2:3 left among you. There is an implication here that Haggai himself must have seen the glories of the first temple, and was distressed at the state of the new one. If so, he must have been quite old when he wrote his prophecies, because the temple had been destroyed seventy years or more before this. His great age may account for the fact that he wrote only the four brief messages which are contained in his two chapters.

2:3 in comparison of it. There were, indeed, in Jerusalem a few who had seen the first temple, and who had “wept with a loud voice; and many shouted aloud with for joy” when the new foundation was laid (Ezra 3:12).