Haggai 1:11
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I have summoned a drought on the fields and on the mountains, on the grain, new wine, and oil, and on whatever the ground yields, on man and beast, and on all the labor of your hands.”
Commentaries
Excerpts gathered from published commentaries to ground the reading.
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).
Open source ↗1:11 I have called for a drought: The people failed to recognize their plight as a divine judgment on their misplaced priorities, so Haggai interpreted the situation in light of the curses attached to the covenant (Deut 28:15-68, especially vv 22-24, 38-40). • Drought (Hebrew khoreb) is a wordplay on “ruins” (Hag 1:4, 9; Hebrew khareb)—Judah’s experiences corresponded with the condition in which they had left the Lord’s Temple.
Open source ↗Cross-references
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I struck you—all the work of your hands—with blight, mildew, and hail, but you did not turn to Me, declares the LORD.
The LORD will strike you with wasting disease, with fever and inflammation, with scorching heat and drought, and with blight and mildew; these will pursue you until you perish.
Now Elisha had said to the woman whose son he had restored to life, “Arise, you and your household; go and live as a foreigner wherever you can. For the LORD has decreed a seven-year famine, and it has already come to the land.”
Now Elijah the Tishbite, who was among the settlers of Gilead, said to Ahab, “As surely as the LORD lives—the God of Israel before whom I stand—there will be neither dew nor rain in these years except at my word!”
People have heard my groaning, but there is no one to comfort me. All my enemies have heard of my trouble; they are glad that You have caused it. May You bring the day You have announced, so that they may become like me.
But when He remains silent, who can condemn Him? When He hides His face, who can see Him? Yet He watches over both man and nation,
This is what the Lord GOD showed me: The Lord GOD was calling for judgment by fire. It consumed the great deep and devoured the land.
He builds His upper rooms in the heavens and founds His vault upon the earth. He summons the waters of the sea and pours them over the face of the earth. The LORD is His name.
He who made the Pleiades and Orion, who turns darkness into dawn and darkens day into night, who summons the waters of the sea and pours them over the face of the earth— the LORD is His name—