Haggai 2:4

"Yet now be strong, O Zerubbabel, saith Jehovah; and be strong, O Joshua son of Jehozodak, the High Priest; and be strong, all ye people of the land, saith Jehovah, and work: for I am with you, saith Jehovah of hosts."

The only "glory" that mattered, and the only glory that had any permanent value was that of God Himself. When God was with his people, they were indeed glorified, and all of the alleged inferiority of the new temple would be nullified and compensated for by the presence of the Lord himself who was moving toward the accomplishment of his eternal purpose through the instrumentality of the "once chosen" people in bringing forth the Messiah into the world.

God's love and tenderness for his people was unbounded. The necessity of punishing them and removing them from the land which they had forfeited by disobedience was an occasion for heartbreak, even on the part of God Himself. Therefore, when the remnant was restored to the land of Canaan, and after they had been working only about a month, the Lord provided the strong assurances of this promise that he was "with" them.

Any strict execution of the justice of God would apparently have required all of the Jewish Canaanites to be destroyed in the same manner as the original Canaanites. Surely, Jewry deserved no better treatment than that which God had meted out to Sodom and Gomorrah, for the prophet Ezekiel flatly declared (Ezekiel 16) that both the northern and the southern Israel were "worse" than Sodom and Gomorrah. However, there were strong impediments to such an execution. The continuity of the prophecies of the Messiah, reaching all the way back to Genesis 3:15 demanded the continuity of Israel. God had promised the Messiah "through" them. His prophets had foretold the birth of Christ in Bethlehem. Any execution of the deserved penalty upon the old Israel would have checkmated God's purpose in the far more important matter of delivering the Messiah to mankind. Any true understanding of God's unwavering and continued mercies to Israel must take such things into account. Also, such mercies to the old Israel were typical of similar mercies to Christ's church, the New Israel of God.

Also, God's being with the old Israel must be considered as a type and symbol of his being with his church throughout the ages. "If God be for us, who can be against us?" (Romans 8:31).