Haggai 2:9 isn’t predicting a future physical temple to be built at some point in Jerusalem in the end times. The words of the Lord in that verse are about what Christ would accomplish in himself and with his church. The word of the Lord told Haggai’s contemporaries that something greater than their temple was coming. And Jesus of Nazareth told his generation, “Something greater than the temple is here.”

Weighing in at only two chapters, the book of Haggai is underappreciated among the prophetic books. But this book contains expectations about the future that have to do with Christ and his church.
A Rebuilt Temple
In approximately 520 BC, Haggai and Zechariah ministered to reinvigorate the complacent Israelites. The Israelites had attended to their paneled houses while leaving the temple of God in ruins. The reason for the ruined temple was the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem in 586 BC. Now, more than a generation later, the temple should have been fully rebuilt by those who returned from exile. Yet decades passed without the temple being completed.
Haggai told them the word of the Lord: “Go up to the hills and bring wood and build the house, that I may take pleasure in it and that I may be glorified” (Hag. 1:8).
The rebuilt temple, however, was less impressive than the former temple under Solomon. The Solomonic temple had been a work of grandeur and beauty. The rebuilt temple was not like this.
The word of the Lord addressed the people, “Who is left among you who saw this house in its former glory? How do you see it now? Is it not as nothing in your eyes?” (Hag. 2:3).
The “former glory” referred to the first temple, the one Solomon built. The rebuilt temple in the days of Haggai was inferior to it. Their present temple was not as glorious as in the days of David’s son.
Latter Glory
But the present state of things wouldn’t last forever. God said, “I will fill this house with glory” (Hag. 2:7). A temple being filled with God’s glory is reminiscent of earlier texts, as when the glory of God filled the tabernacle (Exod. 40:34) and also Solomon’s temple (1 Kgs. 8:10–11). Interestingly, in the days of Haggai there was no report that the glory of God filled the rebuilt temple. God simply says, “I will fill this house with glory” (Hag. 2:7). But when?
According to Haggai 2:9, “The latter glory of this house shall be greater than the former, says the LORD of hosts.” Now ponder that promise. The Lord is speaking of future glory, future temple glory. And this future glory would be greater than not just their present disappointing temple but greater than the former glorious temple in Solomon’s day.
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As we look at these Old and New Testament accounts, we see that Jesus’s ministry was greater than that of Elijah and Elisha. Neither Elijah nor Elisha claimed to be the source of such power and life. They were prophets whom the Lord used in miraculous ways. What makes Jesus’s ministry different is a claim like John 11:25: “I am the resurrection and the life.” Never spoke a man like this before.

There are three stories in the Old Testament in which people rise bodily from the dead. To be clear, these bodies are not raised to a glorified and immortal state, but these individuals nevertheless return to earthly life.
These three stories occur in the ministries of Elijah and Elisha. The relevant passages are 1 Kings 17, 2 Kings 4, and 2 Kings 13. Let’s think about each one.
First, in 1 Kings 17, Elijah raised a widow’s son. Elijah “stretched himself upon the child three times and cried to the LORD, ‘O LORD my God, let this child’s life come into him again’” (1 Kings 17:21). The child’s life returned (17:22). Then Elijah brought the child down to the mother and delivered him to her (17:23).
Second, in 2 Kings 4, Elisha raised the son of a Shunammite woman. Elisha, like Elijah, stretched himself upon the child (2 Kings 4:34). The child’s life returned (4:34–35).
Third, in 2 Kings 13, Elisha’s bones resulted in the resurrection of a body. Elisha himself had died, but when a dead body landed on the area where Elisha had been buried, the thrown body “revived and stood on his feet” (2 Kings 13:21).
These three stories (in 1 Kings 17, 2 Kings 4, and 2 Kings 13) are the only Old Testament accounts of the dead coming back to life. One resurrection is associated with Elijah and two with Elisha.
How many resurrection accounts do the Gospels associate with Jesus before the cross? Not one, not two, but three.
First, in Mark 5, Jesus raised a young girl. He went to her home, took her by the hand, and said, “Little girl, I say to you, arise,” and the girl sat up (Mark 5:41).
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Jesus is among the beasts and the Ancient Serpent himself. But the wilderness will not dominate the Son of David. Jesus is the Last Adam, and he enters the wilderness with the power to subdue and renew. In Isaiah 43, the Lord says, “Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert. The wild beasts will honor me” (Isa. 43:19–20).

When Mark’s Gospel opens, Mark highlights the ministry of John the Baptist (1:2–8). But then Mark zeros in on the baptism (1:9–11) and temptation of Jesus (1:12–13), since those things preceded Jesus’s public ministry (1:14–15).
The language of Jesus’s temptations fascinates me because Mark mentions the presence of wild animals, and Mark is the only Gospel writer who does this.
12The Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. 13And he was in the wilderness forty days, being tempted by Satan. And he was with the wild animals, and the angels were ministering to him.
Why would the presence of “wild animals” be worth mentioning? First of all, the location of the wilderness explains the presence of wild animals. The wilderness was understood as a place for wild animals, and the opening verses of Mark’s Gospel introduced the “wilderness” idea (1:3, quoting from Isa. 40). John the Baptist was baptizing “in the wilderness” (1:4), and now in 1:12 we read that the Spirit drove Jesus out into “the wilderness.”
Second, the Old Testament prophets sometimes spoke of wild animals when their oracles portrayed a desolate or cursed setting. In Isaiah 13, the warning for Babylon’s headquarters was that “Wild animals will lie down there, and their houses will be full of howling creatures” (Isa. 13:21).
Third, these Old Testament prophets anticipated a day when the wilderness setting—marked by wild animals—would be transformed by blessing and flourishing.
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Because Jesus lives, death doesn’t stand a chance. The Son of Man has all authority in heaven and on earth, and the tombs answer to him. When the Lord returns, death shall be no more. We have this hope because we are united to Christ by faith. In Christ we will rise to experience what the tree of life held out for us: glorified bodily life.

In the beginning there was life—and so shall the end be. The power of God and his faithfulness to every promise ensure the triumph of life over death. This is the Christian hope of resurrection, or the raising and glorifying of our bodies.
The Bible has much to teach us about this glorious hope. In the following sections, we will meditate on bodily resurrection in several ways. We will see how the Old Testament authors taught God’s death-defeating power. We will notice how the defeat of death will establish what God designed for his image-bearers: immortal physical life. And we will rejoice in the gospel news that Jesus has been raised from the dead, inaugurating bodily life without end—a life that will belong to all who are united to him.
Martha’s Words About Resurrection
Near the end of Jesus’s public ministry, his friend Lazarus died (John 11:14). Even though Jesus learned earlier that Lazarus was ill, he did not make a trip to see him. He waited, but not because of callousness or busyness or misunderstanding. As we can infer from John 11:3–4, Jesus planned to show the glory of God in what happened next. For that reason, Lazarus would spend four days in the tomb when Jesus finally showed (John 11:17).
Martha met with Jesus and said, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died” (John 11:21). Jesus’s reputation as a miracle-worker preceded wherever he traveled those days. Martha knew that Jesus could have healed Lazarus’s illness. Jesus told her, “Your brother will rise again” (11:23).
Faithful Jews had a concept of bodily resurrection because of what the Old Testament authors taught. This understanding is why Martha said, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day” (John 11:24). There she referred to her brother’s future bodily resurrection. The dead would one day rise, and Lazarus would be among them. This she believed, as she had been taught.
Waking from the Dust
A conviction in the Four Gospels that the dead would rise was based on God’s revelation in the Old Testament. In the clearest expression of resurrection hope in the Old Testament, Daniel 12:2 says, “And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.” Pictured as waking from bodily sleep, the dead will awake from the dust and live.
The language of dust takes us back to Genesis 2–3. The Lord pronounced judgments and consequences to the serpent and to the human couple, and Adam heard these words: “By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return” (Gen. 3:19).
Being “taken” from the dust recalls the creation of Adam, where the very first instance of “dust” is used. The Lord “formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature” (Gen. 2:7). Because of the words in Genesis 3:19, however, the dust signifies not just Adam’s life; he “shall return” to the dust, which means death. Like Adam, going to the dust is our earthly end. But as Daniel 12:2 reminds us, life will once again come from the dust. In Genesis 2, the granting of life was creation. In Daniel 12, the granting of life will be resurrection. At death, we go to the dust, but we do not go there to stay.
Made for Embodied Life
Bodily resurrection is what will accomplish God’s design for his image-bearers: embodied life with him. When God made Adam, the man was not a disembodied spirit who was later given a body. God created Adam as an embodied creature, so the only kind of life Adam knew was embodied. Death disrupts bodily life because the body dies even as the soul lives. Resurrection is the recovery of God’s design because the body is raised and re-united to the soul.
We were made for unending bodily life. Consider, as evidence, the tree of life in the Garden of Eden. God put the tree of life in the midst of the garden (Gen. 2:9). And when God exiled Adam from Eden, he was barring Adam from the tree of life, “lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever” (3:22). The tree of life represented immortal physicality. The question for God’s image-bearers, then, is whether we will ever experience what the tree of life held out. The answer is yes: through bodily resurrection, we will, as Daniel 12 puts it, “awake” from the dust unto embodied immortality.
As we affirm the kind of life God created us for and will raise us to receive, we can discern more of what our Christian hope entails. Our ultimate hope is not to die and leave this world as mere souls. Paul says that at death, believers are absent from the body and present with the Lord in heaven (2 Cor. 5:6–8). To die is gain indeed (Phil. 1:21). But if our future was only disembodied life with God, then death would hold our bodies in its cords forever.
Paul, speaking about our earthly bodies, told the Corinthians, “For in this tent we groan, longing to put on our heavenly dwelling” (2 Cor. 5:2). Our earthly tent—marked with moans and groans—will be surpassed by our heavenly dwelling, our risen body. God is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory (4:17). And if we knew the glorious future of embodied life that will be ours, we would long for it like Paul did. The body’s “light momentary affliction” can’t compare to the body’s future glory (4:17–18).
Proving a Staggering Claim
When Martha told Jesus that Lazarus “will rise again in the resurrection on the last day” (John 11:24), she was correctly understanding the Old Testament hope of God’s power delivering the bodies of his people from the cords of death. But she probably wasn’t prepared for Jesus’s response. He said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live” (John 11:25).
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When Jews and Gentiles confess Jesus as Lord, they do so as people who had now received mercy, whereas previously they were the No Mercy group. When Jews and Gentiles confess Jesus as Lord, they do so as God’s people, though formerly they were the Not My People people.

While there are many quotations of the Old Testament in the New, there are far more allusions to the Old Testament in the New. The New Testament authors wrote with a worldview drenched in the ancient Scriptures of Israel. An example of this is the language in 1 Peter 2:10.
In 1 Peter 2:10, the apostle tells his readers, “Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.” A rhythm is created with these words. Look at them like this:

Once you were not a people                   but now you are God’s people
Once you had not received mercy         but now you have received mercy

The “once…but now” language captures the readers’ former and present situation. Before conversion, the readers were not God’s people. Before conversion, the readers stood under God’s condemnation and had not received mercy.
With the language in 1 Peter 2:10, the apostle is connecting us to Hosea 1. In Hosea 1, the prophet was to marry a woman of unfaithfulness, and the names of their children would signal the theological situation of Israel. When Hosea’s daughter was born, God said, “Call her name No Mercy, for I will no more have mercy on the house of Israel, to forgive them at all” (Hos. 1:6).
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On Friday, Jesus was crucified. That’s the first day. On Saturday, Jesus rested on the Sabbath in the tomb. That’s the second day. On Sunday, Jesus rose from the dead. That’s the third day. The Gospel accounts, and subsequent church tradition, confirm this ordering and counting of events.

Not everyone is convinced that Jesus died on a Friday. There is a fringe view that Jesus must have died earlier than Friday (like maybe Thursday or even Wednesday), because Jesus said, “For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth” (Matt. 12:40).
Jesus’s words in Matthew 12:40 seem to suggest a 72-hour period (three full days and three full nights) that can’t be placed between a Friday death and a Sunday resurrection. So if Jesus rose on a Sunday morning, he had to die earlier than a Friday afternoon—right?
No. Several important pieces of information are missing here.
First, the use of “three days and three nights” can simply mean a three-day period. Jesus is reading the story of Jonah typologically. Just as Jonah was delivered (after a period of time associated with the number three), so would Jesus be delivered (also after a period of time associated with the number three). The insistence for a 72-hour period of death for Jesus is an unnecessary and overly literal reading of Matthew 12:40.
Second, we know that Joseph of Arimathea needed to wrap Jesus’ dead body and lay it in the tomb before the Sabbath began. The Sabbath is, of course, the seventh day of the week. Logically, if Joseph of Arimathea buried Jesus before the seventh day began (Mark 15:42), then Jesus’s death occurred on the sixth day—Friday. All four Gospels confirm that Jesus was buried after his death and that his burial occurred right before the Sabbath day began (Matt. 27:62; Mark 15:42; Luke 23:56; John 19:31). Let that sink in: all four Gospels confirm this.
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When we read the story of Rahab in Joshua 2, we are meant to understand that story in light of the exodus backdrop. The scarlet thread recalls the blood of the unblemished lamb. The window in Rahab’s house recalls the doorposts and lintel of an Israelite home. Impending divine judgment was true for both Exodus 12 and Joshua 2. And in both stories, the designated sign meant deliverance for those inside.

Early in the book of Joshua, a Canaanite named Rahab confessed her faith in the God of Israel to some Israelite spies (Josh. 2:8-11). She then asked that she and her household be spared the coming judgment of the conquest (2:12-13).
The spies told her, “Behold, when we come into the land, you shall tie this scarlet cord in the window through which you let us down, and you shall gather into your house your father and mother, your brothers, and all your father’s household” (Josh. 2:18).
So Rahab did. After the men left, she tied the scarlet cord in the window (Josh. 2:21), trusting and waiting.
This scarlet cord was consistently interpreted in the early centuries of Christian interpretation as signifying the cross of the Lord Jesus (see the writings of Justin Martyr, Origen, Augustine, Jerome, Clement, Irenaeus, and Ambrose).
Such an interpretation has caused no small amount of controversy for modern readers. First of all, there’s no clear prophecy in Joshua 2 to the future redemptive work of Jesus. Second, the color-connection of a “scarlet” cord and the red blood of Jesus is not a substantive correspondence. Third, no New Testament author connects the scarlet cord to the cross.
Those three points are valid but not decisive. I’m going to offer a cumulative case that argues for the scarlet cord of Rahab to be a type of Christ’s cross-work. Let’s notice how the episode with Rahab is meant to evoke the event of the exodus.
First, Rahab tells the spies, “For we have heard how the LORD dried up the water of the Red Sea before you when you came out of Egypt…” (Josh. 2:10).
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We know that donkeys don’t talk—which is why it was incredible when one did. The action is miraculous: the Lord opened the donkey’s mouth. The donkey’s words function as a rebuke—ultimately from the Lord—against Balaam’s actions.

So here’s what happened: King Balak in Moab wanted the Israelites to be cursed, so the king sent for an international seer named Balaam who could do the cursing work.
In Numbers 22, Balak’s messengers talked with Balaam about making the trip to Moab. Eventually Balaam went with the messengers (22:21). But he didn’t walk. He rode his donkey.
Since Balaam was apparently not going with the conviction to obey the Lord, an angel of Yahweh opposed Balaam in the middle of the road. Balaam didn’t see the angel. The donkey, however, saw the angel and turned aside out of the road and into a field (Num. 22:23). Balaam, in his frustration and ignorance of the situation, struck the donkey!
The angel of the Lord then stood in a narrow path between vineyards in the field, with a wall on either side (Num. 22:24), and the donkey pushed against the wall and squished Balaam’s foot (22:25). Balaam struck the donkey a second time!
The angel of the Lord moved to block the path entirely, so the donkey lay down under Balaam (Num. 22:27). Balaam, again, was angry and, again, struck the donkey—a third time!
Now something different happened. “Then the LORD opened the mouth of the donkey, and she said to Balaam, ‘What have I done to you, that you have struck me these three times?’” (Num. 22:28).
Did you notice the preface in front of the donkey’s words? The Lord “opened the mouth of the donkey.” We know that donkeys don’t talk—which is why it was incredible when one did. The action is miraculous: the Lord opened the donkey’s mouth. The donkey’s words function as a rebuke—ultimately from the Lord—against Balaam’s actions.
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Consider that the actions of Phinehas stop the judgment of God that was breaking out in the Israelite camp. God himself said, “Phinehas the son of Eleazar, son of Aaron the priest, has turned back my wrath from the people of Israel” (25:11). In a greater way, the Lord Jesus has turned away God’s wrath by propitiating it. Phinehas administered judgment, but Jesus took the judgment upon himself.

In Numbers 25, the Israelites sin egregiously against the Lord, and a judgment by plague breaks out among the people, killing twenty-four thousand Israelites. The reason for the judgment was the provocation of the Lord’s anger. The Israelites had yoked themselves with the worship of Baal and committed sexual immorality with the daughters of Moab (25:1-3).
The reason the plague stops is the zeal of a man named Phinehas. He was the high priest’s son, and he had special duty at the tabernacle. According to 1 Chronicles 9:20, he was a chief gatekeeper for the tabernacle. Like his father before him (Num. 3:32), he had a guarding responsibility at the tabernacle.
Therefore, the actions of Phinehas in Numbers 25 were not the acts of a vigilante. Amid the sinning Israelites, a Midianite woman and an Israelite man walked toward a tent to engage in immorality together (25:6). Phinehas knew what the couple planned to do, so he pursued them with the zeal of righteous indignation and judgment. They were defiling the region with their abominable act.
Phinehas took a spear and “went after the man of Israel into the chamber and pierced both of them, the man of Israel and the woman through her belly. Thus the plague on the people of Israel was stopped” (Num. 25:8).
The zeal of Phinehas turned aside Yahweh’s anger. The Lord told Moses, “Phinehas the son of Eleazar, son of Aaron the priest, has turned back my wrath from the people of Israel, in that he was jealous with my jealousy among them, so that I did not consume the people of Israel in my jealousy.
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The intake of locusts and wild honey was not a throwaway detail. The food going into John’s mouth represented the message coming out of John’s mouth. Those who received John’s message with faith would taste its sweetness and experience God’s blessing, like honey. Those who refused John’s message would experience God’s judgment, like locusts.

John the Baptist preached in the wilderness and called for people to repent, and those who repented he baptized in the Jordan River (Matt. 3:1-2, 5-6).
So John was a preacher and a baptizer. Aside from these roles, John also dressed and ate in a certain way. It’s good practice for interpreters to notice unexpected details and to ask, “Why is that there? Is there any significance I should see?”
In Matthew 3:4, we’re told: “Now John wore a garment of camel’s hair and a leather belt around his waist, and his food was locusts and wild honey.” The first part of the verse is about his dress, and the second part is about his diet.
The “garment of camel’s hair and a leather belt” is an allusion to the prophet Elijah. In 2 Kings 1:8, Elijah “wore a garment of hair, with a belt of leather about his waist.” The description of this garment and belt connects Elijah with John the Baptist, for John was the Elijah who was to come (see Mal. 4:5-6; Matt. 11:13-14).
Isn’t it intriguing, though, that we’re also informed about John’s diet? He ate locusts and wild honey. If the first part of Matthew 3:4 was an Old Testament allusion, could the same thing be true of the second part?
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