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Prophets play a pivotal role in proclaiming God’s word to the Hebrew people. Throughout the Old Testament prophets are blessed with the “word of the lord”; it is their duty to tell (Hebrew) people of this word and to lead them on their path to follow it. In the Haggai, the prophet (Haggai) has two distinct messages to relay to the people: The temple needs to be rebuilt, and that the people should be thankful for all they have received. The final editor of the Haggai is thought to have combined these to lessons into one for the people (Keck, 716). In order for one to fully understand literature, especially biblical texts, one needs to understand the historical context of the literature in question. In the first sentence of the Haggai it is stated, “In the second year of King Darius, in the sixth month, on the first day of the month, the word of the lord came by the prophet Haggai…” Darius was king of the Persian Empire from 522 to 486 BCE. This date can be pinpointed as august 29, 520 BCE (Coogan 1354). There are three large events which Keck discusses in his commentary as being of large importance in the time of Haggai. The first event is the relatively unproductive economy present in Judah, which had yet t