Haggai 1:1-6
Consider your ways
You dwell in panelled houses and this house lies waste. You have sown much and bring in little, you clothe yourselves and none is warm, and he that earns wages puts them into a bag with holes.
People of the Bible
Haggai
Two chapters, four dated messages, and the only prophet in the Old Testament whose audience did exactly what he said.
Haggai speaks in the second year of Darius to people who came back from exile sixteen years earlier, laid a foundation, met opposition, and stopped. His question is domestic rather than theological: is it time for you to dwell in your panelled houses and this house lie waste. He tells them to look at their own accounts, sowing much and bringing in little, earning wages to put into a bag with holes. Twenty-three days later the work restarts, and it is not interrupted again.
Scroll down to the storyThe movements, in the order the text gives them.
The story of Haggai
- 01
- 02
Haggai 1:12-15
I am with you
The governor, the high priest and the remnant obey the voice, and the message that follows is four words long. Twenty-three days later they come and work on the house.
- 03
Haggai 2:1-9
Who saw this house in her first glory
Those who remember Solomon’s temple find this one as nothing. The reply is be strong, work, my spirit remains among you, and the glory of this latter house shall be greater.
- 04
Haggai 2:10-19
Ask the priests concerning the law
A ruling on whether holiness spreads by touch, and whether uncleanness does. The answer is that holiness does not and uncleanness does, which is the whole diagnosis in one legal question.
Why it matters
Haggai is the shortest distance between preaching and result anywhere in the prophets. The dates are given to the day, and the gap between the first sermon and the first shovel is three weeks. He also handles the grief honestly: the old men who had seen the first house wept at the size of this one, and the answer is not that it is as good, but that the glory of this latter house shall be greater than of the former, and in this place I will give peace.
6 songs
The music
Every song in the catalogue whose passage falls inside these chapters.
