Attributed commentary excerpt
Keil & Delitzsch on Haggai 2:6
A historical reference excerpt for this verse. Read it alongside the biblical text and other available sources.
Commentary on the Old Testament
C. F. Keil & F. Delitzsch · 19th-century historical commentary
Source: BibleWord.ai's local reference edition of this named work.
"For thus saith Jehovah of hosts, Once more, in a short time it comes to pass, I shake heaven and earth, and the sea, and the dry. Hag 2:7. And I shake all nations, and the costly of all nations will come, and I shall fill this house with glory, saith Jehovah of hosts. Hag 2:8. Mine is the silver, and mine the gold, is the saying of Jehovah of hosts. Hag 2:9. The last glory of this house will be greater than the first, saith Jehovah of hosts; and in this place shall I give peace, is the saying of Jehovah of hosts." Different explanations have been given of the definition of the time עוד אחת מעט היא. Luther, Calvin, and others, down to Ewald and Hengstenberg, follow the Chaldee and Vulgate, and either take achath in the sense of the indefinite article or as a numeral, "adhuc unum modicum est," or "it is yet a little thither." But if achath belonged to מעט as a numeral adjective, either in the one sense or the other, according to the arrangement adopted without exception in Hebrew (for 'echâd is not an adjective in Dan 8:13), it could not stand before מעט, but must be placed after it. The difference of gender also precludes this combination, inasmuch as מעט is not construed as a feminine in a single passage. We must therefore take מעט היא as forming an independent clause of itself, i.e., as a more precise definition of עוד אחת. But 'achath does not mean one = one time, or a short space of time (Burk, Hitzig, Hofmann); nor does it acquire this meaning from the clause מעט היא; nor can it be sustained by arbitrarily supplying עת. 'Achath is used as a neuter in the sense of "once," as in Exo 30:10; Kg2 6:10; Job 40:5 (cf. Ewald, 269, b). מעט היא , a little, i.e., a short time is it, equivalent to "soon," in a short time will it occur (cf. Hos 8:10; Psa 37:10). The lxx have rendered it correctly ἔτι ἅπαξ, only they have left out מעט היא. The words, "once more and indeed in a short time I shake," etc., have not the meaning which Koehl. attaches to the correct rendering, viz., "Once, and only once, will Jehovah henceforth shake heaven and earth," in which the עוד standing at the head is both moved from its place, and taken, not in the sense of repetition or of continuance from the present to the future, but simply in the sense of an allusion to the future; in other words, it is completely deprived of its true meaning. For עוד never loses its primary sense of repetition or return any more than the German noch (still or yet), so as to denote an occurrence in the future without any allusion whatever to an event that has already happened or is in existence still, not even in Sa2 19:36 and Ch2 17:6, with which Koehler endeavours to support his views, without observing that in these passages עוד is used in a very different sense, signifying in 2 Sam. praeterea, and in 2 Chronicles "moreover." In the verse before us it is used with reference to the previous shaking of the world at the descent of Jehovah upon Sinai to establish the covenant with Israel, to which the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews has quite correctly taken it as referring ( Heb 12:26). On the other hand, the objection offered by Koehler, that that shaking did not extend beyond Sinai and the Sinaitic region, either according to the historical account in Exo 19:16-18, or the poetical descriptions in Jdg 5:4-5, and Psa 68:8-9, is incorrect. For not only in the two poetical descriptions referred to, but also in Hab 3:6, the manifestation of God upon Sinai is represented as a tr…
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