel), or does it apply to his entire lineage, thus signifying the end of the Davidic dynasty?

The “signet ring” prophecy in Haggai signals the continuation of David’s royal line through Zerubbabel. Many commentators resist this understanding of the “signet ring,” perhaps from a desire to protect Haggai from “mistaken messianism” (because Zerubbabel was never crowned king). However, this misses the point of the prophecy. What Coniah lost was not merely his own kingship but the dynastic succession of the line of David. This is what is promised to Zerubbabel in Haggai’s oracle: continuation of the royal line of descent. The Lord’s description of Zerubbabel as “my servant” and his statement “I have chosen you” echo the language of 1 Kings 11:34, which describes a continuing dynastic succession “for the sake of David my servant whom I chose.” When the NT traces the royal line of David, it is through Zerubbabel that the line continues after the exile, culminating ultimately in Christ (Matt. 1:12).

This oracle declares that God will restore a king from the line of David. He will overthrow the kingdoms and thrones of the nations to reestablish his kingdom and put his king on the throne above all thrones.