After the Exile: Haggai

One thing we have to understand when we get into any of the prophets is the historical background. Is 44:28 ^NASB “{It is I} who says of Cyrus, ‘{He is} My shepherd! And he will perform all My desire.’ And he declares of Jerusalem, ‘She will be built,’ And of the temple, ‘Your foundation will be laid.’” About 150 years before Cyrus was born there was this extremely precise prophecy given by Isaiah to the exile generation. Cyrus was the first king of the Persian empire. He is the one who conquers the Babylonian empire and will give a decree for the nation Israel to go back to the land, rebuild the city of Jerusalem and rebuild the temple.

Isaiah 45:1 ^NASB “Thus says the LORD to Cyrus His anointed [appointed one], Whom I have taken by the right hand, To subdue nations before him And to loose the loins of kings; To open doors before him so that gates will not be shut [anything that would prohibit the Israelites from returning home]: [2] I will go before you and make the rough places smooth; I will shatter the doors of bronze and cut through their iron bars.[3] I will give you the treasures of darkness And hidden wealth of secret places, So that you may know that it is I, The LORD, the God of Israel, who calls you by your name.” This is God saying all He will do for Cyrus in order to allow Cyrus to accomplish His goal in relationship to Israel. [4] “For the sake of Jacob My servant, And Israel My chosen {one,} I have also called you by your name; I have given you a title of honor Though you have not known Me.” This shows the sovereignty of God over the affairs of man. Jesus Christ controls history and He is the one who raises up kingdoms and the one who destroys kingdoms.

In fulfillment of this prophecy when Cyrus united the Persian empire by defeating the Medes in approximately 550 BC he then devised a plan to conquer the Babylonians. His policy was to free the captive peoples (not only the Jews) and restore them back to their land. When the Jews went back to the land there was much opposition from the Samaritans and all work ceased until the intervention of Darius in 520 BC, after which the work continued and by 516 the temple had been rebuilt. The next emperor was Xerxes who reigned from 486 to 465 BC. He was also called Ahasuerus in the Old Testament. This is the Ahasuerus of Esther. He had a remarkable reign. Like his father Darius he has a desire to expand the border of Persia and he looked westward towards Greece, and he started conquering the Greeks. The Greek finally pulled it together and there was the battle of Thermopylae. This bought time for the rest of the Greek states to put together their army and navy and eventually to defeat the Persians. Xerxes is succeeded by his son Artaxerxes (465-424) and he is the one who in 444 BC gives the decree to the Jews to rebuild the city walls of Jerusalem. He is succeeded by Xerxes II who only lasts for a few months on the throne. Then Darius II from 423-404 and then Darius II from 423-404 and Artaxerxes II from 404-350.

During the period of time the Persian empire was dominating there were six books mentioned in the Scriptures that close out our study: Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi plus three historical books, Ezra, Nehemiah and Esther. In the Hebrew Bible 1 & 2 Chronicles were also written during this period to boost the confidence of the nation in their return to the land.

Haggai gives a specific time period at the beginning of his book. Haggai 1:1 ^NASB “In the second year of Darius the king, on the first day of the sixth month, the word of the LORD came by the prophet Haggai to Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and to Joshua the son of Jehozadak, the high priest, saying, [2] Thus says the LORD of hosts, ‘This people says, “The time has not come, {even} the time for the house of the LORD to be rebuilt.’” What we see by a corollary passage in Ezra 5:1 ^NASB “When the prophets, Haggai the prophet and Zechariah the son of Iddo, prophesied to the Jews who were in Judah and Jerusalem in the name of the God of Israel, who was over them, [2] then Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel and Jeshua the son of Jozadak arose and began to rebuild the house of God which is in Jerusalem; and the prophets of God were with them supporting them.” Ezra identifies the fact that it is the prophetic ministry of Haggai and Zechariah that God uses to bring the nation back to focus on God. What had happened was they had become consumed with their own personal security and comfort. They were not at all concerned with rebuilding the house of the Lord.

Haggai 1:4 ^NASB “Is it time for you yourselves to dwell in your paneled houses while this house {lies} desolate?” The idea there is they are busy building very comfortable dwellings for themselves and focusing on the details of life. [5] “Now therefore, thus says the LORD of hosts, ‘Consider your ways!’” This is the theme of Haggai. It is repeated again in verse 7—it is time to take a personal assessment of your life and see what you are doing, what your priorities are; your priorities need to be on the Word of God and the honor and glory of God, which is exemplified by rebuilding the temple. Your priorities are totally askew, you are totally consumed with your own personal lives and details of your lives and not at all concerned with me. This is completely contrary to the attitude of the psalmist, Psalm 69:9 ^NASB “For zeal for Your house has consumed me…” We saw that same passage applied to Jesus Christ when He cleansed the temple, and it is the same temple. But look at the promise that God gives them in the second chapter. Haggai 2:2 ^NASB “Speak now to Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and to Joshua the son of Jehozadak, the high priest, and to the remnant of the people saying, [3] ‘Who is left among you who saw this temple in its former glory? And how do you see it now? Does it not seem to you like nothing in comparison? [4] ‘But now take courage, Zerubbabel,’ declares the LORD, ‘take courage also, Joshua son of Jehozadak, the high priest, and all you people of the land take courage,’ declares the LORD, ‘and work; for I am with you,’ declares the LORD of hosts.” In other words, you are still in my plan, I haven’t forgotten the Abrahamic covenant, and even though this temple overtly does not have the splendor of the Solomonic temple this temple will be more glorious than the Solomonic temple. [5] “As for the promise which I made you when you came out of Egypt, My Spirit is abiding in your midst; do not fear! [Exodus 19:5, 6] [6] For thus says the LORD of hosts, ‘Once more in a little while, I am going to shake the heavens and the earth, the sea also and the dry land. [7] I will shake all the nations; and they will come with the wealth of all nations, and I will fill this house with glory,’ says the LORD of hosts.” When does that occur? It occurs at the first advent when Jesus Christ, the second person of the Trinity, takes on flesh and comes to this temple. So this is a prophecy that this temple has to survive long enough for the Messiah to come. [9] “‘The latter glory of this house will be greater than the former,’ says the LORD of hosts [because it sees the coming of Messiah], ‘and in this place I will give peace,’ declares the LORD of hosts.” In 70 AD the Roman armies invade Israel and destroy the temple. This gives us the parameter that the Messiah had to come before 70 AD.

Zechariah is also concerned with this same period. His book is much more concerned with the coming of Messiah and he. Too, is concerned with the building of the temple and challenging the nation to rebuild the temple.

One other book is Esther which takes place outside the land. The background is that Xerxes, known as Ahasuerus, returns from his defeat by the Greeks and takes comfort in his harem. One of the key figures in the book is a man named Haman, and he is anti-Semitic. He finagles a way to get the king to pass legislation that all the Jews are to be killed on a particular day. When that day came anybody could go out and kill a Jew and get away with it. But Esther’s uncle Mordecai who gets wind of the plot goes to Esther to plead with her that God has put her in this position in the harem of Ahasuerus in order to intercede for her people. So goes and stands before the king and makes a plea for her people, and when Xerxes understands what he did he reverses the edict. Instead of having the Jews becoming the focus he makes Haman’s people, the Hagagites, the focus of the edict and in the process the Jews kill over 75,000 Hagagites.

There are a number of interesting problems related to the book of Esther. The name of God is never mentioned once. This is one reason the Jews didn’t think the book was canonical for some time. It was a tremendous time of distress, the Jews are under persecution, are going to be killed, and they never call on God. At one point they come right up to the point where they are fasting but they don’t call on God. Why is it that God is not mentioned here? Secondly, how do we deal with this book against the background of the Jews in the holocaust? Here we see God’s sovereign protection of the nation against genocide in their Gentile captivity and this did not happen in the holocaust. Third, we need to ask our selves the question: what is our attitude towards this massacre of the 75,000 Hagagites? It is thought that the answers to these questions flows from understanding that what the book of Esther is doing is showing us God’s sovereignty, His faithfulness to the Abrahamic covenant, towards protecting the Jews, even when they are out of fellowship—out of the land. God’s will for the nation is at the conclusion of the captivity for all the Jews to go back to the land. The vast majority never returned to Israel so they are out of the will of God. Therefore they are out of fellowship, they are not concerned with the things of the Lord. They are staying in Babylon, so they have rejected God’s plan for their life. The book of Esther, then, shows how God continues to care for the believer, even though the believer is out of fellowship; in this case how He continues to be faithful to the Abrahamic covenant event though they are in reversionism, they don’t know anything about Him, and we see how he protects them despite their disobedience. That is why they are not calling on God; they are not concerned with the things of the Lord at all but God does preserve and protect them.

We come forward to the 20^th century and we see an episode like the holocaust. The answer to the problem of evil is that God has all knowledge and He knows that there is a greater good and a greater purpose, and if God were to stop all suffering He would have to stop all sin; and that would terminate human history. God is working out a plan because there is a greater good. The person who raises the question of the goodness of God in all of this is assuming that he knows enough to know that there can’t possibly be an absolute, a standard, a good that is greater than all others goods that could possibly justify the existence of suffering in the realm of the creation. What has he just done? I know everything! Man’s intellect is limited, yet we are automatically assuming that we know more than God knows in order to raise that question.

What we see in the killing of the 75,000 in Esther is not something that God necessarily approves of; it is simply the recording of a historical fact.

Ezra and Nehemiah tells the story about the rebuilding of the temple. Ezra is a Zadokite priest who returns to the land and is involved in rebuilding the temple and the reestablishment of the priesthood so that the nation has a central rallying point now. There is a point of cohesion and unity for the nation so that they can survive and go forward. What happens during this period as Ezra comes in and lays the foundation is that it also lays the foundation for the legalism of the Pharisaical period. The groups of the Pharisees and the Sadducees were born during this period under Ezra. That is not saying that Ezra started them but this is when thy rise to the forefront. The people were still in spiritual failure, but now what they do because they were disciplined for idolatry is to become legalistic about the application of the law. So the law becomes an external religious system: religion but no reality, no understanding of the relationship to God.

The temple is rebuilt under the ministry of Haggai and Zechariah. Nehemiah comes back in 444 BC with the commission from Artaxerxes to rebuild the wall. In the midst of this they recover the law and they read through the book of the law to the entire nation. Everyone stands up and listens to the oral instruction from the law. It is the reading of the law at that time that does produce a true repentance on the part of the nation and there is one of those true and rare spiritual revivals in the nation under the ministry of Nehemiah.

But this doesn’t last long and the last prophet of the Old Testament, Malachi, comes and challenges the nation because of their inconsistent and superficial application, and at the end there is the prophecy, Malachi 3:1 ^NASB “‘Behold, I am going to send My messenger, and he will clear the way before Me. And the Lord, whom you seek, will suddenly come to His temple; and the messenger of the covenant, in whom you delight, behold, He is coming,’ says the LORD of hosts.” That is the prophecy of John the Baptist. Malachi is the last prophet and for the next four hundred years there will be silence from the Lord, there will no longer be a prophet.

Then suddenly John the Baptist appears on the scene and then people flock to hear him because they knew he was a prophet. It was a self-authenticating message. Now they knew that God was doing something; this is the messenger of Malachi. The people went out to hear him because they knew God was again speaking to the nation.