Almost every prophet speaking up throughout the history of Judah and Israel had something to say against the priestly corruption and how religious bureaucracy replaced true faith and angered God. One by one the prophets warned that if the people don’t reform the way the temple worship functioned - both temple and palace will cease to exist. Which is exactly what happened.
So by the time the remnants of Judah make their way back to Jerusalem with the permission of the Persian kings - not everybody was in favor of rebuilding the temple and going back to the same old pattern of pious power. There were other political factors that were part of this debate, as other ethnic groups wanted to be part of the new temple - but the purist priestly leadership was not so keen on including them in what they considered to be the Judean-only cause.
Haggai the prophet is clearly on the side of those who think that temple is the only way to ensure the success of the return to Judah and in the two chapters that he left us he makes this his primary goal. He speaks to the people and persuades them that a new temple will be greater than the old ones and will ultimately gain them power, peace and control:
גָּד֣וֹל יִֽהְיֶ֡ה כְּבוֹד֩ הַבַּ֨יִת הַזֶּ֤ה הָאַֽחֲרוֹן֙ מִן־הָ֣רִאשׁ֔וֹן אָמַ֖ר יְהֹוָ֣ה צְבָא֑וֹת וּבַמָּק֤וֹם הַזֶּה֙ אֶתֵּ֣ן שָׁל֔וֹם נְאֻ֖ם יְהֹוָ֥ה צְבָאֽוֹת׃
The glory of this latter House shall be greater than that of the former one, said YHWH of Hosts; and in this place I will grant peace—declares YHWH of Hosts.
Haggai 2:9
But what about the opposition? Where is their voice and why did they end up losing?
Scholars point at fragments that hint at the ultimately unpopular view, including one of the last verses of the Isaiah in the last chapter of his prophecy:
“Thus said YHWH: The heaven is My throne And the earth is My footstool: What house could you build for Me? What place could serve as My resting place?”
Isaiah was not alone in his reservations. Some suggest that a vast part of the Torah, identified with the Priestly authors, focus on the Mishkan - the taberlance that was a tent - a mobile home for the holy, in so much detail as a way to rebuke the desire for a permanent temple made of marble and wood.
Dr. Hacham Isaac S. D. Sassoon suggests in this bold and fascinating essay that what Haggai is engaged with is an age-old ideological debate that contains “ serious theological reservations about the acceptability of a fixed address on earth to house their deity.”
Like most modern scholarship, Sassoon identifies the authorship of the P materials in the Torah in its final form to the early post-Exilic period. That’s exactly the time of Haggai.
As he writes:
“This is the era in which the Judean returnees needed to decide on the make-up of the newly reconstituted Judea, including the important question of whether to rebuild the Temple or not…
The Temple advocates ultimately won out, but this did not happen without a protracted dispute. ..eighteen years elapsed from Cyrus’ proclamation in 538 B.C.E. allowing Judeans to return to their native land and set up their community from scratch until Darius’s second year, when the building of the Temple finally commenced. In short, if it is clear that a Temple must be rebuilt, why did it take 18 years for its reconstruction to begin?
The early restoration prophets, Haggai and (First) Zechariah, who were eye-witnesses to the events.. intimate that there had been no enthusiasm to build prior to their own campaign of goading and cajoling...The entire two chapters of Haggai, all set in the second year of Darius, are one sustained push for the building of the Temple – a project which had not yet been embarked upon…
Temple advocates such as Haggai and Zechariah encouraged leaders such as Zerubbabel and the high priest, Joshua, informing them that it was the will of YHWH to speedily build the Temple and that the Judeans’ luck would change for the better once this was done.”
It took just three months from Haggai’s speech until the temple went up, even if in modest form. His ideological position clearly won and the second temple would survive, with revisions and some setbacks, for five hundred years, until the Romans would burn it.
There are those who want to see the third one go up in its place. But if we closely read the verse that Haggai left us - there’s a hint that perhaps that is not meant to be. “The glory of this latter House shall be greater than that of the former one” Haggai said -- but the Hebrew word ‘latter’ could also be read as ‘the last’.
Like Isaiah and so many others who preferred to place divine presence in the hearts of humans and on every corner of the world where people seek the sacred -- this debate, quite old, seems to continue. Hidden in Haggai’s poetic propaganda is a debate that we are urged to pay attention to - not just because of its historical significance but because it explains some of what’s happening in Israel, and in the Jewish world - right now.
Haggai bows out, and next week we will meet his colleague and contemporary Zechariah. The reconstruction project with all its problems and promises - continues. With or without a temple - all the people wanted and still want - is stability, security, and what Haggai had promised them - ‘a place of peace.’
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The first rule of real estate is location, location, location. While I believe in an ideal world it would be possible to simply rebuild the temple on its historical site, this is not a practical idea.
Rather there is an ampitheater on Mount Scopus that could be repurposed to build a new (third) temple or great synagogue.