4. THE REINVESTMENT OF ISRAEL'S HOPE
On the same day Haggai published another oracle, in which he put the climax to his own message by reinvesting in Zerubbabel the ancient hopes of his people. When the monarchy fell the Messianic hopes were naturally no longer concentrated in the person of a king; and the great evangelist of the Exile found the elect and anointed Servant of Jehovah in the people as a whole, or in at least the pious part of them, with functions not of political government but of moral influence and instruction towards all the peoples of the earth. Yet in the Exile Ezekiel still predicted an individual Messiah, a son of the house of David; only it is significant that, in his latest prophecies delivered after the overthrow of Jerusalem, Ezekiel calls him not king any more, but prince.
After the return of Sheshbazzar to Babylon this position was virtually filled by Zerubbabel, a grandson of Jehoiakin, the second last king of Judah, and appointed by the Persian king Pehah or Satrap of Judah. Him Haggai now formally names the elect servant of Jehovah. In that overturning of the kingdoms of the world which Haggai had predicted two months before, and which he now explains as their mutual destruction by war, Jehovah of Hosts will make Zerubbabel His signet-ring, inseparable from Himself and the symbol of His authority.
"And the word of Jehovah came a second time to Haggai on the twenty-fourth day of the ninth month, saying: Speak to Zerubbabel, Satrap of Judah, saying: I am about to shake the heavens and the earth, and I will overturn the thrones of kingdoms, and will shatter the power of the kingdoms of the Gentiles, and will overturn chariots and their riders, and horses and their riders will come down, every man by the sword of his brother. In that day - oracle of Jehovah of Hosts-I will take Zerubbabel, son of She'alti'el, My servant-oracle of Jehovah-and will make him like a signet-ring; for thee have I chosen-oracle of Jehovah of Hosts."
The wars and mutual destruction of the Gentiles, of which Haggai speaks, are doubtless those revolts of races and provinces which threatened to disrupt the Persian Empire upon the accession of Darius in 521. Persians, Babylonians, Medes, Armenians, the Sacae and others rose together or in succession. In four years Darius quelled them all, and reorganized his empire before the Jews finished their Temple. Like all the Syrian governors, Zerubbabel remained his poor lieutenant and submissive tributary. History rolled westward into Europe. Greek and Persian began their struggle for the control of its future, and the Jews fell into an obscurity and oblivion unbroken for centuries. The "signet-ring of Jehovah" was not acknowledged by the world-does not seem even to have challenged its briefest attention. But Haggai had at least succeeded in asserting the Messianic hope of Israel, always baffled, never quenched, in this re-opening of her life. He had delivered the ancient heritage of Israel to the care of the new Judaism.
Haggai's place in the succession of prophecy ought now to be clear to us. The meagerness of his words and their crabbed style, his occupation with the construction of the Temple, his unfulfilled hope in Zerubbabel, his silence on the great inheritance of truth delivered by his predecessors, and the absence from his prophesying of all visions of God's character and all emphasis upon the ethical elements of religion-these have moved some to depress his value as a prophet almost to the vanishing point. Nothing could be more unjust. In his opening message Haggai evinced the first indispensable power of the prophet: to speak to the situation of the moment, and to succeed in getting men to take up the duty at their feet; in another message he announced a great ethical principle; in his last he conserved the Messianic traditions of his religion, and though not less disappointed than Isaiah in the personality to whom he looked for their fulfillment, he succeeded in passing on their hope undiminished to future ages.