Haggai 1:7

After this allusion to the visitation of God, the prophet repeats the summons in Hag 1:7, Hag 1:8, to lay to heart their previous conduct, and choose the way that is well-pleasing to God. Hag 1:7. "Thus saith Jehovah of hosts, Direct your heart upon your ways. Hag 1:8. Go up to the mountains and fetch wood and build the house, and I will take pleasure therein and glorify myself, saith Jehovah." Hâhâr (the mountain) is not any particular mountain, say the temple mountain (Grotius, Maurer, Ros.), or Lebanon (Cocceius, Ewald, etc.); but the article is used generically, and hâhâr is simply the mountain regarded as the locality in which wood chiefly grows (cf. Neh 8:15). Fetching wood for building is an individualizing expression for providing building materials; so that there is no ground for the inference drawn by Hitzig and many of the Rabbins, that the walls of the temple had been left standing when it was destroyed, so that all that had to be done was to renew the wood-work, - an inference at variance not only with the reference made to the laying of the foundation of the temple in Hag 2:18 and Ezr 3:10, but also to the express statement in the account sent by the provincial governor to king Darius in Ezr 5:8, viz., that the house of the great God was built with square stones, and that timber was laid in the walls. וארצה־בּו, so will I take pleasure in it (the house); whereas so long as it lay in ruins, God was displeased with it. ואכּבד, and I will glorify myself, sc. upon the people, by causing my blessing to flow to it again. The keri ואכּבדה is an unnecessary emendation, inasmuch as, although the voluntative might be used (cf. Ewald, 350, a), it is not required, and has not been employed, both because it is wanting in ארצה, for the simple reason that the verbs ל…

In this chapter, after the preamble of the prophecy, we have, I. A reproof of the people of the Jews for their dilatoriness and slothfulness in building the temple, which had provoked God to contend with them by the judgment of famine and scarcity, with an exhortation to them to resume that good work and to prosecute it in good earnest (Hag 1:1-11). II. The good success of this sermon, appearing in the people's return and close application to that work, wherein the prophet, in God's name, animated and encouraged them, assuring them that God was with them (Hag 1:12-15).