Hinckley Gilbert Thomas Mitchell

“ These reasons, however, are not convincing, especially in view of the fact that Jewish tradition, although it highly honours Haggai, attributing to him and Zechariah and Malachi, with whom he is almost always associated, various important services, [9] does not reckon him a member of the sacerdotal order. On the whole, therefore, it seems safest to ignore the Christian tradition and regard the prophet as a patriotic Jewish layman of unusual zeal for, and therefore, perhaps, unusual acquaintance with, the religion in which he had been born and reared. ”

“ He slew many people who had known the old Bardes; for this reason he slew the people, lest they should recognise him as not being Bardes, the son of Cyrus. There was not any one bold enough to say aught against Gomates, the Magian, until I arrived. Then I prayed to Ormazd. Ormazd brought help to me. On the tenth day of the month Ragayadish, then it was that I slew this Gomates, the Magian, and the chief men who were his followers. At the fort named Sictachotes, in the district of Media called Nisæa, there I slew him. I dispossessed him of the empire. By the grace of Ormazd I became king. ”

“ The release of the Jews, with permission to rebuild their temple, is so thoroughly in harmony with the policy of Cyrus that one is disposed to accept the Chronicler's account without question. When, however, one examines it more closely, there appear reasons for more or less skepticism. Kosters, as the result of his investigations, not only doubts the historicity of Cyrus's decree, but declares that "in the history of the Restoration of Israel this return must take, not the first, but the third place" ”

“ There is wide disagreement among the authorities with reference to the treatment of the Egyptians and their religion by the conqueror. A nearly contemporary record, the inscription on the statue of Uzahor, says that, when Cambyses had established himself in Egypt, he took an Egyptian prænomen, Mesut-ra, received instruction in the religion of the country, recognised the goddess Neit by purging her temple, restoring its revenues and worshipping at the renovated sanctuary, and finally made offerings to all the other gods that had shrines at Sais. ”

“ The book is so brief that it seems almost ridiculous to suspect its unity. Yet some have not only raised the question, whether all the prophecies it contains are correctly attributed to Haggai, but actually found reasons for answering it in the negative. The most ambitious of these critics is André, who claims (24 ff.) to have shown that 210–19 is an interpolation, being, in fact, a prophecy delivered by an unknown person on the twenty-fourth of the ninth month, not of the second, but of the first, year of the reign of Darius. ”

“ A show of force may have been necessary, but soon, so far as Palestine was concerned, the king was free to devote his energies to a war with the Scythians by which, although it cost him his life, he greatly extended and firmly established, in the north and east, the boundaries of his empire.
The death of Cyrus took place in 530 or 529 B.C. [29] By this time a considerable number of Jews must have returned to Palestine. Their condition was not an enviable one. Of this one can assure one's self without the help of the Chronicler. ”

“ The book of Haggai consists largely of a series of four comparatively brief prophecies, all dated, the last two on the same day. It is evidently not, in its entirety, from the prophet's own hand; for, both in the statements by which the several prophecies are introduced (11 21, 10, 20) and in the body of the third (212 f.) , he is referred to only in the third person. Moreover, the first prophecy is followed by a description of its effect upon those to whom it was addressed (112–15) throughout which he is treated in the same objective manner. There are similar passages in Zechariah ”

“ Finally, the Chronicler describes the effect produced upon "the old men who had seen the first house" when the foundation of the new one was put into place: the cries of joy and sorrow mingled in a great and indistinguishable "noise." This is a clearly an enlargement upon Hg. 23. The whole account, then, is simply the product of an attempt to bring the facts with reference to the restoration of the temple into harmony with an unfulfilled prediction on the subject, and has no historic value. ”

“ Cambyses, who had no son, was finally succeeded by Darius Hystaspes, representing a collateral branch of the Achæmenids. The story of the method by which he obtained the crown, as given by Herodotus, [43] is full of romantic details. The new king himself, in the inscription already cited, gives this concise and simple account of the matter:
"There was not a man, either Persian or Median, or any one of our family, who could dispossess of the empire this Gomates, the Magian. ”

“ Moreover, being on the route by which the Persian army entered Egypt, and by which it had to be re-enforced, they must more than once have been obliged to meet requisitions that sorely taxed their slender resources. It is not surprising, therefore, that there is no evidence, in the Scriptures or elsewhere, that, during the reign of Cambyses, they made any attempt to complete the temple or even to put their city into a defensible condition. ”

“ If, seeing this tablet and these figures, thou shalt injure them, and shalt not preserve them as long as thy seed endures, then may Ormazd be thy enemy, and mayest thou be childless, and that which thou mayest do may Ormazd curse for thee. ”

“ The Chronicler, in a passage a part of which is preserved at the end of the second book of Chronicles and the whole at the beginning of the book of Ezra, recites that, in the first year after assuming the government of Babylonia, Cyrus issued a formal proclamation announcing that "Yahweh, the God of heaven," had given him "all the kingdoms of the earth" and commissioned him "to build him a house in Jerusalem"; summoning the Jews who were moved so to do [9] to return to their country and assist in the project ”

“ In most other cases the name of the prophet's father is given (Is. 11) , or that of the place of his birth or residence (Am. 11) , or both (Je. 11) ; but here both are omitted. This fact, together with the further circumstance that the Hebrew word ḥaggay [1] may mean my feasts, gives some plausibility to the hypothesis [2] that this book, like that of Malachi, was originally an anonymous work, and that the name Haggai, more correctly, Haggay, was given to it because the prophecies it contained were all dated on feast-days. ”

“ It should also be noted as in harmony with this tradition that, in the versions, the name of Haggai appears in the titles of some of the Psalms. [7] This external testimony is not in itself of so much value, but it would deserve more serious consideration if there were internal evidence to support it. There are those who claim that there is such evidence. They find it, first, in the tone and purpose of the book, which seems to them to betray the personal interest of a priest in the restoration of the worship by which his order had subsisted before the Exile ”

“ When the Jews began work on the temple, Media was in rebellion; but, by the time the report of Tattenai reached Darius, he had regained control of the province, including Ecbatana, where the edict of Cyrus was finally discovered. Cf. Ezr. 62.
5. There are certain features of the rescript in reply to Tattenai (Ezr. 66 ff.) that speak for its genuineness. Thus, the request for an interest in the prayers of the worshippers of Yahweh (v.10) reminds one of Cyrus's appeal to the gods that he had restored to their shrines to intercede for him and Cambyses with Bel and Nebo ”

“ The word בגד is the proper one for a single garment. Hence it, and not לבושׁ, which generally means clothing, is used in 212, and often elsewhere, even in connection with the verb לבשׁ, clothe, of 16. ”

“ Meanwhile the Jews proceeded with their work. At first they wrought with feverish, fanatical energy. On the twenty-fourth of the ninth month (December, 520 B.C.) , the enthusiasm seems to have reached its height. This is the date on which Haggai prophesied the destruction of "the strength of the kingdoms of the nations." Cf. 322. Later the work began to drag. At any rate, Zechariah, in 46 f. of his prophecies, pictures the task before Zerubbabel and his associates as a "mountain." ”

“ The order of arrangement differs from the traditional one only in the case of Jonah, which is placed at the end of the series, not only because it was composed at a much later date than the traditional order suggests, but also because it is of a different character from the other prophets. ”

“ They do not lie against a less spectacular view of the matter, derived, not from the prophecies of the Second Isaiah, [18] but from more nearly contemporary sources. 1. In the first place, as has already been suggested, the liberality of which Cyrus gives evidence in his memorial inscription would prompt him to favour the return of the Jews to their country. 2. It would also suit his plans against Egypt to have them reestablish themselves on the western border of his empire under his protection. 3. Again, the decree cited in Ezr. ”

“ When the case came before Darius, he would naturally make it a point to honour a decree of his great predecessor, knowing that, once firmly seated upon his throne, he could easily check any abuse of his liberality by the Jews of Jerusalem.
3. The mention of Sheshbazzar (516) is significant. It shows that the Chronicler, when he introduced it, was borrowing from an older source, a source from which, in ch. ”