The prophet Haggai/Aggeus spends most of his book telling the governor and the high priest that yes, they will manage to rebuild the Temple. Then, over three weeks later, he gets a second, rather mysterious message to pass on (all prophecies are messages to pass on):

Speak to Zorobabel the governor of Juda, saying: I will move both heaven and earth. [23] And I will overthrow the throne of kingdoms, and will destroy the strength of the kingdom of the Gentiles: and I will overthrow the chariot, and him that rideth therein: and the horses and their riders shall come down, every one by the sword of his brother. [24] In that day, saith the Lord of hosts, I will take thee, O Zorobabel the son of Salathiel, my servant, saith the Lord, and will make thee as a signet, for I have chosen thee, saith the Lord of hosts.

Zorobabel/Zerubbabel intrigues me. He may have wondered, on and off for the rest of his life, how he was going to be an instrument to move the cosmos and conquer the Gentiles when he was having trouble just getting the Temple rebuilt. It must have seemed to him that his family was in an irreversible decline; his grandfather had been king, but he himself was extremely lucky to have been made governor of Judea. Jewish legends say he had worked security in the palace at Babylon, rising higher after he, essentially, won an essay contest.

They also say he's an ancestor of the Messiah. Matthew and Luke, of course, say he's an ancestor of Jesus.

Rabbi Ginzberg's Legends of the Jews further says:

. . . the archangel Metatron dealt kindly with him. Besides revealing to him the time at which the Messiah would appear, he brought about an interview between the Messiah and Zerubabbel.

Much like the one between Jesus, Moses and Elijah, but, as I've said, more of a family gathering, which is probably why -- if it happened at all -- there's no record of it.

But I don't want to get all pious-fictional. 

Anyway, maybe Zerubabbel didn't spend his life puzzling over the prophecy after all, but came to know, in whatever way, that long after he was dead and the family's decline seemed complete, one of his descendants would conquer the world in a way no one could imagine.