John Calvin Commentary Haggai 1:9

"Ye looked for much, and, lo, it came to little; and when ye brought it home, I did blow upon it. Why? saith Jehovah of hosts. Because of my house that lieth waste, while ye run every man to his own house." — Haggai 1:9 (ASV)

Here the Prophet relates again that the Jews were deprived of support, and that they, in a way, pined away in their distress because they robbed God of the worship due to Him. He first repeats the fact, Ye have looked for much, but behold little. It may happen that one is contented with a very slender portion because much is not expected.

Those who are satisfied with their own poverty are not anxious even if their portion of food is scanty, though they are constrained to feed on acorns. Those who have become hardened in enduring evils do not seek much; but those who desire much are more affected and troubled by their poverty. This is the reason why the Prophet says, Ye have looked for much, and, behold, there was but little. That is, “You are not like the peasants, who satisfy themselves with any sort of food and are not troubled on account of their straitened circumstances; but your desire has led you to seek abundance. Hence you seek and greedily lay hold of things on every side; but, behold, it comes to little.”

In the second place, he adds, Ye have brought it home. He further mentions another kind of evil—that when they gathered wine, corn, and money, all these things immediately vanished. Ye have brought it home, and I have blown upon it. By saying that they brought it home, he intimates that what they had acquired was laid up so that it might be preserved safely. For those who had filled their storehouses, wine-cellars, and bags thought that they had no more to do with God. Hence it was that profane men securely indulged themselves; they thought that they were beyond the reach of danger when their houses were well filled.

God, on the contrary, shows that their houses became empty when filled with treasures and provisions. But He speaks still more distinctly—that He had blown upon them, that is, that He had dissipated them by His breath. For the Prophet did not consider it enough to narrate historically what the Jews had experienced; his purpose was also to point out the cause, as it were, by the finger. He therefore teaches us that what they laid in store in their houses did not vanish away without a cause, but that this happened through the blowing of God, even because He cursed their blessing, according to what we shall later see in the Prophet Malachi.

He then adds, Why is this? saith Jehovah of hosts. God here asks, not because He had any doubts on the subject, but that He might, by this sort of goading, rouse the Jews from their lethargy: “Think of the cause, and know that My hand is not guided by a blind impulse when it strikes you. You ought, then, to consider the reason why all things thus decay and perish.” Here again, the stupidity of the people is sharply reproved because they did not pay attention to the cause of their evils, for they ought to have known this of themselves.

But God gives the answer because He saw that they remained stupefied—On account of my house, He says, because it is waste. God here assigns the cause; He shows that though no one of them considered why they were so famished, the judgment of His curse was still sufficiently manifest on account of the Temple remaining a waste.

He says, And you run, every one to his own house. Some read, “You take delight, every one in his own house,” for it is the verb רצה, retse, which we have recently noticed, and it means either to take pleasure in a thing or to run. Every one, then, runs to his house, or, every one delights in his house.

But it is more suitable to the context to give this rendering: “Every one runs to his house.” For the Prophet here reminds the Jews that they were slow and slothful in the work of building the Temple because they hastened to their private houses. He then reproves here their ardor in being intent on building their own houses, so that they had no leisure to build the Temple. This is the hastening which the Prophet blames and condemns in the Jews.

Therefore, we may learn again from this that they had long delayed building the sanctuary after the time had arrived. For, as we mentioned yesterday, those who think the Jews returned in the fifty-eighth year and had not then undergone the punishment denounced by Jeremiah are very deluded. They thus obscure the favor of God; indeed, they wholly subvert the truth of the promises, as though they had returned contrary to God’s will through the permission of Cyrus, although Isaiah says that Cyrus would be the instrument of their promised redemption (Isaiah 45:1).

Surely, then, Cyrus must have been dead before the time was fulfilled! In that case, God could not have been the redeemer of His people. Therefore, Eusebius and those who agree with him thus most absurdly confounded the order of time. It now follows—