Who are these People?
Eight weeks later. The meaning of vv 12-13 is unclear. Some scholars suggest reading them against the background of Lev 10: 10-20 on the question of whether holiness can be transmitted by accidental contact. What Haggai seems to be saying is, ‘Because you can become unclean by association, don’t imagine you can become holy by accident or dint of circumstance.’
In other words, if you are doing all the wrong things you can’t put everything right simply by a quick trip to the Temple, a few words of prayer or the correct ritual. In line with the good prophetic tradition genuine worship goes hand in hand with right living. This leaves us with two questions. Who were ‘this people’ and what were they doing wrong (v14)? There are several possibilities, and would his hearers be thinking of the same people as those Haggai had in mind?
If this was a sermon Haggai preached on the day that rebuilding started (as has been suggested based on the reference [v18] to ‘the foundation’), ‘this people’ might be thought to relate to the faithful, but there are other possibilities. People returing to the old country with a different lifestyle; people who had stayed put and resented the new arrivals; Samaritans perhaps whose attitude to the re-building of the Temple seems to have been less than enthusiastic and who saw it as an occasion to stir up unrest, or newcomers taking advantage of the population movements to begin again in a land which seemed to offer better prospects than the one they were leaving. Population movements then were not unlike what they are today. Nor were the tensions that went with them.
As to what they were doing wrong the possibilities are endless, but most such tensions have to do with religion (rituals, ethics and traditions), culture, a general way of life, changing circumstances, location, climate, previous experience and personality.
From here it is not difficult to find ourselves somewhere in that list today. What may be more difficult is to work to what Haggai suggests we do about it.