1IN the second year of Darius the king, in the sixth month, on the first day of the month, the word of the LORD came by Haggai the prophet to Zerubbabel, the son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and to Joshua, the son of Josedech, the high priest, saying, 2Thus says the LORD of hosts: This people say the time has not yet come to build the house of the LORD. 3Then came the word of the LORD by Haggai the prophet, saying, 4Is it a time for you to dwell in your ceiled houses, and this house lie waste? 5Now therefore thus says the LORD of hosts: Consider your ways. 6You have sown much and stored little: you eat, but you never are satisfied; you drink, but you are not filled with drink; you clothe yourselves, but you are not warm; and he who trades among you, earns wages to put it into a bag with holes.

7Thus says the LORD of hosts: Consider your ways. 8Go up to the mountain, and bring timber and build this house; and I will take pleasure in it and I will be glorified in it, says the LORD. 9You looked for much, and, lo, it came to little; and when you brought it home, I blew it away. Why should these things happen? says the LORD. Because of my house that is waste, and you hasten every man to take care of his own house. 10Therefore the heavens over you have stayed from dew and the earth has withheld its fruit. 11And I have called for a drought upon the land and upon the mountains, and upon the grain and upon the wine and upon the oil and upon everything that the ground brings forth, and upon men and upon cattle and upon all the labor of their hands.

12Then Zerubbabel, the son of Shealtiel, and Joshua, the son of Josedech, the high priest, with all the remnant of the people, obeyed the voice of the LORD their God and the words of Haggai the prophet, whom the LORD their God had sent to them, and the people did fear before the LORD. 13Then spoke Haggai the LORD'S messenger according to the LORD'S message to the people, saying, I am with you, says the LORD of hosts. 14And the LORD stirred up the spirit of Zerubbabel, the son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and the spirit of Joshua, the son of Josedech, the high priest, and the spirit of all the remnant of the people; and they went and did work upon the house of the LORD of hosts, their God, 15On the twenty-fourth day of the sixth month in the second year of Darius the king.