Haggai 1:3 Commentary and Bible Study

The prophet Haggai goes directly to the point. ‘Is it time for you?’ It is a call to self-searching. Look at the way Haggai goes about it. ‘Is it time for you, O ye?’ Interestingly, he says ‘you’ twice. The King James translators have made it more elegant, but really he says, ‘Is it time for you, [pause] you?’ – the emphasis is there and they understand what he means – ‘to dwell in your ceiled houses?’ You say the time is not right to build the Lord’s house, but picking up their own language, he asks, ‘Is it time for you’ to do this thing instead: ‘to dwell in your cieled houses, and this house lie waste?’ You of all people who owe so much to the Lord your God, a delivered generation, returned back to Jerusalem by his goodness, delivered from captivity and from the rigours of enslavement or service to another nation. You who have such a history, who have all the promises of God with you, who have a purpose in life: is it time for you, of all people, to be reasoning like this? Our homes are more important than the building of the work of God, and the house of God. So he is speaking very pointedly, right from the beginning. We could pause even longer with that: ‘Is it time for you, O ye, to dwell in your cieled houses?’ The word translated cieled, is ‘covered houses’. It refers to panelling, yes. Either it is – as the King James translators have guessed – suspended ceilings in their houses, so they don't look into the purlins of the roof. Or, equally likely, this indicates some luxury; even the walls are panelled: your covered or concealed panelled houses. Whatever it was, only kings normally had this level of luxury. This first prophecy is a call for self-searching: examine yourselves. Do you put your lives far beyond the work of the Lord?‘And this house, the temple, lie waste?’ Haggai puts it in simple words, but the implications of that are shocking. ‘The house of God: this is the one temple in the world to the true and living God. Everywhere else is polytheism. There is one witness to the true God and you have the duty to uphold it. It is this temple, and you have the privilege and the honour of building it. Are you living in splendid houses while the temple lies waste, a ruin? How appalling, how shameful! You effectively mount an exhibition of a weak God, a discredited God.’ That is the sense. He uses few words, but it comes through powerfully. Is it time for you, O you, of all people, to dwell in your panelled houses, and the temple lie derelict, ruined? Carved ceilings will have a tongue of their own in the day of judgement, says Moore.