Haggai: Four Dates and an Unfinished House

The Pattern

Haggai is two chapters and four messages, and every message carries an exact date. The whole book runs from the first day of the sixth month to the twenty-fourth day of the ninth month in the second year of Darius, about 520 BC. Hold the four dates and the whole book is held.

• Day 1, month 6: build the house (1:1–15).
• Day 21, month 7: do not despise the small house (2:1–9).
• Day 24, month 9: holiness does not rub off; uncleanness does (2:10–19).
• Day 24, month 9: a signet for Zerubbabel (2:20–23).

Three phrases carry the book. Consider your ways — literally set your heart — appears five times (1:5, 7; 2:15, 18 twice). I am with you appears twice (1:13; 2:4). And Yahuah promises to shake heaven, earth, and the nations (2:6, 7, 21).

The Setting

The exiles had come home from Babylon about eighteen years earlier and laid the temple foundation, then stopped when opposition rose (Ezra 4:4–5, 24). In the meantime they built their own houses. Haggai and Zechariah were sent to get the work moving again (Ezra 5:1). Haggai speaks to two men: Zerubbabel the governor, of David’s line, and Joshua the high priest.

1. Build the House (1:1–15)

The date: the first day of the sixth month — the day the month renews.

The problem: This people say, The time is not come, the time that Yahuah’s house should be built (1:2). Yet they have time for their own paneled houses (1:4).

The word: Ye have sown much, and bring in little … he that earneth wages earneth wages to put it into a bag with holes (1:6). The drought and the thin harvest are Yahuah withholding (1:10–11), because mine house … is waste, and ye run every man unto his own house (1:9).

Watch for: the response. Zerubbabel, Joshua, and the people obeyed the voice of Yahuah their Elohim and did fear before Yahuah (1:12). Yahuah answers, I am with you (1:13), and in twenty-three days the work begins (1:15).

2. The Small House (2:1–9)

The date: the twenty-first day of the seventh month — the seventh day of Sukkot, the feast of ingathering, when a poor harvest is plainest to see. Solomon dedicated the first house at this same feast (1 Kings 8:2).

The problem: the old men who remember Solomon’s temple see the new one as nothing (2:3).

The word: Be strong … and work: for I am with you … according to the word that I covenanted with you when ye came out of Egypt, so my spirit remaineth among you (2:4–5). Yahuah will shake the heavens, and the earth and all nations, and the glory of this latter house shall be greater than of the former (2:6–9).

Watch for: the fulfillment. This second house, later enlarged, is the one Yahushua walked into — the temple Malachi said the Adon would suddenly come to (Malachi 3:1). No glory of Solomon’s house matched that.

3. Holy Does Not Rub Off (2:10–19)

The date: the twenty-fourth day of the ninth month.

The problem: the altar is working, but the people are not clean.

The word: Haggai settles it from Torah: Ask now the priests concerning the law (2:11). If holy meat carried in a garment touches bread, does the bread become holy? No. If someone unclean by a dead body touches it, does it become unclean? It shall be unclean (2:12–13). So is this people … and that which they offer there is unclean (2:14).

Watch for: the direction of contact. Holiness does not spread by touch; uncleanness does. A working altar did not make the people clean — the people made the offerings unclean. Then the turn: from this day will I bless you (2:19).

4. The Signet (2:20–23)

The date: the same day, the twenty-fourth of the ninth month.

The problem: Judah has no king, and Zerubbabel’s grandfather Jeconiah had been cut off: though Coniah … were the signet upon my right hand, yet would I pluck thee thence (Jeremiah 22:24).

The word: I will shake the heavens and the earth; and I will overthrow the throne of kingdoms … I will take thee, O Zerubbabel … and will make thee as a signet: for I have chosen thee (2:21–23).

Watch for: the reversal. The signet pulled off Jeconiah’s line is put back on Zerubbabel. Both Matthew and Luke name Zerubbabel in the line that leads to Yahushua (Matthew 1:12–13; Luke 3:27). The line was not finished.

Three Pulpit Errors Haggai Answers

• Haggai 1 means give to the building fund. The house in Haggai is Yahuah’s temple in Jerusalem, not a church building. The apostolic writings name the dwelling now: ye are the temple of Elohim (1 Corinthians 3:16).
• Being near holy things makes people holy. Haggai 2:12–13 says the opposite. The altar was running and the offerings were still unclean, because the people were. Cleansing comes from obedience to Yahuah, not proximity to a sanctuary.
• The silver is mine, and the gold is mine (2:8) promises wealth to givers. The verse is Yahuah telling discouraged builders He owns the treasure needed for His house. The empty barns of chapter 1 came from neglecting Yahuah’s house, not from a shortfall in giving to a ministry.

Where Haggai Points Next

Hebrews quotes Haggai’s promise — yet once more I shake not the earth only, but also heaven — and says it means the removing of those things that are shaken … that those things which cannot be shaken may remain (Hebrews 12:26–27; Haggai 2:6). Revelation shows what remains: a new heaven and a new earth (Revelation 21:1), and a city with no temple in it at all, because Yahuah Almighty and the Lamb are its temple (Revelation 21:22). The house Haggai urged them to build was always pointing to a dwelling that would never need rebuilding.