“Now therefore thus saith the Lord of hosts; Consider your ways. Ye have sown much, and bring in little; ye eat, but ye have not enough; ye drink, but ye are not filled with drink; ye clothe you, but there is none warm; and he that earneth wages, earneth wages to put it into a bag with holes” — Haggai 1:5, 65Now therefore thus saith the Lord of hosts; Consider your ways. 6Ye have sown much, and bring in little; ye eat, but ye have not enough; ye drink, but ye are not filled with drink; ye clothe you, but there is none warm; and he that earneth wages earneth wages to put it into a bag with holes. (Haggai 1:5‑6).
THERE are two key expressions in the little Book of Haggai that give us the purpose of this prophecy: “Consider your ways,” and “Be strong.” There are six books of the Old Testament that are intimately linked together—three historical, Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther, and three prophetic, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi. These give us the story of God’s dealings with the people of Judah after the Babylonian dominion was overthrown and the Medo-Persian empire, which was favorable to the Jews in the main, had succeeded to world sovereignty. In Ezra and Nehemiah we have the history of the returning remnant, and the three prophets throw light upon their moral and spiritual state. Haggai sought to encourage the people to go on with their God-appointed program, the rebuilding of the Temple, which had been hindered because of the opposition of the mixed races (the Samaritans, as they were afterward known) who were dwelling in the land of Palestine. He sought to exercise the consciences of the remnant, and called upon them to face their low spiritual condition before God and get right with Him. His searching ministry proved so effective that the people were stirred to “arise and build.” Then he sounded out the note of encouragement, “Be strong.”
“So many a life is one long fever!
A fever of anxious suspense and care;
A fever of fretting, a fever of getting,
A fever of hurrying here and there.
Ah, what if in winning the praise of others
We miss at the last the Kings Well done—
If our self-sought tasks in the Master’s vineyard
Yield ‘nothing but leaves’ at the set of sun!”
—Edith G. Cherry.