Albert Barnes Commentary Haggai 2:18

"Consider, I pray you, from this day and backward, from the four and twentieth day of the ninth [month], since the day that the foundation of Jehovah`s temple was laid, consider it." — Haggai 2:18 (ASV)

From the day that the foundation of the Lord’s house - Zechariah, in a passage corresponding to this, uses the same words (Zechariah 8:9), the day that the foundation of the house of the Lord of hosts was laid, that the temple might be built, not of the first foundation, but of the work as resumed in obedience to the words by “the mouth of the prophets,” Haggai and himself, which, Ezra also says, was (Ezra 4:24; Ezra 5:1) in the second year of Darius. But that work was resumed, not at the time of this prophecy, but three months before, on the 24th of the sixth month. Since the word translated here, "from," is in no case used of the present time, Haggai gives two dates: the resumption of the work, as marked in these words, and the actual present.

He would then say that even in these last months, since they had begun the work, there were still no signs for the better. There was still no seed in the barn, the harvest having been blighted and the fruit-trees stripped by the hail before the close of the sixth month, when they resumed the work. Yet even though there were still no signs of change, no earnest that the promise would be fulfilled, God pledges His word: from this day I will bless you.

Henceforth, from their obedience, God would give them those fruits of the earth, which in His Providence had been withheld during their negligence. God, said Paul and Barnabas (Acts 14:17), left not Himself without witness, in that He did good, and gave us rain from heaven and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food and gladness.

All the Old and New Testament—the Law, the prophets and the Psalms, the Apostles and our Lord Himself—bear witness to the Providence of God who makes His natural laws serve the moral discipline of His creature, man.

The physical theory, which presupposes that God so fixed the laws of His creation as to leave no room for Himself to vary them, would, even if true, only come to this: that Almighty God, knowing absolutely (as He must know) the actions of His creatures (however this is reconcilable with our free agency, of which we are conscious), framed the laws of His physical creation so that plenty or famine, the health or sickness of our cattle or of the fruits of the earth, would coincide with the good or evil conduct of man, with his prayers or his neglect of prayer.

The reward or chastisement comes to man equally, whether it is the result of God’s will acting apart from any system He has created, or within it and through it.

It is equally His Providential agency, whether He has established any such system with all its minute variations, or whether these variations are the immediate result of His sovereign will.

If He has instituted any physical system, so that the rain, hail, and its proportions, size, and destructiveness, would come in a regulated irregularity—as fixed in all eternity as the revolutions of the heavenly bodies or the courses of the comets—then we only arrive at a more intricate perfection of His creation. This perfection means that in all eternity He framed those laws in exact conformity to the perfectly foreseen actions of men, both good and evil, and to their prayers also. It means that He, knowing certainly whether the creature (whom He has framed to have its bliss in depending on Him) would or would not cry out to Him, framed those physical laws in conformity with this foresight, so that the supply of what is necessary for our wants, or its withholding, will be in all time incorporated into the system of our probation.

However, lest we keep God out of His own world, we must remember this other truth: whether God acts in any such system or not, He (Hebrews 1:3) upholdeth all things by the word of His power by an ever-present working. Therefore, it is He who at each moment does what is done, and He who does and maintains in existence all that He has created, in the exact order and variations of their being.

Fire and hail, snow and vapor, stormy wind fulfilling His word (Psalms 148:8) are likewise immediate results of His Divine Agency, in whatever way it pleases Him to act, and are the expression of His will.