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Commentaries and Other Bible Study Helps - Prayer Tents - Prayer Tents
2:10-19 Consider Your Ways: Holiness and Defilement; Repentance and Blessing. In this fifth message, the Lord uses an analogy of ritual holiness and defilement to compel reflection upon the actual status of the people before him (vv. 10-14), consideration of that status and its relation to past agricultural failures before temple restoration (vv. 15-17), and consideration of their experience since rebuilding of the temple began (vv. 18-19).
2:10-14 Analogy: Holiness and Defilement. Haggai uses questions directed to priests (cf. 1:4; 2:3) and an analogy to force reflection upon the uncleanness of the people before the Lord (v. 14).
2:10 twenty-fourth day . . . ninth month . . . second year. , the since the work of renewal began. This oracle came during the time for sowing seed.
2:11 priests. It is their duty to give a ruling in matters of ritual and law (Hb. Torah; Lev. 10:10-11; Deut. 17:8-13).
2:12 Holy meat is meat dedicated for sacrifice (Jer. 11:15). It was assumed that holiness could be transferred from a consecrated object to a person or other object (Lev. 6:27). Haggai questions whether holiness may be transferred from that second consecrated object to a third.
2:13 dead body. While holiness may not be attained through indirect contact, one defiled by contact with a dead body pollutes all that he contacts (Lev. 22:1-9; Num. 19:11-13, 22). Any of these likely refers to the foods mentioned in Hag. 2:12.
2:14 every work of their hands. All that they do is unclean (cf. v. 17). there. The temple. The lack of holiness and the presence of defilement is due not to the impropriety of current sacrifices (Ezra 3:3-7) but rather to the fact that they permit a ruinous "corpse" (the unfinished temple) to remain in their midst.
