Like Jeremiah, Zephaniah foretold the coming conquest and destruction of Jerusalem. “I will stretch out my hand against Judah and against all the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and I will cut off from this place every remnant of Baal and the name of the idolatrous priests, those who bow down on the roofs to the host of the heavens, those who bow down and swear to the Lord but also swear by Milcom” (Zephaniah 1:4-5).

Haggai wrote 70 or 80 years later, after Jerusalem had indeed been destroyed, with virtually all the population sold into slavery in Babylon. All of Haggai’s prophesying took place in a span of less than four months, when the people of Judah had returned from the Exile, in the second year of King Darius of Persia (Haggai 1:1, 2:1, 2:10, 2:20). People were rebuilding their homes amid the wreckage of Jerusalem, but there was great uncertainty as to what the future might hold.

The prophet invites the people, “Consider how you have fared” (1:5, 1:7). They had not fared well: “You have sown much, and harvested little; you eat, but you never have enough; you drink, but you never have your fill; you clothe yourselves, but no one is warm; and you that earn wages put them into a bag with holes” (1:6).

All that seems pretty bleak; and there was a reason for that. “These people say the time has not yet come to rebuild the Lord’s house” (1:2). People were all working on reestablishing the prosperity of their own houses; that was their clear priority. So the word of the Lord came by the prophet Haggai: “Is it a time for you yourselves to live in your paneled houses, while this house lies in ruins?” (1:4). Why were they experiencing such hard times? “You looked for much, and it came to little; and when you brought it home, I blew it away. Why? Because my house lies in ruins, while all of you hurry off to your own houses” (1:9) – and God had therefore called for a serious drought (1:10-11).

We’ve all been there: so concerned about our own situation, too busy to consider God’s purpose within the kingdom. Yet even when we have not been listening, if we wake up enough to obey the voice of the Lord (1:12), we will hear the promise: “I am with you, says the Lord” (1:13).

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I will say to my soul, ‘Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.’ But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God.” (Luke 12:19-21).
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We too have sown much and reaped little, O Lord; we have earned wages and put them in a bag with holes: and we are so slow to see that as long as our priority is ourselves, as long as building our own house is our highest goal, we’ll never see the fullness of the kingdom you intend for us. Teach us to set our hearts’ true allegiance to you, O God!

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