The Signet Ring

A ring is pulled off a finger and thrown away. Years go by. Then, one winter's day, God picks it up again, and slips it back onto his hand.

It is the twenty-fourth day of the ninth month, in the second year of King Darius of Persia, about five hundred and twenty years before Christ. It is early winter in Jerusalem. Three months earlier, the people began rebuilding the temple, urged on by the prophet Haggai. Today, Haggai has already given one message, a promise that from this day on God will bless them. Now a second message comes the same day, and this one is for one man only: Zerubbabel, the governor of Judah. Zerubbabel is a grandson of Jehoiachin, the king of David's line who was carried off to Babylon. He is a royal prince without a crown, governing a small province for the Persian emperor.

To understand this message, you have to remember something the prophet Jeremiah had said, many years before, about Zerubbabel's grandfather. God said: even if Jehoiachin, king of Judah, were the signet ring on my right hand, I would pull you off. A signet ring was a king's personal seal, his signature, his authority. Being pulled off God's hand meant being rejected. Jehoiachin was taken to Babylon, and Jeremiah said none of his descendants would prosper on David's throne. For decades, that judgment had hung over the royal family. Zerubbabel had grown up under it.

Now God speaks to Zerubbabel through Haggai. I am going to shake the heavens and the earth. I will overthrow the thrones of kingdoms and destroy the strength of the nations. I will overturn the chariots and their riders; horses and riders will fall, each by the sword of his brother. These are huge words. To a small province in a vast empire, they mean: the great powers of the world are not in charge. God is. Empires that look unshakeable can be shaken by him in a moment.

And then, in contrast to all that shaking, a gentle, personal promise. “In that day, saith the LORD of hosts, will I take thee, O Zerubbabel, my servant, the son of Shealtiel, saith the LORD, and will make thee as a signet: for I have chosen thee, saith the LORD of hosts.” The ring that was pulled off is being put back on. The family that seemed rejected is chosen again. God calls Zerubbabel my servant, the same title given to David. Zerubbabel never became a king. He never wore a crown. But God's promise to David's family was alive, and God himself was holding it, like a ring on his own hand.

Seals like this were part of daily life in ancient Israel. A seal was a small carved stone, often set in a ring or hung on a cord. Its owner pressed it into soft clay to close and sign a document. Archaeologists in Israel have found many such clay impressions, called bullae, some bearing the names of royal officials known from the Bible. Whoever held the king's signet could act with the king's full authority, so to be God's signet ring meant to carry his authority and to be close to him.

You'll find this promise in Haggai chapter two, verses twenty to twenty-three. Both Matthew and Luke name Zerubbabel in the family line of Jesus. The promise God sealed with that ring was finally fulfilled in a baby born in Bethlehem. So here is a question to carry with you. Is there something in your life that feels thrown away, that God might want to pick up and restore?