This House Lies Waste

Sixteen years went by. Sixteen years is long enough for the boy who carried water to the stonecutters to grow up and have a boy of his own carrying water somewhere else. In all that time nobody laid one stone on another on the hill. The order to stop had never been taken back — and after a while nobody needed an order. Ask anybody in Judah about the temple and you got the same answer: “The time has not come to build the Lord’s house.” They were not idle. They built plenty. They built houses to live in, and good ones — paneled houses, with fitted wood set over the walls inside, which is what a man does to a house when he means to stay in it and can afford to be comfortable. And the harvests kept going wrong. They planted a great deal and brought in a little. They ate and were not full. They drank and were still thirsty. They put their clothes on and could not get warm. A man would work all week for his wages and by the end of the month the money was simply gone, as if he had been carrying it home in a bag with holes in the bottom of it.

In the second year of King Darius, on the first day of the sixth month, a word came from the Lord to a prophet named Haggai. It was for two men in particular: Zerubbabel son of Shealtiel, who governed Judah, and Jeshua son of Jozadak, the great priest. Haggai went and said it to them out loud, in front of everybody. “This is what the Lord Almighty says. This people says, ‘The time has not come to build the Lord’s house.’” “Is it time for you to live in your paneled houses, while this house lies waste?” “Now this is what the Lord Almighty says: think carefully about your ways. You have sown much and brought in little. You eat, and you are not satisfied. You drink, and you never have enough. You put on clothes and do not get warm. Whoever earns wages puts them into a bag full of holes.” “Think carefully about your ways. Go up to the mountain. Cut timber. Build the house. I will take pleasure in it, and I will be honored, says the Lord.” “You looked for much, and little came. You brought it home, and I blew it away. Why? Because my house lies waste, while every one of you runs to his own house. That is why the sky has held back its dew and the ground has held back what grows in it.”

And they listened. Zerubbabel listened, and Jeshua the great priest listened, and everybody who was left of that people listened, because they knew that the Lord their God had sent the man; and they stood in awe of the Lord. And Haggai, the Lord’s messenger, said one sentence more to them: “I am with you, says the Lord.” Then the Lord stirred up the spirit of Zerubbabel, and the spirit of Jeshua, and the spirit of every one of the people who were left; and they came, and they went to work on the house of the Lord Almighty, their God. It happened on the twenty-fourth day of the sixth month, in the second year of King Darius. Haggai had spoken on the first day of that month. It took them twenty-three days to get up and go. Each word that came to Haggai had its date — the month and the day — the way you write the date at the top of a letter that matters.

On the twenty-first day of the seventh month the word came again. “Speak to Zerubbabel, and to Jeshua the great priest, and to all the people who are left. Say to them: who is there among you who saw this house in the glory it used to have? And how does it look to you now? Does it not look like nothing at all in front of your eyes?” “But be strong now, Zerubbabel, says the Lord. Be strong, Jeshua son of Jozadak, great priest. Be strong, all you people of the land, says the Lord — and work. Because I am with you, says the Lord Almighty. My Spirit is standing among you. Take courage.” “For this is what the Lord Almighty says: once more I am going to shake the heavens and the earth and the sea and the dry ground. I will shake all the nations, and the best of everything the nations have will come here, and I will fill this house with glory, says the Lord Almighty. The silver is mine and the gold is mine, says the Lord Almighty.” “The later glory of this house will be greater than the first, says the Lord Almighty. And in this place I will give peace — peace of soul, to keep, for everybody who builds to raise up this house.” The old men who remembered Solomon’s house had cried at the sight of the new foundation, because it looked like nothing. Now they were told that the second house would end up with more glory on it than the first one had.

On the twenty-fourth day of the ninth month, in the same year, the word came again, and this time it began with a riddle. Haggai was told to go and ask the priests a question about the law. So he did. “If a man is carrying holy meat in the fold of his coat, and the fold touches bread, or stew, or wine, or oil, or any food at all — does that food become holy?” “No.” “And if a man who has touched a dead body touches any of those things — do they become unclean?” “They do.” The priests had it right both times. Holiness does not rub off a man onto the bread in his coat. Uncleanness does. And then Haggai told them what he had been asking it for. “So it is with this people, and with this nation in front of me, says the Lord, and so it is with every work of their hands. Whatever they bring near becomes unclean, because of what they were offering there in the mornings. They have had to suffer for their own hard work — and you hated the man who told you the truth at the gate.”

And then he told them to look back. “Now think carefully. Think back from this day, to before there was one stone laid on another in the house of the Lord. What were you like then? You went to the bin for forty measures of barley and there were twenty in it. You went to the vat to draw three hundred measures of wine and there were a hundred and twenty. I struck everything your hands did with blight and hail, and you did not turn back to me, says the Lord.” “So think carefully from this day forward — from the twenty-fourth day of the ninth month, from the day the foundation of the Lord’s house was laid. Fix it in your hearts. Is there any seed left in the barn yet? The vine and the fig tree and the pomegranate and the olive tree have not borne anything yet. But from this day I will bless you.” Nothing was up. Nothing was on any of the trees. There was nothing to look at in any field in Judah. He told them to mark the day down anyway.

And on that same day the word came to Haggai one more time, and this one was for Zerubbabel by himself. “Say to Zerubbabel son of Shealtiel: I am shaking the heavens and the earth and the sea and the dry ground. I will turn over the thrones of kings and break the strength of the kingdoms of the nations. I will turn over the chariots and the men riding in them, and the horses and their riders will go down, every man by his own brother’s sword.” “On that day, says the Lord Almighty, I will take you, Zerubbabel son of Shealtiel, my servant, says the Lord — and I will make you like a seal, because I have chosen you.” A seal was the ring a great man wore on his hand and pressed into soft wax to sign his name with. He did not leave it lying about the house. He kept it on him, wherever he went. That was the last word that came to Haggai. All his words did was get a whole country to pick its tools back up.

And they were building. Up on the mountain men were felling cedar again; down in Jerusalem the stone was being squared and the timber laid into the walls, and the courses went up off the foundation that had lain bare in the weather for sixteen years. They were not finished, and they were not safe, and they did not know yet what the governor of the whole country west of the River was going to say when he heard about it. But they were building.