Day 262 of Heart Dive 365. I'm your Bible study friend Kenoy. Welcome to the Heart Dive podcast.

Well, we were briefly introduced to Haggai yesterday, Haggai and Zechariah in Ezra.

And so we're taking a break from the book of Ezra, and we are heading over to the

book of Haggai today, reading the entire book. It's really only two chapters. It is the second

shortest book in the Bible. But don't let that fool you, because I told Holly yesterday, I said,

I'm going to get Head Start on Haggai. It's probably pretty easy. I also ended up sending her a video

of what I said, this is God cracking up at me. After four hours of studying only the first chapter and five heart checks in and I was like, okay, I'll never again say that something's going to be easy. But it's a good one today. So we are reading from the ESV by Crossway Translation. But before we get started, if you could hit the thumbs up button, that's your roll call. If you're part of the Heart Dying family, if you're a Bible study friend, or if you are new here, we welcome you to Bible study. Make sure to check out the show notes or the description box. That will probably answer a lot of your questions that you might have about this Bible study. You can go to our website, heartdive.org. You can check out our Facebook group, HeartDive. And there we have a thriving community. We've got fellowship groups that meet online that discuss the Word of God, discuss life, hang out, have a good time, almost every single day of the week, almost every time zone, or at least a time zone that's close to you. Make sure to check that out if that's something that you are looking for. So other than that, we're going to go ahead and pray and then jump on in. So Heavenly Father, we love you. We thank you for this time. We thank you for this day. We thank you for every sister and brother that is here with us to study today. Lord, we come together to gather. And because so, Lord, we know that you are here in our midst. We're gathered with one heart, one mind, one purpose,

and that is just to get to know you. And because we are standing because so, Lord, we know that you are here in our midst. We're gathered with one heart, one mind,

one purpose, and that is just to get to know you. And because we are standing here in unity together, Lord, we know that you will bless it. So I pray, Lord, that we won't miss that blessing today. Open up our eyes, ears, and hearts to be able to see it, to perceive it, to understand it, help us to know your word, to hear it clearly, make it make sense, oh God. And I just thank you for

every heart, Lord, that has been so willing to be able to devote themselves on the daily to come here and to just sit at your feet. And so we're grateful for this time that we get to do this together, Lord. I pray that you'll speak through me. Don't let it be my words. let it be yours. And I just pray that you'll hide me now behind the cross

so that you are seeing Jesus, you alone.

In Jesus' name I pray, amen.

So taking a look at the timeline here,

it was 538 BC when Cyrus sent the Jews back.

So about 50,000 Israelites went back to the promised land.

Took about two years before they even started doing any

sort of construction for the temple. And of course, that was under the lead of Zerubababal.

Zerubabal, remember, is a direct descendant of the Davidic dynasty. He was the grandson of

Jechanaya, but he is not a king. He's only been given the title of governor, so he rules over the

people, but he's not a king. And then, after they started that construction in 536, for about two

years, remember, it got interrupted. We saw that in the book of Ezra. And so now the work has stopped,

and the temple has been neglected for a good 16 years. So Haggai is the prophet

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