William Robertson Smith and Alexander James Grieve

“ The rebuke took effect, and the people began to work at the temple, strengthened by the prophet’s assurance that the Lord was with them (i. 12-15) . In a second prophecy (ii. 1-9) delivered in the following month, Haggai forbids the people to be disheartened by the apparent meanness of the new temple. The silver and gold are the Lord’s. He will soon shake all nations and their choicest gifts will be brought to adorn His house. Its glory shall be greater than that of the former temple, and in this place He will give peace. ”

“ Babylon and other subject states rose in revolt, and to the Jews it seemed that Persia was tottering and that the Messianic era was nigh. It was therefore natural that Haggai and Zechariah should urge the speedy building of the temple, in order that the great king might be fittingly received. ”

“ To Haggai the temple appears so essential that he teaches that while it lay waste, the people and all their works and offerings were unclean (Hag. ii. 14) . In this he betrays his affinity with Ezekiel, who taught that it is by the possession of the sanctuary that Israel is sanctified (Ezek. xxxvii. 28) . In truth the new movement of religious thought and feeling which started from the fall of the Hebrew state took two distinct lines, of which Ezekiel and the anonymous authors of Isa. ”

“ The language of the prophet in ii. 3 suggests the probability that he was himself one of those whose memories reached across the seventy years of the captivity, and that his prophetic work began in extreme old age. This supposition agrees well with the shortness of the period covered by his book, and with the fact that Zechariah, who began to prophesy in the same autumn and was associated with Haggai’s labours (Ezra v. 1) , afterwards appears as the leading prophet in Jerusalem (Zech. vii. 1-4) . We know nothing further of the personal history of Haggai from the Bible. ”

“ The stem of David is superseded by the house of Zadok, the kingship has yielded to the priesthood, and the extinction of national hopes gives new importance to that strict organization of the hierarchy for which Ezekiel had prepared the way by his sentence of disfranchisement against the non-Zadokite priests. ”