Albert Barnes Commentary Haggai 2:5

"[according to] the word that I covenanted with you when ye came out of Egypt, and my Spirit abode among you: fear ye not." — Haggai 2:5 (ASV)

The words which I covenanted—The words stand more forcibly, because abruptly.

It is an exclamation that cannot be forced into any grammatical relation with the preceding. The more exact idiom would have been “Remember,” “take to heart.” But the prophet points to it the more energetically, because he casts it, as it were, into the middle, not bound up with any one verb.

This would be rather done in speaking to the people, as David to his followers (1 Samuel 30:23), which Ewald compares (Lehrbuch, number 329a, page 811; Exodus 8:0; and in his Die Propheten, volume 3, page 183).

Only Ewald, not very intelligibly, makes it a sort of oath: By the word, By that which the Lord has given us. But he suggests the like broken sentence (Zechariah 7:7): “That which the Lord has given us and has preserved us and given the company against us into our hands!”

That is, “Would you deal this way with it?” The abrupt form rejects it as shocking. So here, “The word which I covenanted with you,” that is, this, “I will be with you,” was the central all-containing promise, to which God pledged Himself when He brought them out of Egypt.

He speaks to them as being one with those who came up out of Egypt, as if they were the very persons. The Church, ever varying in the individuals of whom it is composed, is, throughout all ages, in God’s sight, one; His promises to the fathers are made to the children in them.

So the Psalmist says, “There” (at the dividing of the Red Sea and the Jordan) “do we rejoice in Him,” as if present there; and our Lord promises to the Apostles, “I am with you always even to the end of the world” (Matthew 28:20), by an ever-present presence with them and His Church founded by them in Him.

My Spirit abides among you—as the Psalmist says, “they (the heavens) perish and You abide” (Psalms 102:27); “The counsel of the Lord stands forever” (Psalms 33:11); “His righteousness endures forever” (Psalms 111:3).

The Spirit of God is God the Holy Spirit, with His manifold gifts. Where He is, is all good. As the soul is in the body, so God the Holy Spirit is in the Church, Himself its life, and bestowing on all and each every good gift, as each and all have need.

As Paul says of the Church of Christ, “There are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are diversities of operations, but it is the same God, who works all in all” (1 Corinthians 12:4, 6, 11).

“All these works one and the selfsame Spirit, dividing to every man severally as He wills.” But above and beyond all gifts He is present as the Spirit of holiness and love, making the Church and those in whom He individually dwells, acceptable to God.

Special applications, such as “the Spirit of wisdom and might;” a spirit such as He gave to Moses to judge His people; the spirit of prophecy; or the spirit given to Bezaleel and Aholiab for the work of the sanctuary—these recognize in detail the one great truth, that all good, all wisdom, from least to greatest, comes from God the Holy Spirit, though one by one they would exclude more truth than they each contain.