Yet Once More

• Anchor Bible Dictionary — “Haggai, Book of,” “Zerubbabel,” “Temple, Second,” “Darius.”
• Dictionary of the OT: Prophets (IVP) — “Haggai: Book of,” “Temple,” “Persian Period,” “Messiah.”
• Dictionary of NT Use of the OT (Beale & Carson) — on Hebrews 12:26–27.
• NIDOTTE — חֶמְדָּה, רָעַשׁ, חוֹתָם, צְבָאוֹת.

Haggai carries no Hebrew/English verse offset. Masoretic, CATSS and the ESV all run 15 / 23 — 38 verses. Verified from content at the chapter seam rather than assumed. Of the twelve Minor Prophets, seven carry an offset somewhere and five do not; Haggai is one of the five, with Amos, Obadiah, Zephaniah and Habakkuk.

Two Haggai rows reach nine, and each reaches the same two New Testament verses.

Four pairs, all at the same depth, on the same nine words: τὸν οὐρανὸν καὶ τὴν γῆν καὶ τὴν θάλασσαν καί. Both tie bands are two: from either Haggai row the maximum is held by two New Testament verses, and from either Acts verse the maximum is held by two CATSS units.

Acts 4:24 and Acts 14:15 both describe the God who made the heaven and the earth and the sea. Neither is quoting Haggai; the run is a list of created domains that both books happen to give in the same order.

Hebrews 12:26 introduces its quotation with λέγων and reproduces four words.

CATSS Haggai 2:6: …ἔτι ἅπαξ ἐγὼ σείσω τὸν οὐρανὸν καὶ τὴν γῆν καὶ τὴν θάλασσαν καὶ τὴν ξηράν
Hebrews 12:26: …λέγων Ἔτι ἅπαξ ἐγὼ σείσω οὐ μόνον τὴν γῆν ἀλλὰ καὶ τὸν οὐρανόν

The run stops after four because the row lists four domains joined by καί and Hebrews names two, in the other order, with οὐ μόνον…ἀλλὰ καί between them. Hebrews 12:26’s own deepest partner among all 18,183 CATSS verse units is Haggai 2:6 — a tie band of one. From that side the screen points straight at Haggai; it just does not point far.

The longer run is the commoner string and the shorter run is unique in both corpora. On this shelf that has happened before — but this is the one case where the rare short string is also the one a New Testament writer explicitly introduces as a quotation. Reporting the maximum alone would have printed a creation formula and missed the citation entirely.

What the rest of the book returns: all 38 rows reach two, 32 reach three, 13 reach four, and then nothing until the two rows at nine. Nothing in Haggai sits between five and eight.

What the measurement is, and its scope. Contiguous runs of word forms, Greek against Greek: the CATSS FORM column (cols 0–24, beta-code transliterated) across 18,183 verse units in 35 .mlxx files, against the MorphGNT surface-word column across 7,927 verses in 27 files. Both sides lowercased, accents and breathings dropped, final sigma folded, then filtered to Greek letters — the same filter on both corpora. Word forms, never lemmas. Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Daniel are not among the Greek files held here, and a fuller corpus would very likely raise the count of two on the creation formula. It says nothing about which text is prior and nothing about citation.

Haggai says the same thing twice, fifteen verses apart, and the two columns do not keep the two statements the same length.

And the verb differs by a single letter between the two rows: σείσω at 2:6, σείω at 2:21. That one letter is why Hebrews 12:26 matches 2:6 and not 2:21, since Hebrews reads σείσω.

The most discussed word in the book is a question of number.

The Hebrew has חֶמְדַּת כָּל־הַגּוֹיִם — a singular construct, the desire of all nations. The Greek row has τὰ ἐκλεκτὰ πάντων τῶν ἐθνῶν — a neuter plural, the choice things of all the nations. The verb agrees with the singular in the Hebrew and the row keeps a singular verb too (ἥξει), which is the detail commentators spend most time on.

The page reports both readings and does not resolve them. Why either stands as it does is not something these columns can settle.

Each is printed as its file has it. The thirteen extra words at 2:9 are καὶ εἰρήνην ψυχῆς εἰς περιποίησιν παντὶ τῷ κτίζοντι τοῦ ἀναστῆσαι τὸν ναὸν τοῦτον.

And the screen finds it — from the Hebrews side. Hebrews 12:26’s deepest partner among all 18,183 CATSS verse units is Haggai 2:6, a tie band of one. From the Haggai side the same verse ranks below two verses of Acts, because those two share a longer but commoner string.

This is the clearest illustration on the shelf of why a maximum needs its direction stated. “Haggai 2:6’s deepest New Testament partner” and “Hebrews 12:26’s deepest Old Testament partner” give different answers, and both are correct.

Acts 4:24 and Acts 14:15 both describe God as the one who made the heaven and the earth and the sea. Haggai 2:6 and 2:21 both list the same domains in the same order, with the same connective.

Nine matching word forms, and nothing in either Acts verse suggests Haggai is in view. The page reports the run and draws nothing from it — a list of created things given in a conventional order is exactly the kind of material a contiguous-run test will find whether or not anything connects the two texts.

Note also the scope: Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel are not among the 35 Greek files here, and formulas of this kind are common in them. The count of two CATSS verse units for the nine-word string would very likely be higher in a fuller corpus.

A rarity figure is only as good as its corpus, and this page prints one that is visibly corpus-bound. Two CATSS verse units for the creation formula is a fact about 35 files, not about the Greek Old Testament, and the page says so at the point of use.

Depth and direction both have to be stated. The same pair looks different depending on which corpus is being iterated over, and this study is the one where that matters most.

And 2:7 is a genuine crux this page does not enter. Whether חֶמְדַּת is a collective singular, and what to do with the singular verb, has a long literature. None of it was consulted; the page prints both columns.

No Hebrew or Greek critical apparatus. No Qumran material — the Minor Prophets scroll from Nahal Hever bears on the Greek of these books and was not consulted. No Targum, Syriac, Vulgate, Aquila, Symmachus or Theodotion. No text-critical work on Hebrews 12:26.

And nothing on the history. What happened to Zerubbabel after 2:23, and how the second temple compared with the first, are questions a word count cannot touch.

Haggai’s deepest runs into the New Testament are nine words long and land on two verses of Acts that are not thinking about Haggai at all — a list of heaven, earth and sea, given in the same order by both books.

The one New Testament verse that does take up Haggai, and says so, shares four words: ἔτι ἅπαξ ἐγὼ σείσω, yet once more I will shake. Those four words stand in exactly one verse unit of eighteen thousand and one New Testament verse of eight thousand. The nine-word string stands in two of each.

Length and rarity came apart, and this time the shorter string was both the rarer one and the real connection. A page that reported only its maximum would have printed a creation formula and left the citation out.

Tenth study on the Minor Prophets shelf, and the whole of Haggai in one page. Seven books complete: Hosea, Joel, Amos, Jonah, Micah, Habakkuk, Haggai.