Albert Barnes Commentary Haggai 2:15

"And now, I pray you, consider from this day and backward, before a stone was laid upon a stone in the temple of Jehovah." — Haggai 2:15 (ASV)

And now, I urge you—observe his tenderness in drawing their attention to it: Consider from this day and upward. He asks them to look backward, from before a stone was laid upon a stone—that is, from the last moment of their neglect in building the house of God.

He directs them to consider the time backward, since those days were—or, as he puts it, "when those things were" (revisiting, with the phrase "from-their-being," the period he had just specified: that is, looking backward from the start of their renewed building efforts, throughout all those years of neglect). In that period, one came to a heap of twenty measures, yet there were only ten.

The precise measure is not mentioned; the force of the appeal lay in the proportion. A heap of grain that usually would yield twenty (whether bushels, seahs, or any other measure—for since the heap itself was of no defined size, neither could the quantity expected from it be defined) yielded only ten.

Similarly, when one came to the press-vat to draw out fifty vessels from the press—or perhaps fifty poorahs, that is, the ordinary quantity drawn out at one time from the press—there were, or it had become, only twenty: just two-fifths of what they looked for and ordinarily obtained.

The dried grapes yielded so little.