Haggai 2:2

"Speak now to Zerubbabel, the son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and to Joshua the son of Jehozadak, the High Priest, and to the remnant of the people, saying, 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?"

"Who is left among you that saw this house ... ?" There would hardly have been any point in a question framed just like this, if indeed there were none who could remember the former temple of Solomon. As Barnes said, "This implies that there were those among them who had seen the first house in its glory, yet but few."[2] The speculation that Haggai himself might have been among them is valid enough, but unprovable, as noted in our introduction.

Speaking of the glory of that first Temple, it must indeed have been a magnificent splendor.

"Solomon overlaid the house within with pure gold: and he drew chains of gold across the oracle; and he overlaid it with gold. And the whole house he overlaid with gold, until all the house was finished: also the whole altar that belonged to the oracle he overlaid with gold (1 Kings 6:21,22)."

Some have estimated the cost of Solomon's Temple somewhere between three and five billion dollars!

"This house ..." Haggai did not view the efforts of his generation as the construction of a new Temple, but as the rebuilding of the old one. As Hailey noted, "The Lord never had but one house in Jerusalem." In an accommodative sense, that was "the Lord's house," whether the one built by Solomon, rebuilt by Zerubbabel, or renovated by Herod the Great. It should always be borne in mind, however, that the only genuine Temple the Lord ever had is the Church of Jesus Christ our Lord.

"Is it not in your eyes as nothing ...?" The inferiority of the new edifice did not derive so much from the lateral dimensions of it, because Cyrus had ordered that the new Temple should even exceed the old one in size. "If the injunction of Cyrus had been heeded, the dimensions of the new temple would have exceeded those of the old",[3] but there was no way, really that Haggai and Zerubbabel, with the limited resources available, could have strictly adhered to any such guidelines. Even so, "the proportions were not greatly inferior to those of the first temple."[4] The chief physical shortcoming, it appears, would have been in the height of the building. Whereas Solomon's temple stood 120 cubits in height, that of Zerubbabel was only 60 cubits, according to Josephus.[5] However, it was not merely the lesser height and volume of the new edifice that attested its inferiority, but the lack of all the extravagant adornment which had distinguished the first. "Six hundred talents of gold ($10,000,000.00) were used in overlaying the Holy of Holies alone."[6] Such monies were not available to Zerubbabel.