Haggai 2:6

saith the Lord of hosts The frequent recurrence of this expression, which is found here four times in as many verses, is a marked feature of the prophecies of Haggai and of Malachi, and of some sections of that of Zechariah. It is of the nature of an appeal to the power and resources of Almighty God, either as here to awaken the confidence, or as elsewhere to subdue the contumacy of the Jews. The expression is properly elliptical for "Jehovah (the God) of hosts." See Appendix, note A.

yet once, it is a little while It has been proposed to render this: "Yet one (a) little while, and I will shake," &c. Luther has, Es ist noch ein Kleines dahin, and Calvin, Adhuc unum modicum hoc. Similarly Maurer and Hengstenberg. But grammatical considerations are in favour of the A. V. and R. V.

yet once or, once again. "By the word yethe looks back to the first great shaking of the moral world, when God's revelation by Moses and to His people broke upon the darkness of the pagan world, to be a monument against heathen error till Christ should come; oncelooks on and conveys that God would again shake the world, but onceonly, under the one dispensation of the Gospel, which should endure to the end." Pusey.

a little while The explanation which interprets this to mean little in the sight of God, with whom a thousand years are as one day, is forced and unsatisfactory. "The prophet," as Hengstenberg points out (Christol. iii. p. 270, Clark's Translation), "lays stress upon the brevity of the time in this case, for the purpose of administering consolation. But only what is short in human estimation would be fitted to accomplish this." Nor is it better to say that the 517 years which were to elapse to the birth of Christ were a little while"in respect to the time which had elapsed from the fall of Adam, upon which God promised the Saviour Christ," or "in respect to the Christian law, which has now lasted above 1800 years, and the time of the end does not seem yet nigh." Pusey. 500 years is not a little whilein comparison of any known epoch of human history. The true explanation would seem to be that it is not the actual birth of Christ, but the preparation for that event in the "shaking of all nations," (ver. 7) to which the little whilerefers. The whole grand future, embracing not only the first but the second coming of Christ and the final consummation of all things, is indeed included in the prophecy. But it was the beginning of the great drama, not its last act, that was then closely at hand. That beginning was the then immediate object of the Church's hope; in that she was to welcome the promise and the presage of all that should follow. Time alone would unfold the plot. In prophetic prospect coming events were confused and blended, just as in our Lord's great prophecy were the circumstances of the destruction of Jerusalem and of the end of the world. But the beginning was near at hand. "This shaking commenced immediately. The axe was already laid at the root of the Persian empire, whose subsequent and visible fall was but the manifestation of a far earlier one, which had been hidden from view." (Hengstenberg). Our Lord's use of a similar expression when He says to His disciples, "A little while and ye shall not see me, and again a little while and ye shall see me" (St John 16:17), may serve to illustrate its significance here. On His lips the "little while" had a three-fold reference; first to the few days before they should see Him again in His risen body; next to the few weeks before He would come to them in the Pentecostal gift of His Spirit; lastly to the interval, which in the retrospect will seem "a little while," before His second personal advent.

I will shake the heavens, &c. That political convulsions are here predicted is clear from the clause in ver. 7, "I will shake all nations;" as well as from the passage, ch. Haggai 2:21-22, which clearly refers back to this prediction, and explains the shaking of the heaven and the earth by the words, "I will overthrow the throne of kingdoms, and I will destroy the strength of the kingdoms of the heathen," etc. ver. 22. But there is no reason to exclude physical convulsions also. In the earlier revelation of God on Mount Sinai, to which, as we have seen, there is an allusion here, they bore a prominent part. And when, as the inspired writer to the Hebrews teaches us, this prophecy shall receive its final accomplishment in the "removing of those things that are shaken as of things that are made, that those things which cannot be shaken may remain," the whole material frame of the universe will be convulsed. Hebrews 12:27, with 2 Peter 3:10-12.