Haggai 1:1

This chapter contains the the salutation and dating of the prophecy and the first of Haggai's four messages.

Haggai 1:1

"In the second year of Darius the king, in the sixth month, in the first day of the month, came the word of Jehovah by Haggai the prophet unto Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and to Joshua the son of Jehozadak, the High Priest, saying:"

FIRST MESSAGE

"Darius the king ..." This was Darius the Great of Persia, also called Darius Hystaspes, after the name of his father. He reigned over the Medo-Persian Empire from 522-486 B.C.[1] He continued the benevolent policies that had characterized the reign of Cyrus who issued the original order for the rebuilding of the Temple and the return of the Jewish captives to Jerusalem.

"In the sixth month, in the first day of the month ..." This corresponds to "Elul, answering to parts of our August and September."[2]

"The word of Jehovah by Haggai ..." Twenty-six times the prophet affirmed in the space of these two short chapters that his word was not his own, but the word of the Lord. Commentators will never be able to understand prophecy until they are willing to take this into account. All of the speculation and wild guesses about what the prophet supposed, or thought, are absolutely immaterial and irrelevant. No matter what the prophets might have thought, and we may be reasonably certain that they thought a lot of things that were not true, it was what they wrote that constitutes the Word of God; and, as an apostle has declared unto us, the prophets themselves did not always know the meaning of what they declared to be the Word of God (See 1 Peter 1:10-12).

"Unto Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah ..." Note that Zerubbabel here is a deputy of Darius the Great; and despite his being of the royal seed of David, he was in no sense a true king of Judah. The name Zerubbabel means, "Seed of Babylon," indicating that he was probably born during the Babylonian captivity. He was a friend and favorite of Darius the Great who made him governor of Judah. Zerubbabel successfully competed in a contest to determine what was the strongest thing in the world - wine, kings, women, or truth. Zerubbabel, having demonstrated that truth was the mightiest of all, was called the `king's cousin,' and was granted permission to go up to Jerusalem to build the temple."[3]

"Son of Shealtiel ..." Scholars, have long puzzled over the riddle posed by other passages which affirm that he was the son of Pedaiah (1 Chronicles 3:19). Several plausible solutions involving Levirate marriages, adoptions, etc., have been proposed, but they are of minor interest. Zerubbabel was universally known as the "son of Shealtiel" (Luke 3:27; Matthew 1:12) and is so listed in the genealogies of both Matthew and Luke. "Salathiel" is another form of the same name. In harmony with Jeremiah's prophecy that no seed of Jeconiah should sit upon David's throne, it would appear that Zerubbabel was not a blood relative of that weak and incompetent monarch. Nevertheless, he was "most certainly his successor of the 3or 4th generation, and the legitimate heir to the throne of David."[4] The two New Testament genealogies of Matthew and Luke both list his name; and it would appear that Christ was both a literal descendant of Zerubbabel through Mary the daughter of Heli, and the legal descendent and heir of David through Zerubbabel and Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was the legal son, but not his actual son.

"And Joshua ... the High Priest ..." Note the prominence of the Jewish high priest. Not to the governor only, but to the High Priest likewise came the sacred message. Henceforth in Israel (Judah), the king would not be the "all in all" of former days, but the High Priest would move into a similar position of authority as the custodian of the peoples' fortunes. This was continued throughout the subsequent history of Judah until the coming of Christ, at which time the high priest, Caiaphas, appears as one of near-equal authority with the governor, or procurator, Pontius Pilate.