Chaggai HaNavi
570 BCE–500 BCE · Biblical · Jerusalem
Chaggai (Haggai) is the first of the three prophets of the Return from Babylon. All of his short book falls in a few months of one year, the second year of King Darius, 520 BCE (Haggai 1:1, 2:10, 2:20). By then the exiles had been home for years, but the Temple still lay in ruins while the people built their own houses. Chaggai's message to the governor Zerubavel and the High Priest Yehoshua was blunt: rebuild the House of God. They listened, and work began (Haggai 1:12-14; Ezra 5:1-2). To those who remembered the First Temple and found the new one 'like nothing' (Haggai 2:3), he promised future glory, and he ended with a promise to make Zerubavel God's 'signet ring' (Haggai 2:23). The Temple was completed in 515 BCE, 'urged on by the prophesying of Haggai and Zechariah' (Ezra 6:14-15). The Talmud counts Chaggai, Zechariah and Malachi as the last prophets, after whom prophecy departed from Israel (Yoma 9b).
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JerusalemירושליםJudea
What they did here
In the second year of Darius (520 BCE) Chaggai prophesied to the Jews in Judah and Jerusalem, urging the rebuilding of the Temple (Haggai 1:1; Ezra 5:1-2). The building was finished in Darius's sixth year (Ezra 6:14-15).
Jerusalem in this era
In the Hebrew Bible, David takes Jerusalem from the Jebusites and makes it his capital, Solomon builds the First Temple there, and Nehemiah rebuilds its walls after the return from Babylon; in 164 BCE Judah Maccabee rededicated the Temple, the origin of Hanukkah. Archaeologists debate how large the city was in the 10th century BCE; it is well attested as the capital of Judah by the 8th century BCE, and Babylon destroyed it in 586 BCE.
About Jerusalem
Jerusalem, in the Judean hills, is a sacred city for Jews, Christians and Muslims. In the Hebrew Bible it is King David's capital and the site of Solomon's Temple; the First Temple was destroyed by Babylon in 586 BCE and the Second Temple, rebuilt from about 516 BCE, by Rome in 70 CE. Christians revere it as the place of Jesus's crucifixion and, in their faith, his resurrection; in Islamic tradition it is the destination of the Prophet Muhammad's Night Journey and the first direction of prayer, marked by the Dome of the Rock (691-92) and al-Aqsa Mosque. It was ruled in turn by Rome and Byzantium, by Muslim dynasties from 638, by Crusaders (1099-1187), Ayyubids, Mamluks and Ottomans (1517-1917), and by Britain. Divided between Israel and Jordan from 1948 to 1967, it has since been under Israeli control. Israel regards the city as its capital; Palestinians claim East Jerusalem as the capital of a future state; most countries do not recognize sovereignty over the whole city.
In Jerusalem at the same time
Yehoshua the Kohen Gadol, Zerubavel, Governor of Judah, Zecharyah HaNavi
In the same place & time
Sages whose lives overlapped with Chaggai HaNavi’s in the same cities, drawn from their recorded journeys.
In the same tradition
Yehoshua the Kohen Gadol, Zerubavel, Governor of Judah, Zecharyah HaNavi
The world in their lifetime
Thinkers and teachers of other traditions whose lives overlapped with Chaggai HaNavi’s — a glimpse of the wider world they lived in. Drawn purely from recorded birth and death years.
Works
No works attributed in the corpus yet.