Albert Barnes Commentary Haggai 2:3

"Who is left among you that saw this house in its former glory? and how do ye see it now? is it not in your eyes as nothing?" — Haggai 2:3 (ASV)

Who is left among you? – The question implies that there were those among them who had seen the first house in its glory, yet only a few. When the foundations of the first temple were laid, there were many (Ezra 3:12): Many of the priests and Levites and chief of the fathers, ancient men, that had seen the first house, when the foundations of this house were laid before their eyes, wept with a loud voice. Fifty-nine years had elapsed from the destruction of the temple in the eleventh year of Zedekiah to the first year of Cyrus, so that old men of seventy years had seen the first temple when they themselves were eleven years old.

In the second year of Darius, seventy years had passed, so that those who were 78 or 80 years old might still remember it well. Ezra’s father, Seraiah, was slain in the eleventh year of Zedekiah; so he must have been born at the latest a few months later, yet he lived until the second year of Artaxerxes.

Is not such as it is as nothing? – Besides the richness of the sculptures in the former temple, everything that allowed for it was overlaid with gold. For instance (1 Kings 6:22, 28, 30, 32, 35), Solomon overlaid the whole house with gold, until he had finished all the house; also the whole altar by the oracle, the two cherubim, the floor of the house, and the doors of the holy of holies. The ornaments of it also included the cherubims thereon and the palm trees he covered with gold fitted upon the carved work.

The altar of gold and the table of gold, on which the showbread was, the ten candlesticks of pure gold, with the flowers and the lamps and the tongs of gold, the bowls, the snuffers, and the basons, the spoons, and the censers of pure gold, and the hinges of pure gold for all the doors of the temple were also of gold (1 Kings 7:48–50).

Furthermore, according to 2 Chronicles 3:4–9: The porch that was in the front of the house, twenty cubits broad and 120 cubits high, was overlaid within with pure gold; the house glistened with precious stones; and the gold (it is added) was gold of Parvaim—a land, of course, distant and unknown to us. Six hundred talents of gold (about 4,320,000 British pounds) were employed in overlaying the holy of holies. The upper chambers were also of gold; the weight of the nails was fifty shekels of gold.