[586] This argument, it is true, does not fully account for the curious fact that Haggai and Zechariah never call the Jewish community at Jerusalem by a name significant of their return from exile. But in reference to this it ought to be noted that even the Aramaic document in the Book of Ezra which records the Return under Cyrus does not call the builders of the Temple by any name which implies that they have come up from exile, but styles them simply the Jews who were in Judah and Jerusalem (Ezra v. 1), in contrast to the Jews who were in foreign lands.
[587] Indeed, why does he ignore the whole Exile itself if no return from it has taken place?
[588] Zech. ii. 10–17 Heb., 6–13 Eng.
[589] E.g. Stade, Kuenen (op. cit., p. 216). So, too, Klostermann, Gesch. des Volkes Israel, München, 1896. Wellhausen, in the second edition of his Gesch., does not admit that the List is one of exiles returned under Cyrus (p. 155, n.).
[590] ix. 4; x. 6, 7.
[591] Op. cit., p. 216, where he also quotes the testimony of the Book of Daniel (ix. 25).
[592] Since writing the above I have seen the relevant notes to the second edition of Wellhausen’s Gesch., pp. 155 and 160. “The refounding of Jerusalem and the Temple cannot have started from the Jews left behind in Palestine.” “The remnant left in the land would have restored the old popular cultus of the high places. Instead of that we find even before Ezra the legitimate cultus and the hierocracy in Jerusalem: in the Temple-service proper Ezra discovers nothing to reform. Without the leaven of the Gôlah the Judaism of Palestine is in its origin incomprehensible.”
[593] The inscription of Cyrus is sometimes quoted to this effect: cf. P. Hay Hunter, op. cit., I. 35. But it would seem that the statement of Cyrus is limited to the restoration of Assyrian idols and their worshippers to Assur and Akkad. Still, what he did in this case furnishes a strong argument for the probability of his having done the same in the case of the Jews.
[594] See above, p. 206, and especially n. 575.
[595] Even Cheyne, after accepting Kosters’ conclusions as in the main points inevitable (op. cit., p. xxxv), considers (p. xxxviii) that “the earnestness of Haggai and Zechariah (who cannot have stood alone) implies the existence of a higher religious element at Jerusalem long before 432 B.C. Whence came this higher element but from its natural home among the more cultured Jews in Babylonia?”
[596] Ezra iii. 8–13.
[597] Schrader, “Ueber die Dauer des Tempelbaues,” in Stud. u. Krit., 1879, 460 ff.; Stade, Gesch. des Volkes Israel, II. 115 ff.; Kuenen, op. cit., p. 222; Kosters, op. cit., Chap. I., § 1. To this opinion others have adhered: König (Einleit. in das A. T.), Ryssel (op. cit.) and Marti (2nd edition of Kayser’s Theol. des A. T., p. 200). Schrader (p. 563) argues that Ezra iii. 8–13 was not founded on a historical document, but is an imitation of Neh. vii. 73—viii.; and Stade that the Aramaic document in Ezra which ascribes the laying of the foundation-stone to Sheshbazzar, the legate of Cyrus, was not earlier than 430.
[598] Ryle, op. cit., p. xxx.
[599] Stade, Wellhausen, etc. See below, Chap. XVIII. on Hag. ii. 18.
[601] Ezra iv. 24, v. 1.
[602] Ezra v. 6.
[603] Ib. 13.
[604] Ib. 16.
[605] Gesch., II., p. 123.
[607] Ezra iv. 1–4. “That the relation of Ezra iv. 1–4 is historical seems to be established against objections which have been taken to it by the reference to Esarhaddon, which A. v. Gutschmid has vindicated by an ingenious historical combination with the aid of the Assyrian monuments (Neue Beiträge, p. 145).”—Robertson Smith, art. “Haggai,” Encyc. Brit.
[608] Cf. Hist. Geog., pp. 317 ff.
[609] Ezra iv.
[610] There was a sharp skirmish at Rabbath-Ammon the night we spent there, and at least one Circassian was shot.
[611] “Sheshbazzar presumably having taken up his task with the usual conscientiousness of an Oriental governor, that is having done nothing though the work was nominally in hand all along (Ezra v. 16).”—Robertson Smith, art. “Haggai,” Encyc. Brit.
[613] Herod., I. 130, III. 127.
[614] 1 Chron. iii. 19 makes him a son of Pedaiah, brother of She’altî’el, son of Jehoiachin, the king who was carried away by Nebuchadrezzar in 597 and remained captive till 561, when King Evil-Merodach set him in honour. It has been supposed that, She’altî’el dying childless, Pedaiah by levirate marriage with his widow became father of Zerubbabel.
[615] In the English Bible the division corresponds to that of the Hebrew, which gives fifteen verses to chap. i. The LXX. takes the fifteenth verse along with ver. 1 of chap. ii.
[616] ii. 9, 14: see on these passages, n. 685, n. 700.
[617] Besides the general works on the text of the Twelve Prophets, already cited, M. Tony Andrée has published État Critique du Texte d’Aggée: Quatre Tableaux Comparatifs (Paris, 1893), which is also included in his general introduction and commentary on the prophet, quoted below.
[618] Robertson Smith (Encyc. Brit., art. “Haggai,” 1880) does not even mention authenticity. “Without doubt from Haggai himself” (Kuenen). “The Book of Haggai is without doubt to be dated, according to its whole extant contents, from the prophet Haggai, whose work fell in the year 520” (König). So Driver, Kirkpatrick, Cornill, etc.
[619] Z.A.T.W., 1887, 215 f.
[620] So also Wellhausen.
[621] Which occurs only in the LXX.
[622] See note on that verse [n. 694].
[623] Cf. Wildeboer, Litter. des A. T., 294.
[624] Le Prophète Aggée, Introduction Critique et Commentaire. Paris, Fischbacher, 1893.
[625] Page 151.
[627] i. 10, 11.
[628] ii. 17.
[629] They follow drought in Amos iv. 9; and in the other passages where they occur—Deut. xxviii. 22; 1 Kings viii. 37; 2 Chron. vi. 28—they are mentioned in a list of possible plagues after famine, or pestilence, or fevers, all of which, with the doubtful exception of fevers, followed drought.
[630] Above, p. 216; below, p. 248, n. 708.
[631] Some of M. Andrée’s alleged differences need not be discussed at all, e.g. that between מפני and לפני. But here are the others. He asserts that while chap. i. calls oil and wine “yiṣhar and tîrôsh,” chap. ii. (10) 11–19 calls them “yayin and shemen.” But he overlooks the fact that the former pair of names, meaning the newly pressed oil and wine, suit their connection, in which the fruits of the earth are being catalogued, i. 11, while the latter pair, meaning the finished wine and oil, equally suit their connection, in which articles of food are being catalogued, ii. 12. Equally futile is the distinction drawn between i. 9, which speaks of bringing the crops to the house, or as we should say home, and ii. 19, which speaks of seed being in the barn. Again, what is to be said of a critic who adduces in evidence of distinction of authorship the fact that i. 6 employs the verb labhash, to clothe, while ii. 12 uses beged for garment, and who actually puts in brackets the root bagad, as if it anywhere in the Old Testament meant to clothe! Again, Andrée remarks that while ii. (10) 11–19 does not employ the epithet Jehovah of Hosts, but only Jehovah, the rest of the book frequently uses the former; but he omits to observe that the rest of the book, besides using Jehovah of Hosts, often uses the name Jehovah alone [the phrase in ii. (10) 11–19 is נאם יהוה, and occurs twice ii. 14, 17; but the rest of the book has also נאם יהוה, ii. 4; and besides דבר יהוה, i. 1, ii. 1, ii. 20; אמר יהוה, i. 8; and יהוה אלהים and מפני יהוה, i. 12]. Again, Andrée observes that while the rest of the book designates Israel always by עם and the heathen by גוי, chap. ii. (10) 11–19, in ver. 14, uses both terms of Israel. Yet in this latter case גוי is used only in parallel to עם, as frequently in other parts of the Old Testament. Again, that while in the rest of the book Haggai is called the prophet (the doubtful i. 13 may be omitted), he is simply named in ii. (10) 11–19, means nothing, for the name here occurs only in introducing his contribution to a conversation, in recording which it was natural to omit titles. Similarly insignificant is the fact that while the rest of the book mentions only the High Priest, chap. ii. (10) 11–19 talks only of the priests: because here again each is suitable to the connection.—Two or three of Andrée’s alleged grounds (such as that from the names for wine and oil and that from labhash and beged) are enough to discredit his whole case.
[632] ii. 15, 18.
[633] In this opinion, stated first by Eichhorn, most critics agree.
[634] Marcus Dods, Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi, 1879, in Handbooks for Bible Classes: Edin., T. & T. Clark.
[635] חַגַּי, Greek Ἀγγαῖος.
[636] חַגִּי, Gen. xlvi. 16, Num. xxvi. 15; Greek Ἁγγει, Ἁγγεις. The feminine חַגִּית, Haggith, was the name of one of David’s wives: 2 Sam. iii. 4.
[637] No. 67 of the Phœnician inscriptions in C. I. S.
[638] Hiller, Onom. Sacrum, Tüb., 1706 (quoted by Andrée), and Pusey.
[639] חַגִּיָּה, see 1 Chron. vi. 15; Greek Ἁγγια, Lu. Ἀναια.
[640] Köhler, Nachexil. Proph., I. 2; Wellhausen in fourth edition of Bleek’s Einleitung; Robertson Smith, Encyc. Brit., art. “Haggai.”
[641] חגריה = Jehovah hath girded.
[642] Derenbourg, Hist. de la Palestine, pp. 95, 150.
[643] Jerome, Gesenius, and most moderns.
[644] As in the names קַלַּי ,כְּלוּבַי ,בַּרְזִלַּי, etc.
[645] The radical double g of which appears in composition.
[646] Op. cit., p. 8.
[647] i. 1, the new moon; ii. 1, the seventh day of the Feast of Tabernacles; ii. 18, the foundation of the Temple (?).
[648] Baba-bathra, 15a, etc.
[649] Megilla, 2b.
[650] Hesychius: see above, p. 80, n.
[651] Augustine, Enarratio in Psalm cxlvii.
[652] Pseud-Epiphanius, De Vitis Prophetarum.
[653] Jerome on Hag. i. 13.
[654] Eusebius did not find these titles in the Hexaplar Septuagint. See Field’s Hexaplar on Psalm cxlv. 1. The titles are of course wholly without authority.
[655] Pseud-Epiphanius, as above.
[656] So Ewald, Wildeboer (p. 295) and others.
[657] See above, pp. 210-18, and emphasise specially the facts that the most pronounced adherents of Kosters’ theory seek to qualify his absolute negation of a Return under Cyrus, by the admission that some Jews did return; and that even Stade, who agrees in the main with Schrader that no attempt was made by the Jews to begin building the Temple till 520, admits the probability of a stone being laid by Sheshbazzar about 536.
[659] Hag. i. 4.
[660] Art. “Haggai,” Encyc. Brit.
[661] Heb. Daryavesh.
[662] Heb. by the hand of.
[663] See above, pp. 199 f. and 221.
[664] See below, pp. 258, 279, 292 ff.
[665] Heb. saying.
[666] For לאֹ עֶת־בֹּא = not the time of coming read with Hitzig and Wellhausen לאֹ עַתָּ בָא, not now is come; for עַתָּ cf. Ezek. xxiii. 4, Psalm lxxiv. 6.
[667] The emphasis may be due only to the awkward grammatical construction.
[668] ספונים, from ספן, to cover with planks of cedar, 2 Kings vi. 9: cf. iii. 7.
[669] Heb. set your hearts (see Vol. I., pp. 258, 275, 321, 323) upon your ways; but your ways cannot mean here, as elsewhere, your conduct, but obviously from what follows the ways you have been led, the way things have gone with you—the barren seasons and little income.
[670] The Hebrew and Versions here insert set your hearts upon your ways, obviously a mere clerical repetition from ver. 5.
[671] For והנה למעט read with the LXX. והיה למעט or ויהי.
[672] The עליכם here inserted in the Hebrew text is unparsable, not found in the LXX. and probably a clerical error by dittography from the preceding על־כן.
[673] Heb. heavens are shut from dew. But perhaps the מ of מטל should be deleted. So Wellhausen. There is no instance of an intransitive Qal of כלא.
[674] Query?
[677] The LXX. wrongly takes this last verse of chap. i. as the first half of the first verse of chap. ii.
[678] Lev. xxiii. 34, 36, 40–42.
[679] By the hand of.
[680] הֲלאֹ כָמֹהוּ כְאַיִן בְּעֵינֵיכֶם. Literally, is not the like of it as nothing in your eyes? But that can hardly be the meaning. It might be equivalent to is it not, as it stands, as nothing in your eyes? But the fact is that in Hebrew construction of a simple, unemphasised comparison, the comparing particle כ stands before both objects compared: as, for instance, in the phrase (Gen. xliv. 18) כִּי כָמוֹךָ כְּפַרְעֹה, thou art as Pharaoh.
[681] Literally: be strong.
[682] It is difficult to say whether high priest belongs to the text or not.
[683] Here occurs the anacolouthic clause, introduced by an acc. without a verb, which is not found in the LXX. and is probably a gloss (see above, p. 241): The promise which I made with you in your going forth from Egypt.
[684] Hebrew has singular, costly thing or desirableness, חֶמְדַּת (fem, for neut.), but the verb shall come is in the plural, and the LXX. has τα ἐκλεκτά, the choice things. See below, next page [243].
[685] The LXX. add a parallel clause καὶ εἰρήνην φυχῆς εἰς περιποίησιν παντὶ τῷ κτίζοντι τοῦ ἀναστῆσαι τὸν ναὸν τοῦτον, which would read in Hebrew וְשַׁלְוַת נֶפֶשׁ לְחַיּוֹת כָּל־הַיֹֹּסֵד לְקוֹמֵם הַהֵיכָל הַזֶּה. On חיות Wellhausen cites 1 Chron. xi. 8, = restore or revive.
[686] = חֶמְדַּת longing, 2 Chron. xxi. 2, and object of longing, Dan. xi. 37. It is the feminine or neuter, and might be rendered as a collective, desirable things. Pusey cites Cicero’s address to his wife: Valete, mea desideria, valete (Ep. ad Famil., xiv. 2 fin.).
[687] חֲמֻדֹת plural feminine of pass. part., as in Gen. xxvii. 15, where it is an adjective, but used as a noun = precious things, Dan. xi. 38, 43, which use meets the objection of Pusey, in loco, where he wrongly maintains that precious things, if intended, must have been expressed by מַחֲמַדֵּי.
[688] ἥξει τὰ ἐκλεκτὰ πάντων τῶν ἐθνῶν. Theodore of Mopsuestia takes it as elect persons of all nations, to which a few moderns adhere.
[689] Augustini Contra Donatistas post Collationem, cap. xx. 30 (Migne, Latin Patrology, XLIII., p. 671).
[690] Calvin, Comm. in Haggai, ii. 6–9.
[691] Deut. xvii. 8 ff.: עַל־פּי הַתּוֹרָה אֲשֶׁר יוֹרוּךָ. Compare the expression כּוֹהֵן מוֹרֶה, in 2 Chron. xv. 3, and the duties of the teaching priests assigned by the Chronicler (2 Chron. xvii. 7–9) to the days of Jehoshaphat.
[692] Note that it is not the Torah, but a Torah.
[693] The nearest passage to the deliverance of the priests to Haggai is Lev. vi. 20, 21 (Heb.), 27, 28 (Eng.). This is part of the Priestly Code not promulgated till 445 B.C., but based, of course, on long extant custom, some of it very ancient. Everything that touches the flesh (of the sin-offering, which is holy) shall be holy—יִקְדַּשׁ, the verb used by the priests in their answer to Haggai—and when any of its blood has been sprinkled on a garment, that whereon it was sprinkled shall be washed in a holy place. The earthen vessel wherein it has been boiled shall be broken, and if it has been boiled in a brazen vessel, this shall be scoured and rinsed with water.
[694] So several old edd. and many codd., and adopted by Baer (see his note in loco) in his text. But most of the edd. of the Massoretic text read ביד after Cod. Hill. For the importance of the question see above, p. 227.
[695] Torah.
[696] תְּמֵא נֶפֶשׁ.
[697] There does not appear to be the contrast between indirect contact with a holy thing and direct contact with a polluted which Wellhausen says there is. In either case the articles whose character is in question stand second from the source of holiness and pollution—the holy flesh and the corpse.
[698] See above, p. 245, n. 693.
[699] Pusey, in loco.
[700] The LXX. have here found inserted three other clauses: ἕνεκεν τῶν λημμάτων αὐτῶν τῶν ὀρθρινῶν, ὀδυνηθήσονται ἀπὸ προσώπου πόνων αὐτῶν, καὶ ἐμισεῖτε ἐν πύλαις ἐλέγχοντας. The first clause is a misreading (Wellhausen), יַעַן לִקְחֹתָם שַׁחַר for יַעַן לְקַחְתֶּם שֹׁחַד, because ye take a bribe, and goes well with the third clause, modified from Amos v. 10: שָׂנְאוּ בַשַׁעַר מוֹכִיחַ, they hate him who reproves in the gate. These may have been inserted into the Hebrew text by some one puzzled to know what the source of the people’s pollution was, and who absurdly found it in sins which in Haggai’s time it was impossible to impute to them. The middle clause, יִתְעַנּוּ מִפְּנֵי עַצְבֵיהֶם, they vex themselves with their labours, is suitable to the sense of the Hebrew text of the verse, as Wellhausen points out, but besides gives a connection with what follows.
[701] From this day and onward.
[702] Heb. literally since they were. A.V. since those days were.
[703] Winevat, יֶקֶב, is distinguished from winepress, גת, in Josh. ix. 13, and is translated by the Greek ὑπολήνιον Mark xii. I, ληνόν Matt. xxi. 33, dug a pit for the winepress; but the name is applied sometimes to the whole winepress—Hosea ix. 2 etc., Job xxiv. 11, to tread the winepress. The word translated measures, as in LXX. μετρητάς, is פּוּרָה, and that is properly the vat in which the grapes were trodden (Isa. lxiii. 3), but here it can scarcely mean fifty vatfuls, but must refer to some smaller measure—cask?
[704] See above, pp. 228 f., n. 625.
[705] The words omitted cannot be construed in the Hebrew, וְאֵין־אֶתְכֶם אֵלַי, literally and not you (acc.) to Me. Hitzig, etc., propose to read אִתְּכם and render there was none with you who turned to Me. Others propose אֵינְכֶם, as if none of you turned to Me. Others retain אֶתְכֶם and render as for you. The versions LXX. Syr., Vulg. ye will not return or did not return to Me, reading perhaps for לאֹ שָׁבְתֶּם ,אֵין אֶתְכֶם, which is found in Amos iv. 9, of which the rest of the verse is an echo. Wellhausen deletes the whole verse as a gloss. It is certainly suspicious, and remarkable in that the LXX. text has already introduced two citations from Amos. See above on ver. 14.
[706] Heb. from this day backwards.
[707] The date Wellhausen thinks was added by a later hand.
[708] This is the ambiguous clause on different interpretations of which so much has been founded: לְמִן־הַיּוֹם אֲשֶׁר־יֻסַּד הֵיכַל־יְהוָֹה. Does this clause, in simple parallel to the previous one, describe the day on which the prophet was speaking, the twenty-fourth day of the ninth month, the terminus a quo of the people’s retrospect? In that case Haggai regards the foundation-stone of the Temple as laid on the twenty-fourth day of the ninth month 520 B.C., and does not know, or at least ignores, any previous laying of a foundation-stone. So Kuenen, Kosters, Andrée, etc. Or does למן signify up to the time the foundation-stone was laid, and state a terminus ad quem for the people’s retrospect? So Ewald and others, who therefore find in the verse a proof that Haggai knew of an earlier laying of the foundation-stone. But that למן is ever used for ועד cannot be proved, and indeed is disproved by Jer. vii. 7, where it occurs in contrast to ועד. Van Hoonacker finds the same, but in a more subtle translation of למן. מן, he says, is never used except of a date distant from the speaker or writer of it; למן (if I understand him aright) refers therefore to a date previous to Haggai to which the people’s thoughts are directed by the ל and then brought back from it to the date at which he was speaking by means of the מן: “la préposition ל signifie la direction de l’esprit vers une époque du passé d’où il est ramené par la préposition מן.” But surely מן can be used (as indeed Haggai has just used it) to signify extension backwards from the standpoint of the speaker; and although in the passages cited by Van Hoonacker of the use of למן it always refers to a past date—Deut. ix. 7, Judg. xix. 30, 2 Sam. vi. 11, Jer. vii. 7 and 25—still, as it is there nothing but a pleonastic form for מן, it surely might be employed as מן is sometimes employed for departure from the present backwards. Nor in any case is it used to express what Van Hoonacker seeks to draw from it here, the idea of direction of the mind to a past event and then an immediate return from that. Had Haggai wished to express that idea he would have phrased it thus: למן היום אשר יסד היכל יהוה ועד היום הזה (as Kosters remarks). Besides, as Kosters has pointed out (pp. 7 ff. of the Germ. trans. of Het Herstel, etc.), even if Van Hoonacker’s translation of למן were correct, the context would show that it might refer only to a laying of the foundation-stone since Haggai’s first address to the people, and therefore the question of an earlier foundation-stone under Cyrus would remain unsolved. Consequently Haggai ii. 18 cannot be quoted as a proof of the latter. See above, p. 216.
[709] Meaning there is none.
[710] ועוד or וְעֹד for וְעַד, after LXX. καὶ εἰ ἔτι.
[711] The twenty-fourth day of the sixth month, according to chap. i. 15.