For thus saith the Lord— The excellent Bishop Chandler has, with his usual learning and judgment, explained this remarkable prophesy; and it is from him that we have chiefly extracted what follows. The occasion of this prophesy, says he, was the dejection of the Jews at the unhopeful appearance of their new-erecting temple, Haggai 2:3. The comfort, therefore, in the prophet's message was surely suited to this circumstance, and contains a promise of some glory to be conferred on this temple, to make it exceed the glory of the former. Wherein the glory of the first temple consisted, is not said; but it sufficiently appears from the nature of their complaint, and from the eighth verse, that they considered it to have consisted in magnificence of structure, and richness of ornaments. These God makes no account of; the silver is mine, and the gold, &c. which is a manner of speaking not unfrequent in Scripture, to signify, that he hath no pleasure in such things. The glory that he intends for this latter house, is of another nature. It shall consist in the presence of Him, who is described as the desire of all nations, Haggai 2:7 and as peace, Haggai 2:9.—and, or for in this place will I give peace. This glory they were not to expect immediately; great revolutions must first happen in the world; Haggai 2:6. After one [kingdom] it is a little while; and [or after that] I will shake the heavens, &c. and the desire [or expectation] of all nations shall come; namely, into this house; which shall be the filling—the completion of its glory. Thus the Hebrew should be Englished; and thus a date of time is fixed for the performance of the promise.
The Persian kingdom under which they lived was now subsisting; and, after one other kingdom, which should succeed that in dominion over them, it should be but a little while before God would shake the heavens, &c. that is, the whole Gentile world, or empire, to make way for the coming-in of the desire of all nations. Great changes in the political world are commonly foretold in Scripture under the figure of earthquakes; such were the commotions in the Roman empire from the death of Julius Caesar to the birth of Christ, which wasted all the provinces of the nation, and ended in a change of the Roman government, great enough to answer the description of it in Haggai.
For the farther clearing of the prophesy it should be shewn, first, that the desire of all nations is spoken of a person desired, not of things desirable, as some of the Jews understand it; secondly, that this person is the Messiah; and thirdly, that this person was to come under the temple that they were then building.
I. As to the first, we may observe, that if things, and not a person was meant, the expression shall come is absurd; for things cannot be said to come,—which is a personal action, but to be brought. The application of the words to a person is natural and easy. The presence of one of high dignity gives honour and glory to the meanest cottage. It was the symbol of God's presence in Solomon's temple that was truly its glory; and it is the restoring of this glory in the days of the Messiah, which, in the judgment of many Jews, is to make out the glory of another temple. Whomsoever God shall visibly manifest himself upon, may in some sense be called the glory of God; and should he do this most gloriously in the person of the Messiah, the Jews would own that his presence in the temple would be the glory of it, if you would grant, at the same time, that he was not yet come: but come, or not come, makes no alteration in the case. He that would be the glory of the third temple, by coming to it, was so to the second temple, if he honoured it with his presence. The words, then, do well bear the sense of person; which moreover agrees perfectly with the context. "Be ye not troubled (says the prophet) that this house is in your eyes as nothing in comparison of the former. All its deficiencies shall be compensated hereafter, by His coming to it, whom your fathers desired to see, and did not see, under Solomon's temple; and who shall therefore make this temple far more illustrious than that." And thus the prophet himself seems to interpret his meaning; for, repeating the same political concussion, Haggai 2:21-22. I will shake the heavens, &c. he tells them, that this was in order to make room for one, under the name of Zerubbabel, whom God would take, and make as a signet, or exalt to most high dignity, power, and trust, of which the seal was the instrument or sign in those days. Where the same revolution is spoken of, the same person was probably intended; the one passage is parallel to the other. So again, should the word peace, Haggai 2:9 which God promises to give in this place, be understood of external peace and felicity, it will be hard to say how this was fulfilled, or could give the preference of the latter house to the former: for all the time under the second temple was troublesome and unquiet; far short of the halcyon days which they had enjoyed under Solomon: but, take it figuratively for a person, who publishes glad tidings of peace and salvation, whose doctrine and example tended to an universal peace throughout the world, and was always followed with internal and everlasting peace to those who obeyed him,—and there is no comparison between the two temples; no more than between the outward tranquillity of a short reign, and the peace of God which exceeds all that we can desire.
II. Who this person should be, is the second consideration: and he may easily be known by the application of the same, or synonymous epithets, in other prophets. From Abraham's days a seed was promised, in whom all the nations of the earth should be blessed. The promise was renewed to Isaac, afterwards to Jacob, who restricted it to one of Judah's posterity, to Shiloh, who was foretold to be the gathering of the people, or, as the Hebrew word is rendered by the ancient versions and Jewish commentators, the expectation of the people. When God confined it to one family, of the tribe of Judah, to David's seed, David foretels of him by the Spirit, that men, that all the families of the earth, as the Greek interpreters read, shall be blessed in him; all nations shall call him blessed. This was not Solomon; for of the same rod of Jesse Isaiah prophesied, chap. Isaiah 11:10 that to him shall the Gentiles seek; or, as the LXX, in him shall they hope—and his peace shall be glorious: and again, where our translation hath it, the isles shall wait for his law, meaning the Messiah, ch. Isaiah 42:4 it is in the Greek, In his name shall the Gentiles hope. And as to Israel, it is implied that he was once their desire, till he appeared without the pomp and splendour of a prince, which they expected from him; and then they saw no beauty, that they should desire him, Isaiah 53:2. Hence it appears, that the expectation, the hope, the desire of all nations, and of Israel in particular, was a known description of some person, delivered from one prophet to another, and which, after the captivity, was fixed on the Messiah. Compare the present passage with Malachi 3:1 in which the quality of the persons, and the place, so exactly agree, that one must think with R. Aben Ezra, that the same person is meant by both prophets; who is no other than the Lord Messiah, who in the days of Jesus Christ was usually termed, the hope—the blessed hope—the hope of Israel—the hope of the promise of the twelve tribes—the blessing of Abraham to the Gentiles, &c. 1 Timothy 1:1; Titus 2:13.Acts 28:20; Acts 26:7-8. Galatians 3:14. Accordingly, the Jews about Christ's time interpret this text in Haggai of the Messiah. Akiba, who might be born under the second temple, and was chief rabbi and counsellor to Barcochba in Trajan's reign, understands it so; as does the Targum on Isaiah 4:2. Not to search after more authorities, we may acquiesce in the confession of Jarchi, who asserts that the ancients expounded this place of the Messiah. The other word peace is also a name of the Messiah; and as it includes in the notion thereof all kinds of happiness, it seems to be the reason why he is the desire of all nations; even because he shall be the blessing of all nations. However that be, this is one among the other lofty titles of the Messiah in Isaiah 9:6. Prince, Peace, as the words may be rendered in apposition. Of the governor that should come forth out of Bethlehem, it is said, Micah 5:2-5 that he should be the peace; and the Jew's own paraphrase hereof is, The Messiah shall be our peace. Under this title the Jews pray for him in their liturgy, when they say, "Cause to come unto us, blessing and peace quickly.—Give peace, good, blessing, &c. to us and thy people, &c." Add to this, that the Messiah is spoken of in other places of Scripture by the name of the glory of the Lord,
Isaiah 40:5; Isaiah 60:1-2 and then nothing is wanting to prove, that the person whose coming shall make the latter house glorious must be the Messiah.
III. This interpretation is farther strengthened, thirdly, from the expectation that the Jews generally had of the Messiah's coming before the end of the second temple, into which the person prophesied of by Haggai, was to come. To this purpose are several of their traditions: "The second temple shall continue to the age to come, and the days of the Messiah." And, "on the day the temple was destroyed, the Messiah was born:" And to guard against the argument which may be formed against them from this concession, they have invented an idle story, that the Messiah was indeed born under the second temple; but is hidden at Rome, till God shall permit him to reveal himself. Very remarkable is the saying of Rabbi Jose, who lived at the destruction of the temple by Titus, and, grieving at the sight thereof, exclaimed, "Alas! the time of the Messiah is past."
They never dreamed then of a third temple; much less did they infer it from Haggai, who says directly the contrary. Haggai's temple is plainly the same that they then saw, and which was in their eyes as nothing; for he adds, for their comfort, I will fill this house with glory—this latter house—-this place, with peace. There had been at that time but two houses: Solomon's, which was the former, was no longer in being: Zerubbabel's, which is the latter, was now building, unlike to the former in magnificence, and yet promised to exceed it in glory. Nothing can be plainer than that into this house the desire of all nations was to come; that while this temple was standing he was to appear in this place, and manifest forth his glory. Within this compass of time none else came, whom these titles fitted, besides Jesus Christ, in whom the Logos, or Word, tabernacled, or placed his Shechinah, and whose glory they beheld, as of the only begotten of the Father. John 1:14. See Bishop Chandler's Defence, p. 71, &c. The reader will also find in Dr. Sharpe's Sermon on the Rise and Fall of Jerusalem, p. 36 some good remarks on the subject.