THE captivity in Babylon gave a very remarkable

turn to the affairs of the Jewish church both in history and prophecy.

It is made a signal epocha in our Saviour’s genealogy,

Matt. i. 17.

Nine of the twelve minor prophets, whose oracles we have been hitherto

consulting, lived and preached before that captivity, and most of them

had an eye to it in their prophecies, foretelling it as the just

punishment of Jerusalem’s wickedness. But the last three (in whom the

Spirit of prophecy took its period, until it revived in Christ’s

forerunner) lived and preached after the return out of captivity, not

immediately upon it, but some time after. Haggai and Zechariah appeared

much about the same time, eighteen years after the return, when the

building of the temple was both retarded by its enemies and neglected

by its friends. Then the prophets, Haggai the prophet and Zechariah

the name of the God of Israel, even unto them (so we read

Ezra v. 1),

to reprove them for their remissness, and to encourage them to revive

that good work when it had stood still for some time, and to go on with

it vigorously, notwithstanding the opposition they met with in it.

Haggai began two months before Zechariah, who was raised up to second

him, that out of the mouth of two witnesses the word might be

established. But Zechariah continued longer at the work; for all

Haggai’s prophecies that are recorded were delivered within four

months, in the second year of Darius, between the beginning of the

sixth month and the end of the ninth. But we have Zechariah’s

prophecies dated above two years after,

Zech. vii. 1.

Some have the honour to lead, others to last, in the work of God. The

Jews ascribe to these two prophets the honour of being members of the

great synagogue (as they call it), which was formed after the return

out of captivity; we think it more certain, and it was their honour,

and a much greater honour, that they prophesied of Christ. Haggai

spoke of him as the glory of the latter house, and Zechariah as

the man, the branch. In them the light of that morning star

shone more brightly than in the foregoing prophecies, as they lived

nearer the time of the rising of the Sun of righteousness, and now

began to see his day approaching. The LXX. makes Haggai and Zechariah

to be the penmen of

Ps. cxxxviii.

and of

Ps. cxlvi.,

cxlvii., and cxlviii.

Chapter 1