What Is the Book of Haggai?

The book of Haggai presents four reports of divine communications to the prophet Haggai, in the second year of the reign of the Persian king Darius I (reigned 522–486 BCE), about eighteen years after Cyrus permitted the Jews to return from exile and rebuild the Temple. In these communications, God exhorts the people and their leaders—Zerubbabel, the Persian-appointed governor of Judah, and the High Priest Joshua—to cease their delay in rebuilding the Temple, and he declares that the new Temple will surpass the splendor of the First Temple. The people are assured that God will bless them further, that he will overthrow foreign nations and will choose Zerubbabel (known from 1 Chronicles 3:19 as a descendant of David) “as a signet” (a metaphor for royalty).