Haggai 1:4 - Exposition

For you, O ye; for you, yourselves; such as ye are (see Zechariah 7:5 ). He appeals to their consciences. You can make yourselves comfortable; you have time and means and industry to expend on your own private interests, and can you look with indifference on the house of God lying waste? Your cieled houses; your houses, and those cieled— wainscoted and roofed with costly woods ( 1 Kings 7:3 , 1 Kings 7:7 ; Jeremiah 22:14 ), perhaps with the very cedar provided for the rebuilding of the temple ( Ezra 3:7 ). Septuagint, ἐν οἴκοις ὑμῶν κοιλοστάθμοις , "your vaulted houses," or, as St. Cyril explains, "houses whose doorposts were elaborately adorned with emblems and devices." They had naught of the feeling of David ( 2 Samuel 7:2 ), "I dwell in an house of cedar, but the ark of God dwelleth within curtains."