Study Desk

There is no remedy for your injury;your wound is severe.All who hear the news about youwill clap their hands because of you,for who has not experiencedyour constant cruelty?

Since you have plundered many nations,all the peoples who remain will plunder you—because of human bloodshedand violence against lands, cities,and all who live in them.

This is what they get for their pride,because they have taunted and acted arrogantlyagainst the people of the Lord of Armies.

“You expected much, but then it amounted to little. When you brought the harvest to your house, I ruined it. Why?” This is the declaration of the Lord of Armies. “Because my house still lies in ruins, while each of you is busy with his own house.

Then Zerubbabel son of Shealtiel, the high priest Joshua son of Jehozadak, and the entire remnant of the people obeyed the Lord their God and the words of the prophet Haggai, because the Lord their God had sent him. So the people feared the Lord.

He said to him, “Run and tell this young man: Jerusalem will be inhabited without walls because of the number of people and livestock in it.”

The Lord of Armies says this: “Old men and women will again sit along the streets of Jerusalem, each with a staff in hand because of advanced age.

As for you,because of the blood of your covenant,I will release your prisonersfrom the waterless cistern.

For the idols speak falsehood,and the diviners see illusions;they relate empty dreamsand offer empty comfort.Therefore the people wander like sheep;they suffer affliction because there is no shepherd.

they will be like warriors in battle trampling down the mud of the streets. They will fight because the Lord is with them, and they will put horsemen to shame.

Those who buy them slaughter them but are not punished. Those who sell them say: Blessed be the Lord because I have become rich! Even their own shepherds have no compassion for them.

If a man still prophesies, his father and his mother who bore him will say to him: You cannot remain alive because you have spoken a lie in the name of the Lord. When he prophesies, his father and his mother who bore him will pierce him through.

“My name will be great among the nations, from the rising of the sun to its setting. Incense and pure offerings will be presented in my name in every place because my name will be great among the nations,” says the Lord of Armies.

If you don’t listen, and if you don’t take it to heart to honor my name,” says the Lord of Armies, “I will send a curse among you, and I will curse your blessings. In fact, I have already begun to curse them because you are not taking it to heart.

For the lips of a priest should guard knowledge, and people should desire instruction from his mouth, because he is the messenger of the Lord of Armies.

“So I in turn have made you despised and humiliated before all the people because you are not keeping my ways but are showing partiality in your instruction.”

This is another thing you do. You are covering the Lord’s altar with tears, with weeping and groaning, because he no longer respects your offerings or receives them gladly from your hands.

And you ask, “Why?” Because even though the Lord has been a witness between you and the wife of your youth, you have acted treacherously against her. She was your marriage partner and your wife by covenant.

“Because I, the Lord, have not changed, you descendants of Jacob have not been destroyed.

But after he had considered these things, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, “Joseph, son of David, don’t be afraid to take Mary as your wife, because what has been conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.