Haggai 2:7

_ _ shake — not convert; but cause that agitation which is to precede Messiah’s coming as the healer of the nations’ agitations. The previous shaking shall cause the yearning “desire” for the Prince of peace. Moore and others translate “the beauty,” or “the desirable things (the precious gifts) of all nations shall come” (Isaiah 60:5, Isaiah 60:11; Isaiah 61:6). He brings these objections to applying “the desire of all nations” to Messiah:

_ _ (1) The Hebrew means the quality, not the thing desired, namely, its desirableness or beauty, But the abstract is often put for the concrete. So “a man of desires,” that is, one desired or desirable (Daniel 9:23; Daniel 10:11, Margin; Daniel 10:3, Margin).

_ _ (2) Messiah was not desired by all nations, but “a root out of a dry ground,” having “no beauty that we should desire Him” (Isaiah 53:2). But what is implied is not that the nations definitely desired Him, but that He was the only one to satisfy the yearning desires which all felt unconsciously for a Savior, shown in their painful rites and bloody sacrifices. Moreover, while the Jews as a nation desired Him not (to which people Isaiah 53:2 refers), the Gentiles, who are plainly pointed out by “all nations,” accepted Him; and so to them He was peculiarly desirable.

_ _ (3) The verb, “shall come,” is plural, which requires the noun to be understood in the plural, whereas if Messiah be intended, the noun is singular. But when two nouns stand together, of which one is governed by the other, the verb agrees sometimes in number with the latter, though it really has the former as its nominative, that is, the Hebrew “come” is made in number to agree with “nations,” though really agreeing with “the desire.” Besides, Messiah may be described as realizing in Himself at His coming “the desires (the noun expressing collectively the plural) of all nations”; whence the verb is plural. So in Song of Songs 5:16, “He is altogether lovely,” in the Hebrew the same word as here, “all desires,” that is, altogether desirable, or the object of desires.

_ _ (4) Haggai 2:8, “The silver is mine,” etc.; accords with the translation, “the choice things of all nations” shall be brought in. But Haggai 2:8 harmonizes quite as well with English Version of Haggai 2:7, as the note on eighth verse will show; see on Haggai 2:8.

_ _ (5) the Septuagint and Syriac versions agree with Moore’s translation. But Vulgate confirms English Version. So also early Jewish Rabbis before Jerome’s time. Plato [Alcibiades, 2] shows the yearning of the Gentiles after a spiritual deliverer: “It is therefore necessary,” says Alcibiades on the subject of acceptable worship, “to wait until One teach us how we ought to behave towards the gods and men.” Alcibiades replies, “When shall that time arrive, and who shall that Teacher be? For most glad would I be to see such a man.” The “good tidings of great joy” were “to all people” (Luke 2:10).

_ _ The Jews, and those in the adjoining nations instructed by them, looked for Shiloh to come unto whom the gathering of the people was to be, from Jacob’s prophecy (Genesis 49:10). The early patriarchs, Job (Job 19:25-27; Job 33:23-26) and Abraham (John 8:56), desired Him.

_ _ fill this house with glory — (Haggai 2:9). As the first temple was filled with the cloud of glory, the symbol of God (1 Kings 8:11; 2 Chronicles 5:14), so this second temple was filled with the “glory” of God (John 1:14) veiled in the flesh (as it were in the cloud) at Christ’s first coming, when He entered it and performed miracles there (Matthew 21:12-14); but that “glory” is to be revealed at His second coming, as this prophecy in its ulterior reference foretells (Malachi 3:1). The Jews before the destruction of Jerusalem all expected Messiah would appear in the second temple. Since that time they invent various forced and false interpretations of such plain Messianic prophecies.