THE different value placed upon ceremonial by Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi, as compared with Amos, Isaiah, and Jeremiah, is largely explicable by the events that had occurred in the interval between them, and the lessons which those events enforced. The first two of the post-exilic prophets named strove earnestly to promote the re-construction of the Temple, rebuking those who were too busy with the adornment of their own dwellings to build the house of God, rallying from despondency those who contrasted with the glories of the first Temple the meanness of the second, and encouraging Zerubbabel, who was directing the work, by assuring him of Divine assistance. Similarly Malachi, who prophesied after the Temple was completed, sought to elevate the character of its services, and denounced the practice of presenting to Jehovah blemished offerings which none would give to the Persian governor. And the greater respect demanded for the ceremonies of religion inevitably led to increased consideration being shown for its ministers, so that the same prophet represents the withholding of the tithes due to the priests to be one of the counts in Jehovah's indictment of His people, and implies that such robbery was the cause of the blight upon their fields which prompt restitution would remove. In thus insisting upon the duty of restoring the Temple, of performing with reverence the worship conducted in it, and of supporting cheerfully its priesthood, there is no indication that these prophets magnified ritual at the expense of morality. They unsparingly condemned theft and perjury; they exhorted to truth, justice, and mercy; one of zechariah's numerous visions represented symbolically the removal of wickedness from the land; and the same prophet uttered an explicit warning against religious insincerity and self-deception. The importance attached by them to the careful performance of external religious duties was not the consequence of a relapse into primitive ideas of what was acceptable to God, but was owing in part to practical considerations, and in part to the exalted conception which had come to be entertained of Jehovah's majesty and the veneration due to Him.
—From "Old Testament History,"
