Chapter 1
After King Darius of Persia allows the Jews to return to Israel, they immediately start arguing about their new country. In this case, they can't agree when to rebuild the temple. At this point, god intervenes to point out that while they themselves have nicely rebuilt houses, he's still out in the cold. And when they continued to ignore him in favour of home improvement projects, he caused drought and crop failure. So they rebuild the temple.
Chapter 2
God is going to shake the earth until people start showing up for church. If his shaking happens to loosen a few coins out of a few pockets, well, finders keepers.
He also wants an upgrade for his new temple, in exchange for which he promises peace.
Furthermore, he has some complaints about priestly hygiene standards. Turns out a few people have been carrying the sacrifices in the folds of their robes and it grosses god out. Even grosser, people who have touched dead bodies have been touching sacrificial offerings, and he'd really like that to stop, because that is nasty. But then god just goes too far and declares that basically everybody is unclean.
Then there is some very confusing babble about previous droughts, and this drought, and earthquakes and somehow someone named Zarubbabel is honoured. According to his Wikipedia entry, Zerubbabel was a governor of Persia and eventual king of the Israelites.
Monday, October 17, 2011
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