Haggai 1:11 - Exposition

I called for a drought. So Elisha says ( 2 Kings 8:1 ) that "the Lord hath called for a famine." There is a play of words in the Hebrew: as they had let the Lord's house lie" waste" ( thatch ) ( Haggai 1:4 , Haggai 1:9 ), so the Lord punished them with "drought" ( choreb ) . The Septuagint and Syriac, pointing differently, translate this last word "sword," but this is not suitable for the context, which speaks of the sterility of the land only. The land, in contradistinction to the mountains , is the plain country. Nothing anywhere was spared. All the labour of the hands ( Psalms 128:2 , etc.). All that they had effected by long and wearisome toil in the cornfield, the vineyard, etc. (comp. Hosea 2:9 ; Joel 1:10 ).