The post-exilic prophetic books of Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi are set in times of great adversity. God's people are minnows in the vast Persian Empire, and the promises of the earlier prophets for a glorious restoration of Jerusalem seem far from their experience. These books, from beginning to end, restate God's intention to establish his glorious kingdom, and explain what this means for the lives of his people. For Haggai and Zechariah, the immediate challenge was to rebuild the temple in view of God's return. For Malachi, the challenge was covenant unfaithfulness which had infected the people's attitudes towards God, and how this needed to change in view of future judgment. God used each of these prophets to remind the people of the true King and to re-order their lives and their community in the light of the reality of his coming kingdom. In this Apollos Old Testament Commentary, Anthony Petterson offers detailed commentary on these prophetic books, setting them in their wider biblical-theological context. He shows the connections between the post-exilic world and our own, and explains how these books contain a vital message for the church today, living in the gap between promise and reality. The Apollos Old Testament Commentary series aims to take with equal seriousness the divine and human aspects of Scripture. It expounds the books of the Old Testament in a scholarly manner accessible to non-experts, and shows the relevance of the Old Testament to modern readers. Intended primarily to serve the needs of those who preach from the Old Testament, they are equally suitable for use by scholars and all serious students of the Bible.
