immediate interest, was at stake. One is reminded of the truth expressed in a stanza of Matthew Arnold's : We cannot kindle when we will The fire which in the breast resides. But tasks in hours of insight will'd Can be through hours of gloom fulfill'd.1 It is with such a national situation as this that the final voice of Old Testament prophecy, the cadence as it were of the prophetic strain, drawing in from the far vision to the pressing emergency, must deal. I Prophets of the Rebuilt Temple. What manner of house will ye build unto me?" Jehovah had said through the Second Isaiah, "and what place shall be my rest" (Isa. lxvi, 1)? The question carried with it the implication running through all the thought of the great prophet, that henceforth the only temple that could satisfy Israel's worship must be as large as heaven and earth, and that their religious life must be sincerely adjusted to the ideal of a world's salvation. Only so could they be true witnesses for Jehovah (cf. Isa. xliii, 12; xlv, 22). But here in their regained home they had fallen on "the day of small things" (Zech, iv, 10); their superficial dream was disillusioned; so they had allowed their prophetic fervor to lapse. And with this lapse there had crept in moral evils which the prophetic spirit, concerned as it was with the claims of a redeemed life, could not suffer to go unreproved. So, before its function was over, prophecy must gird itself for one more appeal. It was a home appeal this time, though still its far horizon was world-wide. 1 Arnold, "Morality." 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. Haggai : The reader of the Book of Haggai will miss all seeming care on his part for graces of style or elaboration of treatment; will meet with no striking imagery or fervid prophetic vision. On the other hand, he will find what is more to the purpose in hand, 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 the Larger Outlook 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 truth necessary and timely. The reconstructed 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 |