Haggai is an interesting little book of the bible. It’s two pages long, and while it’s named for the prophet Haggai, it is really just a rant. God really could pour on the abuse in those days. Just to make sure you know He’s serious, He points out that all of the bad things that have been happening to “the people” recently are his doing. He’s really in a mood. Haggai’s entire role is one of “the guy who listens to the ranting” and “message boy.”<\/p>\n
God takes a moment at the end of his rant to appoint Zerubbabel as his chosen one and the new leader of the “people.” He does not tell Zer in person, but instead tells Haggai to deliver the message. I’m not sure what to make of that.<\/p>\n
God doesn’t seem to understand why a series of droughts and plagues fails to make the people love and worship him. Haggai 2:17 nicely summarizes his bafflement:<\/p>\n
I smote you with blasting and with mildew and with hail in all the labours of your hands; yet ye turned not to me, saith the Lord.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
There is a complete lack of understanding of human nature here. You can’t just use the stick; there has to be a carrot too! “I beat you repeatedly and yet for some reason you still cringe when I raise my hand!” Oh well. What can you do?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Haggai is an interesting little book of the bible. It’s two pages long, and while it’s named for the prophet Haggai, it is really just a rant. God really could pour on the abuse in those days. Just to make sure you know He’s serious, He points out that all of the bad things that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[263,160],"class_list":["post-1670","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-other","tag-bible","tag-religion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tekhedd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1670","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tekhedd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tekhedd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tekhedd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tekhedd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1670"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/tekhedd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1670\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1674,"href":"https:\/\/tekhedd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1670\/revisions\/1674"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tekhedd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1670"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tekhedd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1670"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tekhedd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1670"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}