Extreme Makeover, Jerusalem Edition
- God offers some words of encouragement to the priests and the people, who have been looking at the reconstruction and not seeing anything all that great.
- He tells them that the restored temple will even more impressive than the last. All the silver and gold on earth belong to God, hint hint.
- God tells Haggai to ask the priests a few obvious questions about ritual purity. Can ritually clean things make other things clean if they touch them? Nope.
- Can unclean things defile other things? Yes.
- This leads to another discussion of why bad things are happening and how God promises that things will get a lot better as they keep building on the temple’s foundation.
- God’s so happy about the rebuilding of the Temple that he promises Zerubbabel, the governor of Judah, that he’ll destroy all the enemies of Judah and make Zerubbabel his special guy.