Albert Barnes Commentary Haggai 1:4

"Is it a time for you yourselves to dwell in your ceiled houses, while this house lieth waste?" — Haggai 1:4 (ASV)

Is it time for you - you, being what you are, the creatures of God, to dwell in your ceiled houses; more emphatically, in your houses, and those ceiled, probably with costly woods, such as cedar?

But where then was the excuse of a lack of resources? They imitated, in their alleged poverty, what is spoken of as magnificent in their old kings, Solomon and Shallum, but not having, as Solomon first did (1 Kings 6:9, ויספן), covered the house of God with beams and rows of cedar.

“Will you dwell in houses artificially adorned, not so much for use as for delight, and shall My dwelling-place, in which was the Holy of Holies, and the cherubim, and the table of showbread, be exposed to rain, desolated in solitude, scorched by the sun?”

“With these words carnal Christians are rebuked, who have no glow of zeal for God but are full of self-love. Consequently, they make no effort to repair, build, or strengthen the material temples of Christ and houses assigned to His worship when these are aged, ruinous, decaying, or destroyed; instead, they build for themselves elaborate, luxurious, superfluous dwellings. In these, the love of Christ does not glow; these Isaiah threatens (Isaiah 5:8, Isaiah 5:12): Woe to you who join house to house and field to field, and regard not the work of the Lord!”

To David and Solomon, the building of God’s temple was their heart’s desire. To early Christian Emperors and to the ages of faith, it was the building of Churches. Now, for the most part, landowners build houses for worldly profit, leaving it to the few to build with eternity in view and for the glory of God.