Abstract
The book is a detailed commentary of the book of Haggai. After an introductory part, which presents Haggai's textual history, structure and form, redactional history, and historical context, the interpretation of individual sections proceeds in five steps: structure and form, the author's translation, text-critical notes, interpretation, and summarizing "meaning." The text-critical notes are relatively detailed, and the commentary is based on a critical text, deviating in several places from MT.
Following H. W.
Wolff, J. Wöhrle, M.
Leuenberger, and some others, the suggested redactional model is mainly based on the distinction between the oracles themselves and a redactional framework which speaks of the prophet in the third person. The material from the primitive collection may be found in 1:2,4-11; 2:3,4*,5aβb,6-9,11-16,18-19.21b-23; the basic redactional processing by the author of the narrative framework appears in 1:1,3,12-15; 2:1-2,10,20-21a (and the mention of Joshua in v. 4; with some verses, another redactional-critical decision seems possible as well).
Besides the edition of the pre-existent text, the author of the redactional framework might also have rearranged the order of the oracles. Later on, the text has been enlarged by several glosses. (Hag 2:5aαMT; the expression m'ṭ hj' in 2:6MT; LXX contains secondary glosses in Hag 2:9,14; the whole verse 2:17, appearing in all important witnesses, is most likely a gloss as well).
Since the author of the redactional framework probably worked at a time when Zerubbabel was still alive, the basic form of the book as we know it was created relatively early after Haggai's activity. With the shifts in dating of many biblical texts and whole literary traditions, the defended traditional dating of Haggai leads to a new appreciation of its position in the history of biblical literature.
Haggai is a relatively old book that offers us a small yet interesting window to several traditional aspects of the Judean religion, relatively uninfluenced by some of the important theological developments of the "exilic" and Persian periods.