[599] Stade, Wellhausen, etc. See below, Chap. XVIII. on Hag. ii. 18.
[607] Ezra iv. 1-4. “That the relation of Ezra iv. 1-4 is historical seems to be established against objections which have been taken to it by the reference to Esarhaddon, which A. v. Gutschmid has vindicated by an ingenious historical combination with the aid of the Assyrian monuments (_Neue Beiträge_, p. 145).”—Robertson Smith, art. “Haggai,” _Encyc. Brit._
[610] There was a sharp skirmish at Rabbath-Ammon the night we spent there, and at least one Circassian was shot.
[611] “Sheshbazzar presumably having taken up his task with the usual conscientiousness of an Oriental governor, that is having done nothing though the work was nominally in hand all along (Ezra v. 16).”—Robertson Smith, art. “Haggai,” _Encyc. Brit._
[614] 1 Chron. iii. 19 makes him a son of Pedaiah, brother of She’altî’el, son of Jehoiachin, the king who was carried away by Nebuchadrezzar in 597 and remained captive till 561, when King Evil-Merodach set him in honour. It has been supposed that, She’altî’el dying childless, Pedaiah by levirate marriage with his widow became father of Zerubbabel.
_Go up into the mountain, and fetch wood, and build the House._
The Book of Haggai contains thirty-eight verses, which have been divided between two chapters.[615] The text is, for the prophets, a comparatively sound one. The Greek version affords a number of corrections, but has also the usual amount of misunderstandings, and, as in the case of other prophets, a few additions to the Hebrew text.[616] These and the variations in the other ancient versions will be noted in the translation below.[617]
The book consists of four sections, each recounting a message from Jehovah to the Jews in Jerusalem in 520 B.C., _the second year of Darius_ (Hystaspis), _by the hand of the prophet Haggai_.
The _first_, chap. i., dated the first day of the sixth month, during our September, reproves the Jews for building their own _cieled houses_, while they say that _the time for building Jehovah’s house has not yet come_; affirms that this is the reason of their poverty and of a great drought which has afflicted them. A piece of narrative is added recounting how Zerubbabel and Jeshua, the heads of the community, were stirred by this word to lead the people to begin work on the Temple, on the twenty-fourth day of the same month.