The first oracle in Zeph. 3 is incomplete; the original conclusion, a sentence of doom upon Judah, the only imaginable sequel to vss. 1-7, is supplanted by the inconsequent pouring out of God's fury on the nations, whereupon the heathen are converted, the dispersion returns, and, purified and chastened the remnant of Judah enjoys a modest golden age (iii. 8-13). The book closes in a more jubilant salutation of the good time coming (iii. 14-20).
Thus in Zephaniah, as in so many other prophetic books, all turns out well in the end; but as in most of the others, the happy endings are an afterthought of later generations for whom the judgment was in the past but the golden age had not yet come.
HAGGAI.--Haggai dates his first revelation to the very day of the month--a new fashion which he and his contemporary Zechariah have--the first day of the sixth month (of the Jewish calendar) in the second year of Darius (Hystaspis), that is, 520 B.C. He has the word of the Lord for Zerubbabel, the governor of Judah, and Joshua, the chief priest, that it is high time to rebuild the temple; the lean years they have been having are due to God's displeasure that he is thus neglected. The civil and religious heads of the community stir up the people and the work begins; again the exact date is given.
Three other oracles follow, all in the same year. The first of these (ii. 1-9) encourages Zerubbabel and the people to more zeal by the prediction that the great crisis of history is at hand: yet a little while and the Lord will shake the heavens and the earth; he will shake all the nations, and the treasures of all the nations shall flow to his temple (cf. Isa. lx. 9 ff.), and God will fill the house with his glory. The third (ii. 20-23), to Zerubbabel, foretells the overthrow and destruction of the kingdoms of the nations; and, in prudently veiled phrase--since such great expectations might have ill consequences if they reached Persian ears--the restoration of Zerubbabel to the throne of his fathers, fulfilling the messianic predictions of earlier prophets. The intervening oracle (ii. 10-19) is another spur to zeal in rebuilding the temple.
The immediate restoration of Jewish nationality which Haggai and Zechariah so confidently foretold was not merely the expression of a general faith or the result of studies in their predecessors. For in reality God was shaking the nations; in particular the Persian empire, newly made master of the world, was shaken to its foundations by the usurpation of the pretended Smerdis, the death of Cambyses, the conspiracy of the nobles against Smerdis, and the elevation of Darius to the throne. In the years when the Jewish prophets were making their predictions, Darius was confronted by formidable rebellions in every quarter of the empire except the west. It might well appear to Haggai that the armies of the nations were falling every one by the sword of his fellow.