Haggai 2:23 - Ellicott's Commentary On The Whole Bible

(20-23) The Fifth Utterance. — The promise of Haggai 2:6-9 is enlarged. The heathen powers shall be consumed one of another, but the line of Zerubbabel shall stand secure, and be a witness to Jehovah’s faithfulness. Here, as in Haggai 2:6-9, the only satisfactory interpretation is that Haggai was charged with a prediction — purposely vague and indistinct in character — of the extension of God’s kingdom by the Christian dispensation. “Zerubbabel,” the descendant of David, includes in himself Him who was according to the flesh his lineal descendant. Just in the same way in older prophecy “David” is himself identified with that Messiah in whom the glories of the Davidic house were to culminate. (See Psalms 89:19, and comp. Jennings and Lowe, Commentary, Introd. to Psalms 89) It appears as unnecessary to find a literal fulfilment of the prediction of the overthrow of the world-powers, “every one by the sword of his brother,” as of the utterance (repeated from Haggai 2:6), “I will shake the heavens and the earth.” It is true that the empires of Babylon, Persia, Syria, and Greece each in its turn declined and passed away. But in the Roman Empire the world-power was as strongly represented as ever, when Christ came on earth. It was to succumb later on to moral, not to material force. Nothing, in fact, can be extracted from these passages beyond a dim presage of the heathen kingdoms being pervaded by the moral influence of the Christian Church.