Bible Book of Haggai | Priorities and the Temple
An urgent call for the returned exiles to prioritize rebuilding God's house over their own personal comforts. Haggai chapters with summary and commentary.
Genre: Minor Prophet. Theme: Priorities and the Temple
- Author: Haggai
- Date: c. 520 BC
- Read Time: 10 mins
- Purpose: Encourage exiles to finish Temple rebuilding.
- Key Verse: Hag 1:4 - Is it time for you... to dwell in your ceiled houses, and this house lie waste?
- Christ: The Desire of All Nations.
- Audience: Returned exiles who had stopped rebuilding the Temple to focus on their own houses
- Priority: Focus on putting God first.
- Specific Dating: The most precisely dated book, containing four sermons delivered in just four months.
- Economic Reality: The teaching that financial struggle is often a result of putting God's kingdom second.
Haggai provided the necessary 'spiritual kick' to a people who had become comfortable in their apathy.
A punchy, rhetorical style that repeatedly asks the people to 'Consider your ways'.
Jesus is the 'Desire of All Nations' (2:7) whose presence makes the glory of the latter house greater than the former.
Haggai 1 - The Command to Rebuild the Temple
The LORD says: "Consider your ways! You never have enough because the temple lies in ruins." So the people worked on the temple.
Haggai 2 - The Coming Glory of the Temple
The LORD says: "The latter glory of this temple shall be greater than the former. This nation is unclean. But now I will bless you."