Haggaichapter 2
23 verses · Haggai · 520 BC · The Twelve
Key verse
In that day, saith the Lord of hosts, will I take thee, O Zerubbabel, my servant, the son of Shealtiel, saith the Lord, and will make thee as a signet: for I have chosen thee, saith the Lord of hosts.
It stands in Zerubbabel, my chosen signet ring, verses 20 to 23.
The chapter
Chapter summary
Three more dated oracles. To the old men who remember Solomon's temple and weep at this one ('is it not in your eyes as nothing?') comes the charge to be strong and work, for 'my Spirit abode among you: fear ye not,' and the promise: 'I will shake all nations… and I will fill this house with glory. The silver is mine, and the gold is mine' (Hebrews 12 takes up the shaking). Then a priestly ruling by way of parable: holiness does not spread by contact, but defilement does. So is this people. Yet 'from this day will I bless you.' Last, to Zerubbabel: 'I will make thee as a signet,' reversing Jeconiah's curse in the line that runs to Christ.
Context
Prophecy · Haggai · Haggai overview
The world behind this chapter
Haggai 2The history
The first message lands on the last day of the Feast of Tabernacles, the great harvest festival, a week of living in booths and remembering the wilderness, and the same feast at which Solomon had dedicated the first temple. That timing is not an accident.
The rest of the history, and what it meant to them
The problem addressed is grief, not laziness. "Who is left among you that saw this house in her first glory? and how do ye see it now? is it not in your eyes in comparison of it as nothing?" A few very old men in that crowd had seen Solomon's temple before 586 BC and were now looking at a modest replacement. Ezra records the same scene: old men weeping while younger ones shouted for joy.
The answer is a command repeated three times, be strong, be strong, be strong, and a reason: the silver and the gold are mine, and the glory of this latter house shall be greater than of the former.
The second message is a legal question put to the priests, and it uses the actual rules of ritual purity. If consecrated meat touches ordinary food, does the food become holy? No. If a person unclean from touching a corpse touches food, does the food become unclean? Yes. Holiness does not spread by contact; defilement does. Haggai applies it to their work: half-hearted religion had not been sanctifying their economy.
The last message is to Zerubbabel, a descendant of David serving as Persian-appointed governor. God says He will shake the heavens and earth and overthrow thrones, and will make Zerubbabel like a signet ring. A signet was the ring a ruler used to seal documents, his authority in a person's hand, and something he never gave away casually. Zerubbabel's grandfather Jehoiachin had been told he would be plucked off like a signet; here the line is put back on the hand.
What it meant to them
To builders working on something visibly inferior, the message was that God measures a house by His presence in it, not by its budget. The dating in the text ties a promise of blessing to the exact day the foundation was recommitted, "from this day will I bless you."
And the promise about shaking the nations came at a moment when the Persian empire had literally just been shaken by revolts. The men laying those stones were told their small project was connected to something that would outlast every throne around them.
Sources cited
- Edwin Yamauchi, Persia and the Bible
- Alfred Edersheim, Bible History: Old Testament
- John Calvin, Commentaries on the Twelve Minor Prophets
Where the chapter sits
Haggai 2 falls in The latter glory and the signet (chapters 2). Three oracles: the latter glory will be greater; clean vs unclean; Zerubbabel as the LORD's signet.
The latter glory; the signet. ‘In this place will I give peace’; ‘I will make thee as a signet’ (2:23).
Before it: Consider your ways; build the house, chapters 1.
The whole shape of Haggai→The structure of this chapter
The heads below are this chapter's scenes. The numbered points under each are its verses.
A. The latter glory of this house shall be greater
1. (vv. 1-3)
Haggai 2:1
“In the seventh month, in the one and twentieth day of the month - This was the seventh day of the feast of tabernacles, Lev 23:34, Lev 23:36, Lev 23:40-42. and its close. The eighth day was to be a sabbath, with its “holy convocation,” but the commemorative feast, the dwelling in booths, in memory of God’s bringing them out of Egypt, was to last seven days. The close then of this feast could not but revive their sadness at the glories of their first deliverance by God’s “mighly hand and outstretched arm,” and their present fewness and poverty.”
1 more voice on this verseWhat preachers and commentators have said about this verse, in their own words.
Haggai 2:1
“It was sent on the twenty-first day of the seventh month, when the builders had been about a month at work (since the twenty-fourth day of the sixth month), and had got it in some forwardness. Note, Those that are hearty in the service of God shall receive fresh encouragements from him to proceed in it, as their case calls for them.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Haggai 2:2
“Speak now to Zerubbabel, the son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah,.... Of whom, his descent and dignity; see Gill on Hag 1:1. The Septuagint version wrongly renders it "of the tribe of Judah"; in which it is followed by the Arabic version; for, though he was of the tribe of Judah, this does not sufficiently distinguish him; nor does it answer to the word here used, which is expressive of his office and dignity. The Vulgate Latin version, Luther, and Castalio, omit the particle נא, rendered "now", which is very emphatic.”
1 more voice on this verse
Haggai 2:2
“The encouragements here are sent to the same persons to whom the reproofs in the foregoing chapter are directed; for those that are wounded by the convictions of the word shall be healed and bound up by its consolations.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Haggai 2:3
“Who is left among you that saw this house in her first glory?.... Not taken away by death, yet alive, and dwelling among them; and who lived before the destruction of the first temple, built by Solomon; and has seen it in all its magnificence; its grand and noble structure; its stately pillars; its carved work, and decorations of gold.”
1 more voice on this verse
Haggai 2:3
“It was now about seventy years since Solomon's temple was destroyed (for that was in the nineteenth year of the captivity, and this about the nineteenth after the captivity), so that there might be some yet alive who could remember to have seen it, and still they would be upbraiding themselves and their brethren with the great disparity between this house and that.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
In the seventh month, in the one and twentieth day: A second dated oracle arrives less than a month after the work resumed, in the seventh month, on the twenty-first day, which the bench notes falls during the feast of tabernacles, the very feast that had recalled Solomon's dedication of the first temple (1 Kings 8:2). Addressed again to Zerubbabel, Joshua, and the residue of the people, the word turns to the discouragement building already showed: who is left among you that saw this house in her first glory, and how do ye see it now, is it not in your eyes as nothing? Some elders present, Ezra 3:12 records, had wept aloud at the new foundation for remembering Solomon's house, and Haggai names that grief before he answers it.
2. (vv. 4-5)
Haggai 2:4
“Let not these leading men give way to this suggestion, nor be disheartened by it, but do as well as they can, when they cannot do so well as they would; and let all the people of the land be strong too, and work; and, if the leaders have but a good heart on it, it is hoped that the followers will have the better heart.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
1 more voice on this verse
Haggai 2:4
“Yet now be strong - Do not let this discourage you. The chief glory of the temple is not its splendid building, but my presence; and as I covenanted to be with you when ye came out of Egypt, so I will fulfill my covenant; for my Spirit remaineth among you, fear not; Hag 2:5. What is the most splendid cathedral, if God be not in it, influencing all by his presence and Spirit? But he will not be in it unless there be a messenger of the Lord there, and unless he deliver the Lord’s message.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Haggai 2:5
“The words which I covenanted - The words stand more forcibly, because abruptly. It is an exclamation which cannot be forced into any grammatical relation with the preceding. The more exact idiom would have been “Remember,” “take to heart.” But the prophet points to it the more energetically, because he casts it, as it were, into the midst, not bound up with any one verb. This would be the rather done in speaking to the people, as David to his followers (1Sa 30:23, which Ewald compares, Lehrb. n. 329. a. p. 811, ed. 8. and in his Die Proph. iii.”
1 more voice on this verse
Haggai 2:5
“Inasmuch as the old people, who had seen the splendor of the former temple, considered this temple no better than a cottage, all their zeal evaporated; for, as we have said, without a promise there will continue in men no ardor, no perseverance.”
John Calvin· Commentaries (1554)reformed
Yet now be strong, O Zerubbabel: Against the comparison just raised, three commands fall in one breath, be strong Zerubbabel, be strong Joshua, be strong all ye people of the land, and work, for I am with you, saith the Lord of hosts. The ground of the courage is not the building's present size but a covenant already sworn, according to the word that I covenanted with you when ye came out of Egypt, so my spirit remaineth among you, fear ye not. Henry reads the appeal to the exodus covenant as Haggai reaching past the diminished temple to the changeless promise behind every temple, the Lord's abiding spirit rather than any structure's dimensions carrying the assurance.
3. (vv. 6-7)
Haggai 2:6
“Yet once - After many confirmations of the new covenant, one more, remains to be made. A little while - Tho' above five hundred years, yet this was but a little time compared with that between the promise to Adam and Christ's coming. I will shake - Whether it be metaphorical or literal, it was verified at the time of Christ's coming into the world.”
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
2 more voices on this verse
Haggai 2:6
“There have been two remarkable transformations of the human way of life in the course of the world's history. These are called two "covenants," and, so famous was the business involved, two "shakings of the earth." The first was the transition from idols to the law;13 the second, from the law to the gospel. The gospel also tells of the third shaking, the change from this present stage of things to what lies unmoved, unshaken, beyond. An identical feature occurs in both covenants. The feature? There was nothing sudden involved in the first movement to take their transformation in hand.”
Gregory of Nazianzus· written before 390· ON THE HOLY SPIRIT, THEOLOGICAL ORATION 5(31)25patristic
Haggai 2:6
“Here the heavens and the earth are shaken, that proud oppressors may be broken and brought down: I will overthrow the throne of kingdoms. The Chaldean monarchy, which had been the throne of kingdoms a great while, was already overthrown; and the powers that are, and are yet to come, shall in like manner be overthrown; their day will come to fall.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Haggai 2:6
- Quoted inHebrews 12:26At that time His voice shook the earth, but now He has promised, “Once more I will shake not only the earth, but heaven as well.”
'Yet once more I shake not the earth only, but also heaven'
Haggai 2:7
“THE second Temple was never intended to be as magnificent as the first. The first was to be the embodiment of the full glory of the dispensation of symbols and types—and was soon to pass away. This comparative feebleness had been proved by the idolatry and apostasy of the people, Israel. And when they returned to Jerusalem they were to have a structure that would be sufficient for the purposes of their worship, but they were not again to be indulged with the splendors of the former house which God had erected by the hand of Solomon.”
Charles Spurgeon· written before 1892· The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, Sermon No. 3442: “'The Desire Of All Nations'” (lightly modernized text, CCEL edition)Particular Baptist
1 more voice on this verse
Haggai 2:7
“With glory - The first temple had a glory in its magnificent structure, rich ornaments, and costly sacrifices; but this was a worldly glory; that which is here promised, is a heavenly glory from the presence of Christ in it.”
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
Yet once, it is a little while, and I will shake the heavens: The promise widens from covenant memory to cosmic upheaval, yet once, it is a little while, and I will shake the heavens, and the earth, and the sea, and the dry land, and I will shake all nations, language the epistle to the Hebrews quotes directly of the removal of everything shakeable so that what cannot be shaken may remain (Heb 12:26-27). Then the crux clause, the desire of all nations shall come, and I will fill this house with glory: the older bench, following the Vulgate's singular desideratus, reads a messianic coming, the desired one himself entering the house; the more recent philological reading takes the Hebrew as a plural or collective, the valuable things or treasures of the nations brought in, both readings are named and neither is pressed as settled. Either way the bench agrees the glory promised outstrips gold and silver, since the next verse names who owns those already.
4. (vv. 8-9)
Haggai 2:8
“The heavenly Jerusalem shall be similarly adorned, but shall need "no temple" (Re 21:10-22). Compare 1Co 3:12, where gold and silver represent the most precious things (Zec 2:5). The inward glory of New Testament redemption far exceeds the outward glory of the Old Testament dispensation.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
1 more voice on this verse
Haggai 2:8
“When David and his princes offered vast sums for the service of the house of God, they acknowledged, It is all thy own, and of thy own, Lord, have we given thee, 1 Chron. xxix. Therefore God needs not sacrifice, for every beast of the forest is his, Ps. l.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Haggai 2:9
“The glory of this latter house . . . greater than of the former--namely, through the presence of Messiah, in (whose) face is given the light of the knowledge of the glory of God (2Co 4:6; compare Heb 1:2), and who said of Himself, "in this place is one greater than the temple" (Mt 12:6), and who "sat daily teaching in it" (Mt 26:55).”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
3 more voices on this verse
Haggai 2:9
“In this place - In my house, a type of Christ. Peace - A spiritual, internal, and heavenly peace.”
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
Haggai 2:9
“The glory of this latter house shall be greater than of the former - or, perhaps, more probably, “the later glory of this house shall be greater than the former;” for he had already spoken of the present temple, as identical with that before the captivity . “Who is left among you that saw this house in her first glory, anti how do you see it now?” He had spoken of its “first glory.” Now he says, in contrast, its later glory should be greater than that of its most glorious times.”
Haggai 2:9
“It was also the glory of this latter house, First, That, before the coming of Christ, it was always kept free from idols and idolatries, and was never polluted with those abominable things, as the first temple often was ( 2 Kings xxiii. 11, 12 ), and in this its glory excelled all the glory of that.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
The silver is mine, and the gold is mine: , saith the Lord of hosts answers any anxiety that the house cannot be worthily furnished, since its true owner already holds the world's wealth in his hand. Then the chapter's central claim: the glory of this latter house shall be greater than of the former, and in this place will I give peace. The bench reads the fulfillment on two tracks named together, the physical enlargement and adornment under Herod that made the Second Temple's courts far grander than Zerubbabel's original, and the greater claim that the Lord of the house himself once walked its courts in the person of Christ, a glory no gold ever supplied to Solomon's temple.
B. Ask the priests: holiness does not spread, but uncleanness doesvv. 10-14
In the four and twentieth day of the ninth month: A third oracle, three months later, comes as a case put to the priests as the law's own experts: does holy flesh carried in a garment's skirt make bread or wine holy by touching it, and the priests answer no, holiness does not transfer by contact through an intermediary. Does a person unclean by touching a corpse make food unclean by touching it, and the priests answer yes, uncleanness does transfer that way. Haggai draws the ruling onto the nation itself, so is this people, and so is this nation before me, and so is every work of their hands, and that which they offer there is unclean: the people's own defilement, the bench reads, had been spreading to their offerings all along, even the offerings brought toward the unfinished house, and no amount of resumed labor could cleanse by contact what needed its own repentance.
Haggai 2:10
“In the four and twentieth day of the ninth month - Three months after they had begun to rebuild the temple, Haggai is ordered to go and put two questions to the priests. 1. If one bear holy flesh in the skirt of his garment, and he touch any thing with his skirt, is that thing made holy? The priests answered, No! Hag 2:12. 2. If one has touched a dead body and thereby become unclean, does he communicate his uncleanness to whatever he may touch? And the priests answered, Yes! Hag 2:13.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Haggai 2:11
“Ask now the priests concerning the law - The priests answer rightly, that, by the law, insulated unholiness spread further than insulated holiness. The flesh of the sacrifice hallowed whatever it should touch, but not further; but the human being, who was defiled by touching a dead body, defiled all he might touch Num 19:22. Haggai does not apply the first part; namely, that the worship on the altar which they reared, while they neglected the building of the temple, did not hallow. The possession of a truly tiring does not counterbalance disobedience.”
Haggai 2:12
“If one bear holy flesh in the skirt of his garment,.... Or, "carry" it (q); from one place to another in his pockets or bags, which were in the skirts of his garments.”
1 more voice on this verse
Haggai 2:12
"Holy flesh" (that is, the flesh of a sacrifice, Jer 11:15), indeed, makes holy the "skirt" in which it is carried; but that "skirt" cannot impart its sanctity to any thing beyond, as "bread," &c.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
Haggai 2:13
“THE Prophet Haggai very wisely drew out from the priests a definite answer to certain questions which he put to them. Then, upon their authority, he could say to the people, "This is what your own priests say and this is what you, yourselves, believe." This was taking them by a kind of sacred guile and it was a powerful means of forcing home the Truth of God to their heart and conscience.”
Charles Spurgeon· written before 1892· The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, Sermon No. 2495: “Defiled and Defiling” (lightly modernized text, CCEL edition)Particular Baptist
1 more voice on this verse
Haggai 2:13
“On the other hand, a legally "unclean" person imparts his uncleanness to any thing, whereas a legally holy thing cannot confer its sanctity on an "unclean" person (Nu 19:11, 13, 22). Legal sanctity is not so readily communicated as legal impurity. So the paths to sin are manifold: the paths to holiness one, and that one of difficult access [GROTIUS].”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
Haggai 2:14
“Then answered Haggai - So is this people - As an unclean man communicates his uncleanness to every thing he touches, so are ye unclean; and whatever ye have hitherto done is polluted in the sight of God. For your neglect of my temple has made you unclean, as if you had contracted legal pollution by touching a dead body.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
2 more voices on this verse
Haggai 2:14
“So - Polluted persons, touching what is clean, pollute it, so polluted Jews, polluted God's ordinances, while the outward performing of legal duties, left them as unholy in themselves, as they were before: somewhat more then is to be done. The soul is first to be purified, that they and we may offer up a pure offering.”
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
Haggai 2:14
“This all applies to them as they had been, not as they are now that they have begun to obey; the design is to guard them against falling back again. The "there" points to the altar, probably in view of the audience which the prophet addressed.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
C. From this day on, I will bless you
1. (vv. 15-17)
Haggai 2:15
“And now, I pray you - Observe his tenderness, in drawing their attention to it , “Consider from this day and upward.” He bids them look backward, “from before a stone was laid upon a stone,” i. e., from the last moment of their neglect in building the house of God; “from since those days were,” or from the time backward “when those things were,” (resuming, in the word, “from-their-being” , the date which he had just given, namely, the beginning of their resuming the building backward, during all those years of neglect) “one came to a heap of twenty measures.” The precise measure is not mentioned: the force of the appeal lay in the proportion: the heap of grain which, usually, would yield twenty, (whether bushels or seahs or any other measure, for the heap itself being of no defined size, neither could the quantity expected from it be defined) there were ten only; “one came to the pressvat to draw out fifty” vessels out of the press, or perhaps fifty poorah, i. e., the ordinary quantity drawn out at one time from the press, there were, or it bad become twenty, two-fifths only of what they looked for and ordinarily obtained. The dried grapes yielded so little.”
1 more voice on this verse
Haggai 2:15
“And now, I pray you, consider from this day and upward,....”
Haggai 2:16
“Since those days were--from the time that those days of your neglect of the temple work have been. when one came to an heap of twenty measures--that is, to a heap which he had expected would be one of twenty measures, there were but ten. fifty vessels out of the press--As the Septuagint translates "measure," and Vulgate "a flagon," and as we should rather expect vat than press.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
1 more voice on this verse
Haggai 2:16
“Note, It is our folly that we are apt to raise our expectation from the creature, and to think tomorrow must needs be as this day and much more abundant, but we are commonly disappointed, and the more we expect the more grievous the disappointment is. In the stores and treasures of the new covenant we need not fear being disappointed when we come by faith to draw from them.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Haggai 2:17
“I smote you with blasting and mildew, - two diseases of grain, which Moses had foretold Deu 28:27. as chastisements on disobedience and God’s infliction, of which Amos had spoken in these self-same words. Amo 4:9. Haggai adds the hail, as destructive of the vines. Psa 78:47. Yet (And) ye turned you not to Me literally “there were none” - your, (accusative i. e., who turned you unto Me. The words are elliptical, but express the entire absence of conversion, of any who turned to God.”
2 more voices on this verse
Haggai 2:17
“But this people either saw not the hand of God in it (imputing it to chance) or saw not their own sin as the provoking cause of it, and therefore turned not to him. They were a long time incorrigible and unhumbled under these rebukes, so that God's hand was stretched out still, for the people turned not to him that smote them, Isa. ix.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Haggai 2:17
“Appropriated from Am 4:9, whose canonicity is thus sealed by Haggai's inspired authority; in the last clause, "turned," however, has to be supplied, its omission marking by the elliptical abruptness ("yet ye not to Me!") God's displeasure.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
consider from this day and upward, from before a stone was laid: upon a stone in the temple of the Lord, turns the nation back to its own recent history for the evidence: when one came to a heap expecting twenty measures there were but ten, when one came to the winepress for fifty vessels there were but twenty, the harvest shrinking under the Lord's own hand. I smote you with blasting and with mildew and with hail in all the labours of your hands, yet ye turned not to me repeats the covenant-curse vocabulary of chapter 1 and echoes the same refrain Amos had used a century earlier of a people disciplined again and again who still would not return (Amos 4:6-11), the bench naming the shared formula.
2. (vv. 18-19)
Haggai 2:18
“Or, translate, "From this day on which the temple is being begun," namely, on the foundations long ago laid [GROTIUS]. MAURER translates, "Consider . . . from the four and twentieth day . . . to (the time which has elapsed) from the day on which the foundation . . . was laid." The Hebrew supports English Version.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
Haggai 2:19
“Is the seed - Your seed for the next harvest is yet in your barns. Hath not brought forth - No sign yet appears what vintage you shall have, what store of wine, oil, figs, and pomegranates.”
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
1 more voice on this verse
Haggai 2:19
“Thus it will be made evident that the blessing is due to Me, not to nature. We may trust God's promise to bless us, though we see no visible sign of its fulfilment (Hab 2:3). God's promise through Zerubbabel to Israel of safety in the coming commotions.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
Consider now from this day and upward, from the four and twentieth day of the ninth month: The same call to consider repeats, now dated precisely to the day the temple's foundation was actually laid, and the question turns from past failure to present fact: is the seed yet in the barn, has the vine, the fig tree, the pomegranate, and the olive tree yet brought forth? The crops have not yet ripened when the promise is spoken, which the bench reads as the point, the blessing is dated from this day, not from any harvest already visible, so that when the harvest does come it can be read only as the Lord's answer and not as ordinary seasonal luck. From this day will I bless you closes the oracle on pure futurity, obedience credited before its fruit appears.
D. Zerubbabel, my chosen signet ringvv. 20-23
And again the word of the Lord came unto Haggai: A fourth oracle on the same day is addressed to Zerubbabel alone, and it returns to the shaking of verse 6 with its political edge made explicit, I will overthrow the throne of kingdoms, and destroy the strength of the kingdoms of the heathen, the chariots and their riders falling by their own brothers' swords. Then the book's closing sentence: in that day will I take thee, O Zerubbabel my servant, and will make thee as a signet, for I have chosen thee. The bench reads the signet as a deliberate reversal of Jeconiah, Zerubbabel's own grandfather, whom the Lord had pulled off his hand as a signet ring in judgment (Jeremiah 22:24): the exile that stripped the ring is answered by a governor of the very same line restored to the honor his grandfather lost. Zerubbabel stands in both Matthew's and Luke's genealogies of Christ (Matt 1:12, Luke 3:27), and the positions are named without settling one over the other, some of the bench reading the signet as Zerubbabel's own personal restoration and covenant pledge that the Davidic line would not end in Jeconiah's curse, others reading it further forward to the greater son of David the line would finally produce.
Haggai 2:20
“And again the word of the Lord came unto Haggai,.... Or a "second" (s) time, even on the same day as the former: in the four and twentieth day of the month; of the ninth month Chisleu, Hag 2:10, saying; as follows: (s) שנית "secundo", V. L. Pagninus, Montanus, Junius & Tremellius, Piscator, Cocceius; "secunda vice", Burkius.”
1 more voice on this verse
Haggai 2:20
“In the temple Jesus Christ was daily preached, Acts v. 42 . Now the ministration of righteousness and life by the gospel was unspeakably more glorious than the law, which was a ministration of death and condemnation, 2 Cor. iii.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Haggai 2:21
“I will shake - Haggai closes by resuming the words of a former prophecy to Zerubbabel and Joshua, which ended in the coming of Christ. Even thus it is plain, that the prophecy does not belong personally to Zerubbabel, but to him and his descendants, chiefly to Christ. There was in Zerubbabel’s time no shaking of the heaven or of nations.”
Haggai 2:22
“And I will overthrow the throne of kingdoms,.... The Persian monarchy, which consisted of various kingdoms and nations, and was destroyed under Darius Codomannus by Alexander the great, who fought with him three pitched battles, and overcame him; but the thing was of the Lord, according to his purpose and will, and by his power and providence; and therefore the overthrow is ascribed to him.”
Haggai 2:23
Wherefore to Him alone is it mystically said, "I will take thee, O Zerubbabel, and will make thee as a signet, for I have chosen thee." When our mind shall have become peaceful so that it may be said to her, "Return, return, O Shulamite," which signifies 'peaceful,' or, to use your own name, Irenice, then shall she receive Christ like a signet on herself, that is, the Image of God, that she may be according to that Image, for "as is the heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly."
Ambrose of Milan· written before 397· Letter 30patristic
3 more voices on this verse
Haggai 2:23
“I will make thee as a signet - God reverses to Zerubbabel the sentence on Jeconiah for his impiety.”
Haggai 2:23
“But this promise has special reference to Christ, who lineally descended from Zerubbabel, and is the sole builder of the gospel-temple. Zerubbabel is here owned as God's servant, and it is an honourable mention that is hereby made of him, as Moses and David my servants.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Haggai 2:23
“He is indeed the signet on God's right-hand. For all power is given to him, and derived from him. In him the great charter of the gospel is signed, and sanctified, and it is in him, that all the promises of God are yea and amen.”
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
This page carries no textual note on Haggai 2. Where this site has examined a place the manuscripts differ, the examination is in the manuscripts room. Every place this site examines →
Sources for this chapter
The summary
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory; John Calvin, Commentaries; John Wesley, Notes on the Old Testament and Matthew Henry, Complete Commentary.
The exposition
Adam Clarke, Commentary on the Bible; Albert Barnes, Notes on the Old Testament; Carl Friedrich Keil, The Twelve Minor Prophets; Edward Bouverie Pusey, The Minor Prophets: A Commentary; John Gill, Exposition of the Old Testament; John Wesley, Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament and Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible.
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