points out "that this was just the time that our Saviour laboured personally to bring His own to repentance and while on the Mount of Olives wept over the holy city."
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up from the midst of the city to the Mount of Olives (chap. xi. 23), and after it " stood " there for some time it finally departed.
Since that event there is one word written across Jewish history, and that one word is " I-chabod " where is the glory? For the Lord has withdrawn Himself, and the glory of Jehovah has departed from His land, and from His people.
They then went to Babylon, and when the seventy years were expired the comparative handful who returned commenced to build a Temple, and while they were engaged in that task the first of that great trio of post-Exilic prophets, " Haggai, the messenger of Jehovah, in Jehovah's message " (chap. i. 13), was commissioned to make to them the following announcement : " Who is left among you that saw this house in her first glory ? and how do ye see it now ? Is it not in your eyes in comparison of it as nothing ? Yet now be strong, O Zerubbabel, saith the Lord ; and be strong, O Joshua, son of Josedech, the high priest ; and be strong, all ye people of the land, saith the Lord, and work : for I am with you, saith the Lord of hosts : according to the word that I covenanted with you when ye came out of Egypt, so My Spirit remaineth among you : fear ye not. For thus saith the Lord of hosts, Yet once, it is a little while, and I will shake the heavens, and the earth, and the sea and the dry land ; and I will shake all nations, and the desire of all nations shall come : and I will fill this house with glory, saith the Lord of hosts. The silver is mine, and the gold is mine, saith the Lord of hosts. The glory of this latter house shall be greater than of the former, saith the Lord of hosts ; and in this place will I give peace, saith the Lord of hosts " (Haggai ii. 3–9).
Now it is certainly true that in its fulness this, like
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every other prophecy in the Old Testament which announces Messiah's advent, looks on to the second coming and to a time yet future.
There is truth even in the rendering of the ninth verse of this passage adopted in the margin of the Revised Version, which, instead of "the glory of this latter house," translates it " the latter glory of this house," which is more literal, and corresponds with the third verse of the same chapter, though the inference drawn from it by some, that the primary reference of the " latter " or " last " glory of " this house " is to the Temple yet to be built in the future, is very doubtful. The Temple of Solomon and the one they were then building was, in a sense, the same house, because there was a living link connecting the two, in the lives of some of the old men, who had returned from the seventy years' exile, to whom the prophet was speaking, who had seen " this house " (Solomon's Temple) in its first glory, before it was destroyed by the Chaldeans, and were now eye-witnesses of its restoration, though on a much smaller scale. But there is no such link between the second Temple and a temple yet to be built more than nineteen centuries later. Anyhow, the fact remains that it was to encourage them in the task in which they were then engaged that Haggai was sent, and when the prophet spoke of " the house, this one," those who heard it could only have understood it as referring primarily to the Temple they were then building. But then there are two important questions which naturally suggest themselves to every intelligent student. First, What is the glory promised in Haggai's prophecy? Second, Where was the glory ? As to the first point a great deal of learned trash has been written, the under- lying fallacy of which is the assumption that it is an outward or material glory that the prophet is here
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speaking about, overlooking the fact that the expression Khebod Jehovah ("the glory of Jehovah"), when used in connection with Beth Jehovah ("the House of Jehovah"), has a technical meaning, and signifies the glory of the manifestation, or personal presence of Jehovah, which filled the Temple, which was His dwelling-place.
But then comes the second question. Where was the glory ? When the Tabernacle was finished we read of its consecration. " A cloud covered the tent of meeting, and the glory of Jehovah filled the Tabernacle." This, by the way, shows us what true consecration means. Any thing or place or person of which God takes pos- session becomes consecrated and holy. The Tabernacle was planned and made under Divine superintendence. When all was finished Moses put it together, but it was not yet holy to the Lord until the symbolical cloud of His presence came and covered it and His glory filled it Thus it became consecrated and holy and no Israelite dared enter it, and even Israel's high priest only once a year, and that on the ground of shed blood. But this is a digression. When Solomon's Temple was finished we again read of its consecration, the symbolical cloud and the glory of Jehovah filled the house, so that the priests could not stand to minister because of the cloud. But when the second Temple was built we never read of any such occurrence in connection with it, and as a matter of fact it never was after this manner formally taken possession of by God, nor was it in this sense ever consecrated. Where was the glory? According to Jewish historians themselves there were five things present in the first Temple which were lacking in the second Temple. I. The ark and its contents. II. The holy fire which descended from heaven to consume the sacrifices in token of God's acceptance. III. The Urim
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and Thummim. IV. The spirit of prophecy. 1 V. The Shekhina glory. As a matter of fact we know from Jewish as well as from heathen writers that the Holy of Holies in the second Temple, through the nearly five centuries of its existence, was a vacuum an empty place, waiting for God to come and take manifest pos- session of it. Where, we ask again, was the glory? Nearly five centuries elapsed, and in the interval Herod, to gain favour with the Jews, was, at the cost of great labour and expense, completing considerable alterations and enlargement of the Temple ; but Josephus, who is our authority on this subject, and who gives us the full account of the alterations carried out by Herod, is careful to emphasise that it was still the same house, and that in the history of the Jews hitherto there have been only two Temples the one built by Solomon and destroyed by the Babylonians, and the other built by Zerubbabel and afterwards enlarged and beautified by Herod. 2 One day to "this house" a poor young woman
1 The canon of the Old Testament being closed with Malachi, who prophesied soon after the completion of the second Temple, the subsequent silent centuries of its existence may well, from their standpoint, be characterised by the absence of " the spirit of prophecy."
8 This is what Josephus says, speaking of the destruction of the second Temple : " Now, although any one would justly lament the destruction of such a work as this was, since it was the most admirable of all the works that we have seen or heard of, both for its curious structure and its magnitude, and also for the vast wealth bestowed upon it, as well as for the glorious reputation it had for its holiness, yet might such a one comfort himself with this thought, that it was fate that decreed it so to be, which is inevitable, both as to living creatures and as to works and places also. However, one cannot but wonder at the accuracy of this period thereto relating ; for the same month and day were now observed, as I said before, wherein the holy house was burnt formerly by the Babylonians. Now the number of years that passed from its first foundation, which was laid by King Solomon,
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of the House of David brought her first-born child to be presented to the Lord " and to offer a sacrifice accord- ing to that which is said in the Word of the Lord, a pair of turtle-doves or two young pigeons." At the very same time an aged man, to whom it was revealed by the Holy Ghost that he should not see death before he had seen the Lord's Christ, was led by the Spirit into the Temple, and seeing the Child Jesus, he took Him up in his arms and blessed God and said : " Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace according to Thy word, for mine eyes have seen Thy salvation, which Thou hast prepared before the face of all people, a light to lighten the Gentiles and the glory of His people Israel" The central promise in Haggai's prophecy in relation to " this house " had to wait long for its fulfil- ment, but here at last was the greater glory ; here was the real Presence. Later, after His entry on the Mes- sianic office, when Christ, with a scourge of cords, drove before Him out of the Temple the money-changers and sellers of doves saying, "Make not my Father's house a house of merchandise " that was its consecration.