Haggai 2:3 Commentary and Bible Study

Who is left that is old enough to have seen the previous temple which was destroyed by the Babylonians 66 years before? The first temple, the temple of Solomon was destroyed in 586 BC (2 Kings 25:13-17); it is now 520 BC. Some were old enough to remember when the work began, as Ezra 3:12 tells us, and had wept with a loud voice when the foundation of this new temple was laid, because of its reduction in size and glory. Haggai asks, ‘Is this new temple in your estimation, as nothing?’ These aged men were preoccupied with externals. They were miserable because they seemed to have lost the glory of Solomon’s temple. Actually, there was an important lesson for them, even in this apparent loss of glory. Although God wanted them to rebuild this physical temple, and although it would stand for about another 590 years, it was only a type, a figure, an earthly illustration which was not intended to be for all time. The physical earthly temple would give way to the much greater temple that would come after it, and that temple would not be physical. God was showing them that they needed to move on from symbols to the realities of the gospel age. The time was not yet come that they should do this, but they should start to detach themselves from the earthly temple, and to help them do this he gave them a smaller, less glorious structure. There was something to see, maybe a perimeter of stones or markings. They could see the ground layout; that was all. Is it not as nothing in your eyes, by comparison with the previous temple? The way Haggai says this, you do get the impression he is an old man, and that maybe he was old enough to have seen the first temple before it was destroyed. Maybe he was six or seven or eight, when the temple was destroyed. Maybe he had not seen it at all, and this is empty speculation, but it rather sounds as though he had. If so, then he is saying to others of his age, ‘Is it not to you as nothing?’ He is anticipating that they are going to be very discouraged and very despondent once they take in how small this temple is.