Haggai 1:7-11
Go Up Into the Hills
7This is what the LORD of Hosts says: “Consider carefully your ways.
8Go up into the hills, bring down lumber, and build the house, so that I may take pleasure in it and be glorified, says the LORD.
9You expected much, but behold, it amounted to little. And what you brought home, I blew away. Why? declares the LORD of Hosts. Because My house still lies in ruins, while each of you is busy with his own house.
10Therefore, on account of you the heavens have withheld their dew and the earth has withheld its crops.
11I have summoned a drought on the fields and on the mountains, on the grain, new wine, and oil, and on whatever the ground yields, on man and beast, and on all the labor of your hands.”
Berean Standard Bible
Consider carefully your ways. He said that a couple of verses earlier, before the list of things that were not working, and now the same sentence comes round a second time. The difference is that this time an instruction follows it.
Go up into the hills, bring down lumber, and build the house, so that I may take pleasure in it and be glorified.
Hills, lumber, build. After a prophet, a dated word from the LORD of Hosts, and a charge laid against a whole town, what actually arrives is a supply run. There is no vision to wait for, no sign to watch the sky for, no ceremony and no qualification anybody has to earn first. Somebody has to walk up a hill and bring timber down.
The reason he attaches to it is not the reason we would have written for him. Not so that you will be safe. Not so that you will prosper, or be forgiven, or be left alone by the empire. He wants the house built so that he can take pleasure in it.
Then he goes back to the thin harvests and puts his own name on them. They had expected much and got little, and what they did carry home, he says, he blew away. He raises the question of why himself, and then answers it himself.
Because My house still lies in ruins, while each of you is busy with his own house.
Busy is the word he chooses. Not idle, not indifferent, not godless. Busy, with a house of your own to think about, which is a charge most of us would find hard to shake off.
Then comes the part that is uncomfortable to read at a table.
I have summoned a drought on the fields and on the mountains, on the grain, new wine, and oil
Summoned is his own word for it. He puts the dry ground, the grain, the new wine and the oil onto his own account, which means the conditions that made building look unaffordable were conditions he had arranged. So the causation runs the other way from the way it would look. Verse 9 says the house lies in ruins while each man is busy with his own, and verse 11 has God summoning the drought. The hard conditions follow the neglect rather than explaining it.
How We Know
The futilities here are not invented for the occasion. They are quoted terms.
Deuteronomy 28:38 says they will sow much seed in the field and harvest little. Deuteronomy 28:39 has them plant and tend vineyards and not drink the wine. Deuteronomy 28:40 has olive trees throughout their territory and no oil.
Haggai 1:11 names grain, new wine and oil under a summoned drought, and 1:6 has planting much and harvesting little.
So the prophet is not announcing a new arrangement. He is pointing at the terms of an old one and saying they are in force. He does it without quoting the chapter, naming the book, or explaining himself, which only works on an audience that already knows.
Questions
1 What does God tell them to do, and what is surprising about it?
AnswerGo into the hills, bring down lumber, build the house. The surprise is how plain it is. There is nothing to wait for and nothing to be shown first. After everything that has been said, the command is a trip up a hill for timber.
2 Why does God say he wants the house built?
AnswerSo that he may take pleasure in it and be glorified. Not so the people will be safe, or rich, or forgiven. The reason given is his own enjoyment of the place, which is not the reason most of us would have supplied for him.
3 When something in our life goes badly, what is the first explanation any of us reaches for?
AnswerBad luck, bad timing, or somebody else. These people had one ready as well: times were too hard to build. God tells them the drought was his doing, and that the order runs the other way round. They had been reasoning from an upside-down picture of their own lives, and it sounded sensible at every step.
4 God calls them busy rather than lazy. Why does that land harder?
AnswerBecause busy is true, and it is the defense they would have offered anyway. They were working hard. Every hour of it went into their own houses, and the hard work is exactly what makes the case against them.
What This Means for Us
Busy was never a defense here. It was the evidence. Nobody in that town was doing nothing, and nobody in that town lacked a good reason for the order they had put things in. What they lacked was a priority, which is a different problem and a quieter one. So work out where the last month of effort in this house actually went, rather than where any of us intended it to go. The honest answer to what we are building is in the hours, not in the intention.
Prayer
Father, we are busy and we use it as a defense. Show us where our lumber is actually going. Give us the honesty to see the order of things the right way round, and the will to go and do the plain thing you have asked of us today. Amen.