CHAPTER XVIII

_HAGGAI AND THE BUILDING OF THE TEMPLE_

HAGGAI i., ii.

We have seen that the most probable solution of the problems presented to us by the inadequate and confused records of the time is that a considerable number of Jewish exiles returned from Jerusalem to Babylon about 537, upon the permission of Cyrus, and that the Satrap whom he sent with them not only allowed them to raise the altar on its ancient site, but himself laid for them the foundation-stone of the Temple.[657]

We have seen, too, why this attempt led to nothing, and we have followed the Samaritan obstructions, the failure of the Persian patronage, the drought and bad harvests, and all the disillusion of the fifteen years which succeeded the Return.[658] The hostility of the Samaritans was entirely due to the refusal of the Jews to give them a share in the construction of the Temple, and its virulence, probably shown by preventing the Jews from procuring timber, seems to have ceased when the Temple works were stopped. At least we find no mention of it in our prophets; and the Jews are furnished with enough of timber to panel and ciel their own houses.[659] But the Jews must have feared a renewal of Samaritan attacks if they resumed work on the Temple, and for the rest they were too sodden with adversity, and too weighted with the care of their own sustenance, to spring at higher interests. What immediately precedes our prophets is a miserable story of barren seasons and little income, money leaking fast away, and every man’s sordid heart engrossed with his own household. Little wonder that critics have been led to deny the great Return of sixteen years back, with its grand ambitions for the Temple and glorious future of Israel. But the like collapse has often been experienced in history when bands of religious men, going forth, as they thought, to freedom and the immediate erection of a holy commonwealth, have found their unity wrecked and their enthusiasm dissipated by a few inclement seasons on a barren and a hostile shore. Nature and their barbarous fellow-men have frustrated what God had promised. Themselves, accustomed from a high stage of civilisation to plan still higher social structures, are suddenly reduced to the primitive necessities of tillage and defence against a savage foe. Statesmen, poets and idealists of sorts have to hoe the ground, quarry stones and stay up of nights to watch as sentinels. Destitute of the comforts and resources with which they have grown up, they live in constant battle with their bare and unsympathetic environs. It is a familiar tale in history, and we read it with ease in the case of Israel. The Jews enjoyed this advantage, that they came not to a strange land, but to one crowded with inspiring memories, and they had behind them the most glorious impetus of prophecy which ever sent a people forward to the future. Yet the very ardours of this hurried them past a due appreciation of the difficulties they would have to encounter, and when they found themselves on the stony soil of Judah, which they had been idealising for fifty years, and were further afflicted by barren seasons, their hearts must have suffered an even more bitter disillusion than has so frequently fallen to the lot of religious emigrants to an absolutely new coast.

1. THE CALL TO BUILD (Chap. i.).

It was to this situation, upon an autumn day, when the colonists felt another year of beggarly effort behind them and their wretched harvest had been brought home, that the prophet Haggai addressed himself. With rare sense he confined his efforts to the practical needs of the moment. The sneers of modern writers have not been spared upon a style that is crabbed and jejune, and they have esteemed this to be a collapse of the prophetic spirit, in which Haggai ignored all the achievements of prophecy and interpreted the word of God as only a call to hew wood and lay stone upon stone. But the man felt what the moment needed, and that is the supreme mark of the prophet. Set a prophet there, and what else could a prophet have done? It would have been futile to rewaken those most splendid voices of the past, which had in part been the reason of the people’s disappointment, and equally futile to interpret the mission of the great world powers towards God’s people. What God’s people themselves could do for themselves—that was what needed telling at the moment; and if Haggai told it with a meagre and starved style, this also was in harmony with the occasion. One does not expect it otherwise when hungry men speak to each other of their duty.

Nor does Haggai deserve blame that he interpreted the duty as the material building of the Temple. This was no mere ecclesiastical function. Without the Temple the continuity of Israel’s religion could not be maintained. An independent state, with the full courses of civic life, was then impossible. The ethical spirit, the regard for each other and God, could prevail over their material interests in no other way than by common devotion to the worship of the God of their fathers. In urging them to build the Temple from their own unaided resources, in abstaining from all hopes of imperial patronage, in making the business one, not of sentiment nor of comfortable assurance derived from the past promises of God, but of plain and hard duty—Haggai illustrated at once the sanity and the spiritual essence of prophecy in Israel.

Professor Robertson Smith has contrasted the central importance which Haggai attached to the Temple with the attitude of Isaiah and Jeremiah, to whom “the religion of Israel and the holiness of Jerusalem have little to do with the edifice of the Temple. The city is holy because it is the seat of Jehovah’s sovereignty on earth, exerted in His dealings with and for the state of Judah and the kingdom of David.”[660] At the same time it ought to be pointed out that even to Isaiah the Temple was the dwelling-place of Jehovah, and if it had been lying in ruins at his feet, as it was at Haggai’s, there is little doubt he would have been as earnest as Haggai in urging its reconstruction. Nor did the Second Isaiah, who has as lofty an idea of the spiritual destiny of the people as any other prophet, lay less emphasis upon the cardinal importance of the Temple to their life, and upon the certainty of its future glory.

_In the second year of Darius[661] the king, in the sixth month and the first day of the month_—that is, on the feast of the new moon—_the word of Jehovah came by[662] Haggai the prophet to Zerubbabel, son of She’altî’el,[663] Satrap of Judah, and to Jehoshua‘, son of Jehoṣadaḳ,[664] the high priest_—the civil and religious heads of the community—_as follows_[665]:—

_Thus hath Jehovah of Hosts spoken, saying: This people have said, Not yet[666] is come the time for the building of Jehovah’s House. Therefore Jehovah’s word is come by Haggai the prophet, saying: Is it a time for you—you[667]—to be dwelling in houses cieled with planks,[668] while this House is waste? And now thus saith Jehovah of Hosts: Lay to heart how things have gone with you.[669] Ye sowed much but had little income, ate and were not satisfied, drank and were not full, put on clothing and there was no warmth, while he that earned wages has earned them into a bag with holes._

_Thus saith Jehovah of Hosts:[670] Go up into the mountain_—the hill-country of Judah—_and bring in timber, and build the House, that I may take pleasure in it, and show My glory, saith Jehovah. Ye looked for much and it has turned out little,[671] and what ye brought home I puffed at. On account of what?—oracle of Jehovah of Hosts—on account of My House which is waste, while ye are hurrying every man after his own house. Therefore[672] hath heaven shut off the dew,[673] and earth shut off her increase. And I have called drought upon the earth, both upon the mountains,[674] and upon the corn, and upon the wine, and upon the oil, and upon what the ground brings forth, and upon man, and upon beast, and upon all the labour of the hands._

For ourselves, Haggai’s appeal to the barren seasons and poverty of the people as proof of God’s anger with their selfishness must raise questions. But we have already seen, not only that natural calamities were by the ancient world interpreted as the penal instruments of the Deity, but that all through history they have had a wonderful influence on the spirits of men, forcing them to search their own hearts and to believe that Providence is conducted for other ends than those of our physical prosperity. “Have not those who have believed as Amos believed ever been the strong spirits of our race, making the very disasters which crushed them to the earth the tokens that God has great views about them?”[675] Haggai, therefore, takes no sordid view of Providence when he interprets the seasons, from which his countrymen had suffered, as God’s anger upon their selfishness and delay in building His House.

The straight appeal to the conscience of the Jews had an immediate effect. Within three weeks they began work on the Temple.

_And Zerubbabel, son of She’altî’el, and Jehoshua‘, son of Jehoṣadaḳ, the high priest, and all the rest of the people, hearkened to the voice of Jehovah their God, and to the words of Haggai the prophet, as Jehovah their God had sent him; and the people feared before the face of Jehovah. [And Haggai, the messenger of Jehovah, in Jehovah’s mission to the people, spake, saying, I am with you—oracle of Jehovah.][676] And Jehovah stirred the spirit of Zerubbabel, son of She’altî’el, Satrap of Judah, and the spirit of Jehoshua‘, son of Jehoṣadaḳ, the high priest, and the spirit of all the rest of the people; and they went and did work in the House of Jehovah of Hosts, their God, on the twenty-fourth day of the sixth month, in the second year of Darius the king._[677]

Note how the narrative emphasises that the new energy was, as it could not but be from Haggai’s unflattering words, a purely spiritual result. It was the _spirit_ of Zerubbabel, and the _spirit_ of Jehoshua, and the _spirit_ of all the rest of the people, which was stirred—their conscience and radical force of character. Not in vain had the people suffered their great disillusion under Cyrus, if now their history was to start again from sources so inward and so pure.

2. COURAGE, ZERUBBABEL! COURAGE, JEHOSHUA AND ALL THE PEOPLE! (Chap. ii. 1-9).

The second occasion on which Haggai spoke to the people was another feast the same autumn, the seventh day of the Feast of Tabernacles,[678] the twenty-first of the seventh month. For nearly four weeks the work on the Temple had proceeded. Some progress must have been made, for comparisons became possible between the old Temple and the state of this one. Probably the outline and size of the building were visible. In any case it was enough to discourage the builders with their efforts and the means at their disposal. Haggai’s new word is a very simple one of encouragement. The people’s conscience had been stirred by his first; they needed now some hope. Consequently he appeals to what he had ignored before, the political possibilities which the present state of the world afforded—always a source of prophetic promise. But again he makes his former call upon their own courage and resources. The Hebrew text contains a reference to the Exodus which would be appropriate to a discourse delivered during the Feast of Tabernacles, but it is not found in the Septuagint, and is so impossible to construe that it has been justly suspected as a gloss, inserted by some later hand, only because the passage had to do with the Feast of Tabernacles.

_In the seventh_ month, _on the twenty-first day of the month, the word of Jehovah came by[679] Haggai the prophet, saying_:—

_Speak now to Zerubbabel, son of She’altî’el, Satrap of Judah, and to Jehoshua‘, son of Jehoṣadaḳ, the high priest, and to the rest of the people, saying: Who among you is left that saw this House in its former glory, and how do ye see it now? Is it not as nothing in your eyes?[680] And now courage,[681] O Zerubbabel—oracle of Jehovah—and courage, Jehoshua‘, son of Jehoṣadaḳ, O high priest;[682] and courage, all people of the land!—oracle of Jehovah; and get to work, for I am with you—oracle of Jehovah of Hosts[683]—and My Spirit is standing in your midst. Fear not! For thus saith Jehovah of Hosts: It is but 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, and the costly things[684] of all nations shall come in, and I will fill this House with glory, saith Jehovah of Hosts. Mine is the silver and Mine the gold—oracle of Jehovah of Hosts. Greater shall the latter glory of this House be than the former, saith Jehovah of Hosts, and in this place will I give peace[685]—oracle of Jehovah of Hosts._

From the earliest times this passage, by the majority of the Christian Church, has been interpreted of the coming of Christ. The Vulgate renders ver. 7_b_, _Et veniet Desideratus cunctis gentibus_, and so a large number of the Latin Fathers, who are followed by Luther, _Der Trost aller Heiden_, and by our own Authorised Version, _And the Desire of all nations shall come_. This was not contrary to Jewish tradition, for Rabbi Akiba had defined the clause of the Messiah, and Jerome received the interpretation from his Jewish instructors. In itself the noun, as pointed in the Massoretic text, means _longing_ or _object of longing_.[686] But the verb which goes with it is in the plural, and by a change of points the noun itself may be read as a plural.[687] That this was the original reading is made extremely probable by the fact that it lay before the translators of the Septuagint, who render: _the picked_, or _chosen, things of the nations_.[688] So the old Italic version: _Et venient omnia electa gentium_.[689] Moreover this meaning suits the context, as the other does not. The next verse mentions silver and gold. “We may understand what he says,” writes Calvin, “of Christ; we indeed know that Christ was the expectation of the whole world; ... but as it immediately follows, _Mine is the silver and Mine is the gold_, the more simple meaning is that which I first stated: that the nations would come, bringing with them all their riches, that they might offer themselves and all their possessions a sacrifice to God.”[690]

3. THE POWER OF THE UNCLEAN (Chap. ii. 10-19).

Haggai’s third address to the people is based on a deliverance which he seeks from the priests. The Book of Deuteronomy had provided that, in all difficult cases not settled by its own code, the people shall seek a _deliverance_ or _Torah_ from the priests, _and shall observe to do according to the deliverance which the priests deliver to thee_.[691] Both noun and verb, which may be thus literally translated, are also used for the completed and canonical Law in Israel, and they signify that in the time of the composition of the Book of Deuteronomy that Law was still regarded as in process of growth. So it is also in the time of Haggai: he does not consult a code of laws, nor asks the priests what the canon says, as, for instance, our Lord does with the question, _how readest thou_? But he begs them to give him _a_ Torah or _deliverance_,[692] based of course upon existing custom, but not yet committed to writing.[693] For the history of the Law in Israel this is, therefore, a passage of great interest.

_On the twenty-fourth of the ninth month, in the second year of Darius, the word of Jehovah came to[694] Haggai the prophet, saying: Thus saith Jehovah of Hosts, Ask, I pray, of the priests a deliverance,[695] saying:—_

_If a man be carrying flesh that is holy in the skirt of his robe, and with his skirt touch bread or pottage or wine or oil or any food, shall _the latter_ become holy? And the priests gave answer and said, No! And Haggai said, If one unclean by a corpse[696] touch any of these, shall _the latter_ become unclean? And the priests gave answer and said, It shall._ That is to say, holiness which passed from the source to an object immediately in touch with the latter did not spread further; but pollution infected not only the person who came into contact with it, but whatever he touched.[697] “The flesh of the sacrifice hallowed whatever it should touch, but not further;[698] but the human being who was defiled by touching a dead body, defiled all he might touch.”[699] _And Haggai answered and said: So is this people, and so is this nation before Me—oracle of Jehovah—and so is all the work of their hands, and what they offer there_—at the altar erected on its old site—_is unclean_.[700] That is to say, while the Jews had expected their restored ritual to make them holy to the Lord, this had not been effective, while, on the contrary, their contact with sources of pollution had thoroughly polluted both themselves and their labour and their sacrifices. What these sources of pollution are is not explicitly stated, but Haggai, from his other messages, can only mean, either the people’s want of energy in building the Temple, or the unbuilt Temple itself. Andrée goes so far as to compare the latter with the corpse, whose touch, according to the priests, spreads infection through more than one degree. In any case Haggai means to illustrate and enforce the building of the Temple without delay; and meantime he takes one instance of the effect he has already spoken of, _the work of their hands_, and shows how it has been spoilt by their neglect and delay. _And now, I pray, set your hearts backward from to-day,[701] before stone was laid upon stone in the Temple of Jehovah: ...[702] when one came to a heap of grain of twenty measures, and it had become ten, or went to the winevat to draw fifty measures,[703] and it had become twenty. I smote you with blasting and with withering,[704] and with hail all the work of your hands, and ...[705]—oracle of Jehovah. Lay now your hearts _on the time_ before to-day[706] (the twenty-fourth day of the ninth month[707]), before the day of the foundation of the Temple of Jehovah[708]—lay your hearts_ to that time! _Is there yet_ any _seed in the barn[709]? And as yet[710] the vine, the fig-tree, the pomegranate and the olive have not borne_ fruit. _From this day I will bless thee._

This then is the substance of the whole message. On the twenty-fourth day of the ninth month, somewhere in our December, the Jews had been discouraged that their attempts to build the Temple, begun three months before,[711] had not turned the tide of their misfortunes and produced prosperity in their agriculture. Haggai tells them, there is not yet time for the change to work. If contact with a holy thing has only a slight effect, but contact with an unclean thing has a much greater effect (verses 11-13), then their attempts to build the Temple must have less good influence upon their condition than the bad influence of all their past devotion to themselves and their secular labours. That is why adversity still continues, but courage! from this day on God will bless. The whole message is, therefore, opportune to the date at which it was delivered, and comes naturally on the back of Haggai’s previous oracles. Andrée’s reason for assigning it to another writer, on the ground of its breaking the connection, does not exist.[712]

These poor colonists, in their hope deferred, were learning the old lesson, which humanity finds so hard to understand, that repentance and new-born zeal do not immediately work a change upon our material condition; but the natural consequences of sin often outweigh the influence of conversion, and though devoted to God and very industrious we may still be punished for a sinful past. Evil has an infectious power greater than that of holiness. Its effects are more extensive and lasting.[713] It was no bit of casuistry which Haggai sought to illustrate by his appeal to the priests on the ceremonial law, but an ethical truth deeply embedded in human experience.

4. THE REINVESTMENT OF ISRAEL’S HOPE (Chap. ii. 20-23).

On the same day Haggai published another oracle, in which he put the climax to his own message by re-investing in Zerubbabel the ancient hopes of his people. When the monarchy fell the Messianic hopes were naturally no longer concentrated in the person of a king; and the great evangelist of the Exile found the elect and anointed Servant of Jehovah in the people as a whole, or in at least the pious part of them, with functions not of political government but of moral influence and instruction towards all the peoples of the earth. Yet in the Exile Ezekiel still predicted an individual Messiah, a son of the house of David; only it is significant that, in his latest prophecies delivered after the overthrow of Jerusalem, Ezekiel calls him not _king_[714] any more, but _prince_.[715]

After the return of Sheshbazzar to Babylon this position was virtually filled by Zerubbabel, a grandson of Jehoiakin, the second last king of Judah, and appointed by the Persian king Peḥah or Satrap of Judah. Him Haggai now formally names the elect servant of Jehovah. In that overturning of the kingdoms of the world which Haggai had predicted two months before, and which he now explains as their mutual destruction by war, Jehovah of Hosts will make Zerubbabel His signet-ring, inseparable from Himself and the symbol of His authority.

_And the word of Jehovah came a second time to[716] Haggai on the twenty-fourth day of the_ ninth _month, saying: Speak to Zerubbabel, Satrap of Judah, saying: I am about to shake the heavens and the earth,[717] and I will overturn the thrones[718] of kingdoms, and will shatter the power of the kingdoms of the Gentiles, and will overturn chariots[719] and their riders, and horses and their riders will come down, every man by the sword of his brother. In that day—oracle of Jehovah of Hosts—I will take Zerubbabel, son of She’altî’el, My servant—oracle of Jehovah—and will make him like a signet-ring; for thee have I chosen—oracle of Jehovah of Hosts._

The wars and mutual destruction of the Gentiles, of which Haggai speaks, are doubtless those revolts of races and provinces, which threatened to disrupt the Persian Empire upon the accession of Darius in 521. Persians, Babylonians, Medes, Armenians, the Sacæ and others rose together or in succession. In four years Darius quelled them all, and reorganised his empire before the Jews finished their Temple. Like all the Syrian governors, Zerubbabel remained his poor lieutenant and submissive tributary. History rolled westward into Europe. Greek and Persian began their struggle for the control of its future, and the Jews fell into an obscurity and oblivion unbroken for centuries. The _signet-ring of Jehovah_ was not acknowledged by the world—does not seem even to have challenged its briefest attention. But Haggai had at least succeeded in asserting the Messianic hope of Israel, always baffled, never quenched, in this re-opening of her life. He had delivered the ancient heritage of Israel to the care of the new Judaism.

* * * * *

Haggai’s place in the succession of prophecy ought now to be clear to us. The meagreness of his words and their crabbed style, his occupation with the construction of the Temple, his unfulfilled hope in Zerubbabel, his silence on the great inheritance of truth delivered by his predecessors, and the absence from his prophesying of all visions of God’s character and all emphasis upon the ethical elements of religion—these have moved some to depress his value as a prophet almost to the vanishing point. Nothing could be more unjust. In his opening message Haggai evinced the first indispensable power of the prophet: to speak to the situation of the moment, and to succeed in getting men to take up the duty at their feet; in another message he announced a great ethical principle; in his last he conserved the Messianic traditions of his religion, and though not less disappointed than Isaiah in the personality to whom he looked for their fulfilment, he succeeded in passing on their hope undiminished to future ages.

FOOTNOTES:

[657] See above, pp. 210-18, and emphasise specially the facts that the most pronounced adherents of Kosters’ theory seek to qualify his absolute negation of a Return under Cyrus, by the admission that some Jews did return; and that even Stade, who agrees in the main with Schrader that no attempt was made by the Jews to begin building the Temple till 520, admits the probability of a stone being laid by Sheshbazzar about 536.

[658] See above, pp. 218 ff.

[659] Hag. i. 4.

[660] Art. “Haggai,” _Encyc. Brit._

[661] Heb. Daryavesh.

[662] Heb. _by the hand of_.

[663] See above, pp. 199 f. and 221.

[664] See below, pp. 258, 279, 292 ff.

[665] Heb. _saying_.

[666] For לאֹ עֶת־בֹּא = _not the time of coming_ read with Hitzig and Wellhausen לאֹ עַתָּ בָא, _not now is come_; for עַתָּ cf. Ezek. xxiii. 4, Psalm lxxiv. 6.

[667] The emphasis may be due only to the awkward grammatical construction.

[668]‎ ספונים, from ספן, _to cover_ with planks of cedar, 2 Kings vi. 9: cf. iii. 7.

[669] Heb. _set your hearts_ (see Vol. I., pp. 258, 275, 321, 323) _upon your ways_; but _your ways_ cannot mean here, as elsewhere, _your conduct_, but obviously from what follows _the ways_ you have been led, _the way_ things have gone with you—the barren seasons and little income.

[670] The Hebrew and Versions here insert _set your hearts upon your ways_, obviously a mere clerical repetition from ver. 5.

[671] For והנה למעט read with the LXX. והיה למעט or ויהי.

[672] The עליכם here inserted in the Hebrew text is unparsable, not found in the LXX. and probably a clerical error by dittography from the preceding על־כן.

[673] Heb. _heavens are shut from dew_. But perhaps the מ of מטל should be deleted. So Wellhausen. There is no instance of an intransitive Qal of כלא.

[674] Query?

[675] Vol. I., pp. 162 ff.

[676] See above, p. 227.

[677] The LXX. wrongly takes this last verse of chap. i. as the first half of the first verse of chap. ii.

[678] Lev. xxiii. 34, 36, 40-42.

[679] _By the hand of._

[680]‎ הֲלאֹ כָמֹהוּ כְאַיִן בְּעֵינֵיכֶם. Literally, _is not the like of it as nothing in your eyes_? But that can hardly be the meaning. It might be equivalent to _is it not, as it stands, as nothing in your eyes?_ But the fact is that in Hebrew construction of a simple, unemphasised comparison, the comparing particle כ stands before _both_ objects compared: as, for instance, in the phrase (Gen. xliv. 18) כִּי כָמוֹךָ כְּפַרְעֹה, _thou art as Pharaoh_.

[681] Literally: _be strong_.

[682] It is difficult to say whether _high priest_ belongs to the text or not.

[683] Here occurs the anacolouthic clause, introduced by an acc. without a verb, which is not found in the LXX. and is probably a gloss (see above, p. 241): _The promise which I made with you in your going forth from Egypt_.

[684] Hebrew has singular, _costly thing_ or _desirableness_, חֶמְדַּת (fem, for neut.), but the verb _shall come_ is in the plural, and the LXX. has τα ἐκλεκτά, _the choice things_. See below, next page.

[685] The LXX. add a parallel clause καὶ εἰρήνην φυχῆς εἰς περιποίησιν παντὶ τῷ κτίζοντι τοῦ ἀναστῆσαι τὸν ναὸν τοῦτον, which would read in Hebrew וְשַׁלְוַת נֶפֶשׁ לְחַיּוֹת כָּל־הַיֹֹּסֵד לְקוֹמֵם הַהֵיכָל הַזֶּה. On חיות Wellhausen cites 1 Chron. xi. 8, = _restore_ or _revive_.

[686]‎ = חֶמְדַּת _longing_, 2 Chron. xxi. 2, and _object of longing_, Dan. xi. 37. It is the feminine or neuter, and might be rendered as a collective, _desirable things_. Pusey cites Cicero’s address to his wife: _Valete, mea desideria, valete_ (_Ep. ad Famil._, xiv. 2 fin.).

[687]‎ חֲמֻדֹת plural feminine of pass. part., as in Gen. xxvii. 15, where it is an adjective, but used as a noun = _precious things_, Dan. xi. 38, 43, which use meets the objection of Pusey, _in loco_, where he wrongly maintains that _precious things_, if intended, must have been expressed by מַחֲמַדֵּי.

[688] ἥξει τὰ ἐκλεκτὰ πάντων τῶν ἐθνῶν. Theodore of Mopsuestia takes it as _elect persons of all nations_, to which a few moderns adhere.

[689] Augustini _Contra Donatistas post Collationem_, cap. xx. 30 (Migne, _Latin Patrology_, XLIII., p. 671).

[690] Calvin, _Comm. in Haggai_, ii. 6-9.

[691] Deut. xvii. 8 ff.: עַל־פּי הַתּוֹרָה אֲשֶׁר יוֹרוּךָ. Compare the expression כּוֹהֵן מוֹרֶה, in 2 Chron. xv. 3, and the duties of the teaching priests assigned by the Chronicler (2 Chron. xvii. 7-9) to the days of Jehoshaphat.

[692] Note that it is not _the Torah_, but _a Torah_.

[693] The nearest passage to the _deliverance_ of the priests to Haggai is Lev. vi. 20, 21 (Heb.), 27, 28 (Eng.). This is part of the Priestly Code not promulgated till 445 B.C., but based, of course, on long extant custom, some of it very ancient. _Everything that touches the flesh_ (of the sin-offering, which is holy) _shall be holy_—יִקְדַּשׁ, the verb used by the priests in their answer to Haggai—_and when any of its blood has been sprinkled on a garment, that whereon it was sprinkled shall be washed in a holy place. The earthen vessel wherein it has been boiled shall be broken, and if it has been boiled in a brazen vessel, this shall be scoured and rinsed with water._

[694] So several old edd. and many codd., and adopted by Baer (see his note _in loco_) in his text. But most of the edd. of the Massoretic text read ביד after Cod. Hill. For the importance of the question see above, p. 227.

[695] Torah.

[696]‎ תְּמֵא נֶפֶשׁ.

[697] There does not appear to be the contrast between indirect contact with a holy thing and direct contact with a polluted which Wellhausen says there is. In either case the articles whose character is in question stand second from the source of holiness and pollution—the holy flesh and the corpse.

[698] See above, p. 245, n. 693.

[699] Pusey, _in loco_.

[700] The LXX. have here found inserted three other clauses: ἕνεκεν τὼν λημμάτων αὐτῶν τῶν ὀρθρινῶν, ὀδυνηθήσονται ἀπὸ προσώπου πόνων αὐτῶν, καὶ ἐμισεῖτε ἐν πύλαις ἐλέγχοντας. The first clause is a misreading (Wellhausen), יַעַן לִקְחֹתָם שַׁחַר for יַעַן לְקַחְתֶּם שֹׁחַד, _because ye take a bribe_, and goes well with the third clause, modified from Amos v. 10: שָׂנְאוּ בַשַּׁעַר מוֹכִיחַ, _they hate him who reproves in the gate_. These may have been inserted into the Hebrew text by some one puzzled to know what the source of the people’s pollution was, and who absurdly found it in sins which in Haggai’s time it was impossible to impute to them. The middle clause, יִתְעַנּוּ מִפְּנֵי עַצְבֵיהֶם, _they vex themselves with their labours_, is suitable to the sense of the Hebrew text of the verse, as Wellhausen points out, but besides gives a connection with what follows.

[701] From this day and onward.

[702] Heb. literally _since they were_. A.V. _since those days were_.

[703] Winevat, יֶקֶב, is distinguished from winepress, גת, in Josh. ix. 13, and is translated by the Greek ὑπολήνιον Mark xii. I, ληνόν Matt. xxi. 33, _dug a pit for the winepress_; but the name is applied sometimes to the whole winepress—Hosea ix. 2 etc., Job xxiv. 11, _to tread the winepress_. The word translated _measures_, as in LXX. μετρητάς, is פּוּרָה, and that is properly the vat in which the grapes were trodden (Isa. lxiii. 3), but here it can scarcely mean fifty _vatfuls_, but must refer to some smaller measure—cask?

[704] See above, pp. 228 f., n. 625.

[705] The words omitted cannot be construed in the Hebrew, וְאֵין־אֶתְכֶם אֵלַי, literally _and not you_ (acc.) _to Me_. Hitzig, etc., propose to read אִתְּכם and render _there was none with you_ who turned _to Me_. Others propose אֵינְכֶם, _as if none of you_ turned _to Me_. Others retain אֶתְכֶם and render _as for you_. The versions LXX. Syr., Vulg. _ye will not return_ or _did not return to Me_, reading perhaps for לאֹ שָׁבְתֶּם ,אֵין אֶתְכֶם, which is found in Amos iv. 9, of which the rest of the verse is an echo. Wellhausen deletes the whole verse as a gloss. It is certainly suspicious, and remarkable in that the LXX. text has already introduced two citations from Amos. See above on ver. 14.

[706] Heb. _from this day backwards_.

[707] The date Wellhausen thinks was added by a later hand.

[708] This is the ambiguous clause on different interpretations of which so much has been founded: לְמִן־הַיּוֹם אֲשֶׁר־יֻסַּד הֵיכַל־יְהוָֹה. Does this clause, in simple parallel to the previous one, describe the day on which the prophet was speaking, _the twenty-fourth day of the ninth month_, the _terminus a quo_ of the people’s retrospect? In that case Haggai regards the foundation-stone of the Temple as laid on the twenty-fourth day of the ninth month 520 B.C., and does not know, or at least ignores, any previous laying of a foundation-stone. So Kuenen, Kosters, Andrée, etc. Or does למן signify _up to the time the foundation-stone was laid_, and state a _terminus ad quem_ for the people’s retrospect? So Ewald and others, who therefore find in the verse a proof that Haggai knew of an earlier laying of the foundation-stone. But that למן is ever used for ועד cannot be proved, and indeed is disproved by Jer. vii. 7, where it occurs in contrast to ועד. Van Hoonacker finds the same, but in a more subtle translation of מן .למן, he says, is never used except of a date distant from the speaker or writer of it; למן (if I understand him aright) refers therefore to a date previous to Haggai to which the people’s thoughts are directed by the ל and then brought back from it to the date at which he was speaking by means of the מן: “la préposition ל signifie la direction de l’esprit vers une époque du passé d’où il est ramené par la préposition מן.” But surely מן can be used (as indeed Haggai has just used it) to signify extension backwards from the standpoint of the speaker; and although in the passages cited by Van Hoonacker of the use of למן it always refers to a past date—Deut. ix. 7, Judg. xix. 30, 2 Sam. vi. 11, Jer. vii. 7 and 25—still, as it is there nothing but a pleonastic form for מן, it surely might be employed as מן is sometimes employed for departure from the present backwards. Nor in any case is it used to express what Van Hoonacker seeks to draw from it here, the idea of direction of the mind to a past event and then an immediate return from that. Had Haggai wished to express that idea he would have phrased it thus: למן היום אשר יסד היכל יהוה ועד היום הזה (as Kosters remarks). Besides, as Kosters has pointed out (pp. 7 ff. of the Germ. trans. of _Het Herstel_, etc.), even if Van Hoonacker’s translation of למן were correct, the context would show that it might refer only to a laying of the foundation-stone since Haggai’s first address to the people, and therefore the question of an earlier foundation-stone under Cyrus would remain unsolved. Consequently Haggai ii. 18 cannot be quoted as a proof of the latter. See above, p. 216.

[709] Meaning _there is none_.

[710]‎ ועוד or וְעֹד for וְעַד, after LXX. καὶ εἰ ἔτι.

[711] The twenty-fourth day of the sixth month, according to chap. i. 15.

[712] See above, p. 228.

[713]

“For I believe the devil’s voice Sinks deeper in our ear, Than any whisper sent from heaven, However sweet and clear.”

[714] Only in xxxiv. 24, xxxvii. 22, 24.

[715]‎ נשׂיא: cf. Skinner, _Ezekiel_ (Expositor’s Bible Series), pp. 447 ff., who, however, attributes the diminution of the importance of the civil head in Israel, not to the feeling that he would henceforth always be subject to a foreign emperor, but to the conviction that in the future he will be “overshadowed by the personal presence of Jehovah in the midst of His people.”

[716] See above, p. 227.

[717] LXX. enlarges: _and the sea and the dry land_.

[718] Heb. sing. collect. LXX. plural.

[719] Again a sing. coll.

_ZECHARIAH_

(_I.-VIII._)

_Not by might, and not by force, but by My Spirit, saith Jehovah of Hosts._

_Be not afraid, strengthen your hands! Speak truth, every man to his neighbour; truth and wholesome judgment judge ye in your gates, and in your hearts plan no evil for each other, nor take pleasure in false swearing, for all these things do I hate—oracle of Jehovah._

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