Haggai 2:15-19
From This Day On
15Now consider carefully from this day forward: Before one stone was placed on another in the temple of the LORD,
16from that time, when one came expecting a heap of twenty ephahs of grain, there were but ten. When one came to the winepress to draw out fifty baths, there were but twenty.
17I struck you—all the work of your hands—with blight, mildew, and hail, but you did not turn to Me, declares the LORD.
18Consider carefully from this day forward—from the twenty-fourth day of the ninth month, the day the foundation of the LORD’s temple was laid—consider carefully:
19Is there still seed in the barn? The vine, the fig, the pomegranate, and the olive tree have not yet yielded fruit. But from this day on, I will bless you.”
Berean Standard Bible
Haggai is talking to people who are building a temple while the harvests come in short. He told them to consider carefully at 1:5 and again at 1:7, and both times he was pointing back at what had already failed. He uses the same instruction here and turns it to face the other way.
He starts with the accounts. A man walks up to a heap of grain expecting twenty measures and finds ten. Another goes to the winepress to draw off fifty and comes away with twenty. Half, and then less than half. These are not vague complaints; they are the kind of figures a farmer writes down and then checks a second time.
Then God says where the shortfall came from. He struck them, and all the work of their hands, with blight and mildew and hail, and he says it in the first person, with nothing taken off the edge of it. The sentence does not stop there.
but you did not turn to Me, declares the LORD.
The short harvests had a message inside them, and the message went undelivered, because nobody was reading. The numbers came in low and got filed under weather.
Now he fixes a date, and he is careful about it: the twenty-fourth day of the ninth month, the day the foundation of the temple was laid. He wants that particular day in their heads. Then he asks them a question.
Is there still seed in the barn?
He leaves the question standing there and moves straight to the orchard, which has produced nothing, and only then does he finish the sentence.
The vine, the fig, the pomegranate, and the olive tree have not yet yielded fruit. But from this day on, I will bless you.
From this day. Not from the harvest, and not from the day the roof goes on. God names the day rather than the outcome, and the day he names is one on which nothing outside has changed at all. The new thing is what these people have decided to start doing about the house of God, and God is willing to begin the blessing from there.
How We Know
The pattern Haggai describes has a name elsewhere in the prophets, and the same complaint attached to it.
Amos 4:9 says God struck the gardens and vineyards with blight and mildew, that the locust devoured the fig and olive trees, and then adds: yet you did not return to Me. Haggai 2:17 gives blight, mildew and hail, and closes with the same complaint, that they did not turn to Him.
Neither passage explains the phrase to its audience.
Inside Haggai itself, the instruction to consider carefully comes back from 1:5 and 1:7, where it introduced the list of things that did not satisfy. Verse 15 uses it to introduce the short harvests of verses 16 and 17. Then verse 18 says it twice more, and what follows this time is a blessing. The book gives no signal that it has changed direction. The reader is expected to notice.
Questions
1 God gives them two numbers off the harvest. What are they?
AnswerTen measures of grain where twenty were expected, and twenty out of the winepress where fifty were. Half, and then less than half. A bad year is only a feeling until somebody writes it down, and these are numbers.
2 God says he sent the blight and the hail himself. What is the sadder half of that sentence?
AnswerThe words that follow it: you did not turn to Me. The thin harvests were meant to be read as a message, and they were not. The numbers came in low and got filed under weather.
3 Has anyone here kept doing a right thing while nothing got better? What was the waiting like?
AnswerMost of us have a version of it, and the honest answer usually involves wondering whether we imagined the whole thing. That stretch between deciding and seeing is exactly where these people are standing when God speaks to them.
4 What has come in from the fields on the day God promises to bless them?
AnswerNothing yet. God asks whether there is still seed in the barn, and the vine, the fig, the pomegranate and the olive have not yielded fruit. He makes them look at that first, and then dates the blessing from that same day.
What This Means for Us
Most of us date a change from the day it starts working: the pay rise, the good report, the week the arguing stops. God dates this one from the day the foundation went in, when the trees still had nothing on them.
That leaves a gap between turning and seeing, and the gap is where families give up. Haggai's people had nothing in from the fields when God told them to start counting from that day, and their empty barns did not mean the rebuilding was a mistake. He was not being unkind to them. He was being early.
Prayer
Father, we want the barn full before we will believe anything has changed. Thank you that you name the day and not the harvest. Give us patience in the gap between turning and seeing, and keep us from reading your silences as absence. Amen.