Haggai 2:1-9

Haggai 2:1-9. The Second Prophecy

The first prophecy had been one of severe rebuke and earnest call to duty. The second is one of encouragement to those, who having promptly obeyed the first, were in danger of being depressed and disappointed by the comparative meagreness and unworthiness of the results of their labours. When the foundations of the second Temple were laid some years before this, we read of the distress which its character and dimensions occasioned, to those of the returned captives who were old enough to remember the former Temple in its glory. The joyous shouts of the younger portion of the assembly, who rejoiced to see the sanctuary of their faith restored, blended strangely with the sad lamentations of their elders, who mourned over the departed splendour of the past. Now that a month of vigorous work was beginning to tell, and the contrast which had been apparent even in the foundations stood out in bolder relief in the rising walls of the edifice; now that many an "ancient man," laudator temporis acti, had passed his disparaging comment on each new feature of the growing structure, and told with fond regret of the "exceeding magnifical" house (1 Chronicles 22:5) that had once been there, the danger of dejection and discouragement on the part of the people was increased. With the gracious design of counteracting this, Haggai is directed to deliver a prophecy, which stimulates them to carry on and complete their undertaking, not only by the assurance of the divine presence and favour, but by the promise that in God's good time that house, so mean and despised, should be filled with a glory that should exceed that of Solomon's Temple in the days of its greatest magnificence.