Haggai 2:16

16 When you hoped for a twenty-bushel crop, you harvested only ten. When you expected to draw fifty gallons from the winepress, you found only twenty.

Haggai 2:16 Meaning and Commentary

Haggai 2:16

Since those [days] were
From the time the foundation of the temple was laid, unto the time they began to work again, which was a space of about fifteen or sixteen years: when [one] came to an heap of twenty [measures], there were [but]
ten;
when the husbandman having gathered in his corn, and who was generally a good judge of what it would yield, came to a heap of it on his corn floor, either of sheaves not threshed, or grain not winnowed, and expected it would have produced at least twenty measures, seahs, or bushels; afterward it was threshed and winnowed, to his great disappointment he had but ten out of it; there were so much straw and chaff, and so little grain; or when he came to a heap of grain, wheat, or barley, in his granary, where he thought he should have twenty bushels of it; but when he had measured it, proved but ten; being either stolen by thieves, or eaten by vermin; rather the latter: when [one] came to the wine vat for to draw out fifty [vessels] out
of the press, there were [but] twenty;
by the quantity of grapes which he put into the press to tread and squeeze, he expected to have had fifty measures, or baths, or hogsheads of wine; but, instead of that, had but twenty; the bunches were so thin, or the berries so bad: there was a greater decrease and deficiency in the wine than in the grain.

Haggai 2:16 In-Context

14 Then Haggai responded, “That is how it is with this people and this nation, says the LORD . Everything they do and everything they offer is defiled by their sin.
15 Look at what was happening to you before you began to lay the foundation of the LORD ’s Temple.
16 When you hoped for a twenty-bushel crop, you harvested only ten. When you expected to draw fifty gallons from the winepress, you found only twenty.
17 I sent blight and mildew and hail to destroy everything you worked so hard to produce. Even so, you refused to return to me, says the LORD .
18 “Think about this eighteenth day of December, the day when the foundation of the LORD ’s Temple was laid. Think carefully.
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