Hag 1:6, 9-11, 2:16 | JFB | STEP | 6. Nothing has prospered with you while you neglected your duty to God. The punishment corresponds to the sin. They thought to escape poverty by not building, but keeping their money to themselves; God brought it on them for not building ( ; ; ). Instead of cheating God, they had been only cheating themselves. ye clothe ... but ... none warm-- through insufficiency of clothing; as ye are unable through poverty from failure of your crops to purchase sufficient clothing. The verbs are infinitive, implying a continued state: "Ye have sown, and been bringing in but little; ye have been eating, but not to being satisfied; ye have been drinking, but not to being filled; ye have been putting on clothes, but not to being warmed" [Moore]. Careful consideration of God's dealings with us will indicate God's will regarding us. The events of life are the hieroglyphics in which God records His feelings towards us, the key to which is found in the Bible [Moore]. wages ... put ... into a bag with holes-- proverbial for labor and money spent profitlessly ( ; compare ; ). Contrast, spiritually, the "bags that wax not old, the treasure in heaven that faileth not" ( ). Through the high cost of necessaries, those who wrought for a day's wages parted with them at once, as if they had put them into a bag with holes.

‏ Haggai 1:6

6. Nothing has prospered with you while you neglected your duty to God. The punishment corresponds to the sin. They thought to escape poverty by not building, but keeping their money to themselves; God brought it on them for not building (Pr 13:7; 11:24; Mt 6:33). Instead of cheating God, they had been only cheating themselves.

ye clothe ... but ... none warm--through insufficiency of clothing; as ye are unable through poverty from failure of your crops to purchase sufficient clothing. The verbs are infinitive, implying a continued state: "Ye have sown, and been bringing in but little; ye have been eating, but not to being satisfied; ye have been drinking, but not to being filled; ye have been putting on clothes, but not to being warmed" [Moore]. Careful consideration of God's dealings with us will indicate God's will regarding us. The events of life are the hieroglyphics in which God records His feelings towards us, the key to which is found in the Bible [Moore].

wages ... put ... into a bag with holes--proverbial for labor and money spent profitlessly (Zec 8:10; compare Is 55:2; Jr 2:13). Contrast, spiritually, the "bags that wax not old, the treasure in heaven that faileth not" (Lu 12:33). Through the high cost of necessaries, those who wrought for a day's wages parted with them at once, as if they had put them into a bag with holes.

‏ Haggai 1:9-11

9. Ye looked for much--literally, "looked" so as to turn your eyes "to much." The Hebrew infinitive here expresses continued looking. Ye hoped to have your store made "much" by neglecting the temple. The greater was your greediness, the more bitter your disappointment in being poorer than ever.

when ye brought it home, I did blow upon it--even the little crop brought into your barns I dissipated. "I did blow upon," that is, I scattered and caused to perish with My mere breath, as scattered and blighted corn.

mine house ... his own house--in emphatic antithesis.

ye run--expressing the keenness of everyone of them in pursuing their own selfish interests. Compare "run," Psa 119:32; Pr 1:16, contrasted with their apathy about God's house.

10. heaven ... is stayed from dew--literally, "stays itself." Thus heaven or the sky is personified; implying that inanimate nature obeys Jehovah's will; and, shocked at His people's disobedience, withholds its goods from them (compare Jr 2:12, 13).

11. I called--what the "heaven" and "earth," the second causes, were said to do (Hag 1:10), being the visible instruments, Jehovah, in this verse, the invisible first cause, declares to be His doing. He "calls for" famine, &c., as instruments of His wrath (2Ki 8:1; Psa 105:16). The contrast is striking between the prompt obedience of these material agencies, and the slothful disobedience of living men, His people.

drought--Hebrew, Choreb, like in sound to Chareeb, "waste" (Hag 1:4, 9), said of God's house; implying the correspondence between the sin and its punishment. Ye have let My house be waste, and I will send on all that is yours a wasting drought. This would affect not merely the "corn," &c., but also "men" and "cattle," who must perish in the absence of the "corn," &c., lost by the drought.

labour of the hands--all the fruits of lands, gardens, and vineyards, obtained by labor of the hands (De 28:33; Psa 78:46).

‏ Haggai 2:16

16. Since those days were--from the time that those days of your neglect of the temple work have been.

when one came to an heap of twenty measures--that is, to a heap which he had expected would be one of twenty measures, there were but ten.

fifty vessels out of the press--As the Septuagint translates "measure," and Vulgate "a flagon," and as we should rather expect vat than press. Maurer translates (omitting vessels, which is not in the original), "purahs," or "wine-measures."