Haggai 2:10 - Meaning and Application

This message came two months after the one earlier in the chapter. Priests and Levites taught all the time, while prophets spoke only at certain times, and both kinds of ministry were needed. We all need to hear our duty in season and out of season.

The people were now working hard on the temple, and they hoped to finish it soon and use it for God’s worship. At that point, God sent them a message through his prophet, and it would help them in more than one way. First, it was meant to convict and warn them. They were doing a very good work, but they needed to make sure they were doing it in a right way, because otherwise God would not accept it.

God saw that many among them were spoiling this good work because they came to it with unholy hearts and hands. Such people would likely gain no benefit from it. So they were being warned to cleanse the hands they used in this work, because only the pure can properly handle what is pure, and only the pure can bring forth what is pure. The prophet illustrates this by using the settled rules of the ceremonial law, which made a difference between what was clean and unclean. Many parts of the law dealt with that, and this shows that the ceremonial law was meant to teach spiritual lessons too.

That law was not only a Jewish ritual. It was also meant to instruct all people in what is right, even us who live at the end of the ages. Through it, God shows us both sin and Christ, both our disease and our cure. Haggai was told to ask the priests about the law, because the priests should keep this knowledge, and the people should ask God’s law from their lips (Malachi 2:7). Even though Haggai was a prophet, he was to ask the priests in this matter.

His work as an extraordinary messenger was to explain God’s providences and give direction on special duties, as he had already done (Haggai 1:8-9). But he would not take the priests’ place, since they were the ordinary ministers whose work was to explain God’s ordinances, teach the people what they meant, and give general rules for keeping them. In a case like this, Haggai was to consult them. God gives different gifts to his servants and calls them to different tasks, so they need one another and should help one another. The prophet cannot say to the priest, “I have no need of you,” and the priest cannot say the same to the prophet.

Haggai may also have been told to consult the priests so that, from their own mouths, he could judge both them and the people under their care, and show them their deeper guilt. The law’s rule was this: if a man carried holy flesh in the fold of his garment, the garment itself could not pass that holiness on to food or drink, though the garment had to be treated as set apart until washed in a holy place (Leviticus 6:27). In contrast, if a person was ceremonially unclean by touching a dead body, then his touch made other things unclean too. The law is clear on this: “Whatever the unclean person touches shall be unclean” (Numbers 19:22). Still, Haggai wanted to hear this from the priests themselves, because even when a Bible truth seems plain, it is good to hear a minister confirm it.

The point is this: uncleanness spreads more easily than holiness does. As Grotius says, there are many ways to do evil, but only one way to do good, and that way is hard. Good comes from what is whole and sound, while evil can come from the smallest defect. People should not think they can live among good people and be accepted by God if they themselves are not good. Rather, they should fear becoming unclean by touching what is unclean, and keep away from it.

Then this rule is applied to the people: “So is this people, and so is this nation before me” (Haggai 2:14). God does not call them “my people” or “my nation” here, because they are not worthy to be owned in that way. They had imagined that their sacrifices on the altar would make them holy and excuse their neglect of the temple. They also thought those sacrifices would remove the curse that had fallen on their common blessings because of that neglect. But God says that their holy flesh and their altar would do nothing to sanctify their food, drink, wine, or oil.

Instead, their contempt for God’s temple had brought pollution, not only on ordinary life, but even on their sacrifices. While they stayed in that neglect, everything was unclean to them. And so it still was with them, unless they changed. If they were profane, worldly, and morally unclean, then even if they worked hard on the temple and later offered many expensive sacrifices, that would not sanctify their food and drink or make their lives pleasing to God. Their sinful hearts and lives would make even their work and offerings unclean and hateful to him.

The same danger remains for us. People may have fair-looking devotions, but if their daily lives are wicked, their devotions will not bless their enjoyments. Their sin will still pollute them. So when we are busy in any good work, we should watch ourselves carefully, lest our corruptions and careless handling make it unclean.

The prophet also speaks for comfort and encouragement. If their hearts are right with God and their aim is single in his service, they will receive the benefit of their devotion. God will remove the famine that had corrected them for their neglect, and he will give them abundance again. They are told to think carefully about this and to see whether God will prove, to the fullest, as good as his word, by openly blessing and rewarding their reform in this matter.

To make this especially clear, they should mark the day they began working again on the temple, building on the foundation that had already been laid. On the twenty-fourth day of the sixth month they had begun preparing materials (Haggai 1:15), and now on the twenty-fourth day of the ninth month they began laying stone upon stone in the house of the Lord. They were to remember that day, and observe what followed.

They should remember how badly their property had gone backward before that day. Let them think back to a time when everything they had was clearly wasting away (Haggai 2:16). A man went to his storehouse expecting to find twenty measures of grain, because that was what he used to get from that field, or what he usually had left at that season, or what he assumed would be there from the last harvest. But when he checked, he found only ten measures. It had shrunk in storage, or mice had eaten it, or someone had stolen it.

The same thing happened at the winepress. He expected to draw fifty containers of wine, because that was the usual return from that amount of grapes, but he got only twenty. This matches what was said earlier: “You looked for much, and it came to little” (Haggai 1:9). We are foolish when we place our hopes in created things and assume tomorrow will surely be as full as today, and even fuller. Usually we are disappointed, and the more we expected, the sharper the disappointment feels.

But in the treasures of the new covenant, the new agreement through Christ, we do not have to fear disappointment when we come by faith to receive from them. Still, that was not all. God was openly opposing them through the weather (Haggai 2:17). He struck them with scorching winds and frost, so that green things withered, and with mildew, which spoiled the grain while it was forming, and with hail, which beat down and broke the crops after they had begun to grow. In this way they lost the work of their hands because they had ignored God’s own work, the rebuilding of his house. When we do not care for God’s interests, we should not expect him to care for ours.

When God deals with us this way, he expects us to turn back to him and to our duty. But these people either did not see God’s hand in it, and blamed chance, or they did not see their own sin as the cause. So they did not turn to him. They stayed hard and unbroken under these warnings for a long time, so God’s hand kept being stretched out against them, because they would not return to the one who struck them (Isaiah 9:12-13). They could easily see that as long as they neglected the temple work, everything else went downhill.

Now they were told to notice something else: from that day forward, God would bless them (Haggai 2:18-19). They were to think carefully about this. As soon as they began to turn toward God, they would find that God was turning toward them. From the day they started working on the temple, they should pay attention and see a clear change for the better in all their affairs. The seed was still in the barn and had not yet been sown. The trees had not yet budded, and the vine, fig tree, and olive tree had not yet produced anything that looked like a good harvest or vintage for the coming year. Nature gave them no promise. But now that they were truly taking up their duty, the God who rules nature gave his promise: “From this day I will bless you.”

This was the best day’s work they had ever done, because from it they could date the return of their prosperity. He does not say exactly what form the blessing would take, only, “I will bless you.” Those who know what comes from God’s blessing know that they need nothing more to make them truly happy. If God blesses them, they will soon recover their losses and prosper again as quickly as they had fallen behind. The blessing of the Lord makes rich, and those he blesses are truly blessed.

So when we begin to take our duty to God seriously, we may expect his blessing. That tree of life is known by its fruit, and people can often see, almost to the day, a clear change in providence, God’s wise care, when others return to their duty. Then they and those around them can say that from that day they are blessed. See Malachi 3:10. Anyone who is wise will pay attention to these things and understand the Lord’s lovingkindness.