What Does Haggai 1:15 Mean?

In the twenty-fourth day of the sixth month, in the second year of Darius the king.

Haggai 1:15 · SDV

Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.

Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.

This verse in the King James

King James wording

King James Version

In the four and twentieth day of the sixth month, in the second year of Darius the king.

THE KEY

The word for “month” grows from the Hebrew for “new,” placing this dated moment inside a recurring cycle of renewal.

THE MEANING

This verse sets a precise day inside a numbered month and year. Its calendar marker gives the surrounding work a place where it can be remembered and measured.

THE ROOT

חֹדֶשׁ

chodesh

GROWS FROM

חדש

ḥ-d-sh

new; renew

Hebrew chodesh (“month”) belongs to chadash (“new”), and a month is counted by the moon’s return. The date therefore carries both chronology and renewal: the work is situated within a cycle that begins again.

ALSO GROWS

chadash: new

חָדָשׁ

The root of the calendar word is also the ordinary word for new, so “sixth month” echoes a new cycle.

chiddesh: renew; make new

חִדֵּשׁ

This renewal verb lets the month resonate with the rebuilding named in the preceding verse: the work takes place within a word-family of newness.

THE PATTERN

A marked time gives a turning point a place in the world.

This month will be the head of months for you; it will be first of the months of the year.

Exodus 12:2 · SDVThe month itself is named as a beginning, making the calendar marker part of the transition.

To everything there is an appointed time, and a time for every delight under the heavens.

Ecclesiastes 3:1 · SDVTime is presented as having a place for each purpose, the same structure by which this verse gives a moment its date.

But when the time was filled, God sent out his Son, come from a woman, come under the instruction.

Galatians 4:4 · SDVThe phrase “fulness of the time” locates a turning at a particular moment, as this dated verse locates its surrounding work.

THE THREAD

And the LORD roused the breath of Zerubbabel son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and of Joshua son of Josedech, the great priest, and the breath of all the remnant of the people. And they came and worked in the house of the LORD of hosts, their God.

Haggai 1:14 · SDV

The preceding verse names the stirring and the work; this one pins that work to a day. Together, they show inward movement taking a definite place in time.

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