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Two prophets, Haggai and Zechariah, beginning their activity in the same year, namely, the second year of the Persian king Darius I (520 B. C.), — addressed themselves to the needs of the situation. Their plea, following rather the lines of Ezekiel than of the Second Isaiah, as, indeed, the times demanded, was for the rebuilding of the Temple, that it might become the religious and cultural center which it was meant to be. Both prophets were of the company returned from Chaldea; their work may properly be reckoned, therefore, among the literary fruits of the exile.

The reader of the Book of Haggai will miss all seeming care on his part for graces of style or elaboration of treatHaggai : ment; will meet with no striking imagery or Bearing a fervid prophetic vision. On the other hand, he Message Urgent and will find what is more to the purpose in hand, Immediate a lucid directness and incisiveness aimed straight at a practical object and counting on practical and concrete effect. His aim was single, urgent, immediate to rouse the conscience of rulers and people to the work of building the Temple. That was what they were sent home from Babylon to do. On it depended their national idea and perpetuity, their power and influence in the world. The response to his appeal, which was prompt and hearty, showed how true a heart still beat in the bosom of the chosen people. "No prophet," says Dr. Marcus Dods, "ever appeared at a more critical juncture in the history of the people, and, it may be added, no prophet was more successful." In less than a month after he received his word from Jehovah he had the rulers and the people at work.

In all Haggai's prophecy there is no hint of what had so long been a staple of prophetic censure, namely, the insidious blight of idolatry. The people here in the homeland were well purged of that inveterate obsession. Their ordeal of exile, now so happily over, had left them sincerely

and exclusively loyal to their fathers' God Jehovah. And this meant much; it was their return, after long discipline, to the old ways (cf. Hag. ii, 5; Jer. vi, 16). But with this emancipation secured, and with unpropitious conditions trying . their faith, new tendencies to evil were creeping in, which the keen sense of prophecy must expose and deal with. For one thing, their God and His service were not yet a thing confirmed and supreme. They were postponing His claims to their own convenience., "This people say, 'The time is not come for Jehovah's house to be built (i, 2), was the word of Jehovah to the prophet, which he in turn reported to the governor and the high priest, now the nation's leaders. They had indeed their excuse, in the lean harvests and hard conditions of living (i, 6). But not the people alone, or mainly, were at fault. The leaders themselves, the men of means and influence, were more culpably so. "Is it a time for you yourselves to dwell in your ceiled houses, while this house lieth waste?" (i, 4) was the prophet's trenchant question. Here was the beginning of mischief. It has been suggested that they had used the material gathered for the Temple to build and adorn their own houses. Not unlikely. So the prophet's repeated warning is, "Consider your ways" (i, 5, 7). They had reversed the relations of things, - had made untoward conditions a pretext instead of a warning and lesson. "Ye looked for much, and, lo, it came to little; and when ye brought it home, I did blow upon it. Why? saith Jehovah of hosts. Because of my house that lieth waste, while ye run every man to his own house" (i, 9). It was a conscienceawakening word, revealing the fact that poor and rich alike were not for necessity but for mere self-indulgence putting off the claims of God and duty. And this could not be allowed to vitiate the wholeness and genuineness of their new-found faith. The unselfish spirit of their prophetic mission was at stake.

Gleams of

As soon as the response to Haggai's appeal came, so prompt and practical, the prophet's tone changed to encouragement and promise. The reassurance was in the Larger truth necessary and timely. The reconstructed Outlook Temple itself, on which such glowing hopes had been founded, must survive the shrinkage of the real from the ideal. It seemed, as soon as they got at work, an insignifi cant affair as compared with the venerable Solomonic one, which some of the older people remembered (ii, 3; cf. Ezra iii, 12). "Yet now be strong," was the prophet's heartening word, reiterated to one and all (ii, 4); and went on to predict that the promise of Isaiah lx, 4-9, would come true of it, and that the latter glory of the house would be greater than the former, "and in this place will I give peace, saith Jehovah of hosts" (ii, 9).

Haggai's prophecy, as has been said of all this closing strain of prophecy,1 has drawn in from the large horizon of the Second Isaiah to the present emergency; and yet he adds to it an apocalyptic touch, which leaves the prospect open, as it were, for the larger and limitless view, in his prediction that Jehovah is soon to "shake the heavens, and the earth, and the sea, and the dry land" (ii, 6), so that the precious things of all nations shall come to enhance the glory of Jehovah's house. Like all apocalyptics the prediction is a foreshortened vision, and his idea of the intermediate steps thereto is vague, not to say in some ways erroneous. He couples with it, for instance, a promise to Zerubbabel the governor, who is the grandson of Jehoiachin, that Jehovah will make him a signet as His chosen one (ii, 23); a promise which, seeming to imply the resumption of the Davidic dynasty, conflicts with the emphatic prophecy uttered by Jeremiah at the time of the surrender (see Jer. xxii, 24, 30). As a matter of history, Zerubbabel was succeeded by civic governors of other nations, while the real

1 See above, p. 340.

headship of Israel passed into the hands of the high priest. For the Davidic Shepherd and Anointed One (Messiah) Israel must await the fullness of the time (cf. Gal. iv, 4), and that was far beyond Haggai's horizon.

The promise of a glorified Temple connotes a law and a Temple service to correspond. Haggai cannot well clinch his prophecy without an intimation of this, which like his other utterances strikes close home. In two searching questions to the priests he reverts to that lurking evil of covetous self-indulgence which has brought on Jehovah's monitory infliction of hard times (ii, 10-19). From their answers he deduces the lesson that while the bearing of holy things does not purify by physical contact, uncleanness does spread an evil taint. So it has been hitherto; hence this widespread want and scarcity. The Temple service that shall bring the blessing must be unalloyed and pure, and for this, from the very foundation of the house, the promised glory must wait. "Is the seed yet in the barn? yea, the vine, and the fig-tree, and the pomegranate, and the olive-tree have not brought forth; from this day will I bless you" (ii, 19).

Thus with heartening assurance of success on the one side and a thinly veiled hint of moral taint and drawback on the other, Haggai's 'downright message justifies its farreaching motive and principle.

Zechariah :

In the middle of Haggai's work, a few weeks after he had predicted the shaking of the nations and the filling of Jehovah's house with wealth and glory (ii, 6-9), Adding New another prophet, Zechariah, began a series of Visions of prophetic utterances, the revelations for which Destiny were grouped under three dated occasions (see i, 1; i, 7; vii, 1), the last being in the fourth year of King Darius, namely, 518 B.C., two years before the completed edifice was dedicated. His activity was thus contemporary with that of Haggai, beginning two months after

work on the Temple at the urgency of the latter was resumed (cf. Hag. i, 15), and continuing two years after Haggai's. His prophecies, uttered while the builders were zealously at work, did not need to press that phase of the issue; accordingly, taking it for granted, he dealt with the renovated and organized period that would follow, a matter which he brought out in increasing clearness as the work

went on.

Thus by wise and timely team work these two postexilic prophets, supplementing each other, led the momentous enterprise of rebuilding and reinstatement within measurable sight of completion. It was this Temple, we will remember, which, known to us as the Second Temple, was the center of reorganized worship and culture, of law and learning and religious administration, until near the coming of Jesus.

NOTE. In both Haggai and Zechariah the prophecies are recorded after the manner of Ezekiel (see above, p. 260), that is, by the dated order of time, without apparent heed to its bearing on logical continuity. The time range here, however, is so limited, and events so keep pace with dates, that (except for one or two slight dislocations easily corrected) the two books move in lucid and orderly progress.

It must here be noted that in considering the Book of the prophet Zechariah we are dealing only with chapters i to viii, as constituting a homogeneous whole. The succeeding chapters, ix to xiv, which will be taken up in the next section, can be clearly understood only as an addition, of other authorship and time, which has somehow come to be incorporated with the original book of Zechariah's prophecy and which goes on to deal with more distinctively apocalyptic values.

The tone of Zechariah's prophecy is much more conciliatory than that of Haggai, and he approaches his subject in the less trenchant and more literary way of vision and parable. He is eminently constructive; taking advantage of all the signs of promise that can be gleaned from the