What's HAGGAI about?

This short book, only two chapters long, describes how Haggai urged the people to re-build the temple after they had been released from Babylon and returned to Jerusalem. A recent drought is interpreted as punishment for not having started the re-building, and prosperity is promised when the temple is finished.

How Haggai is helpful to us

It’s easy for us to imagine these interpretations of droughts as God punishing the people for not rebuilding the temple as ways of manipulating people to rebuild the temple, but when we realize that the temple was the centre of justice and inclusion and dignity for all, it may well be that neglecting the temple was a symptom of neglecting justice and the poor. If so, then, as we have also discovered in the modern world, there are unhappy consequences for abandoning the priorities of justice and inclusion.