Haggai 1:4

[Is it] time for you, O ye, to dwell in your panelled houses,.... They could not only find time, leisure, and convenience to build houses to dwell in; but to wainscot them, and line them with boards

Is it time for you, O ye, to dwell in your cieled houses, and this house lie waste? Is it time for you, O ye, to dwell in your cieled houses, and this house lie waste? Is it time.

Is it time? you think it full time to build your own houses, you judge it seasonable enough to lay out much cost on adorning them, what pretence can you make that it is not seasonable to build my house? For you, Jews, who were by a king (that knew not your God) sent to build my house, you unthankful and forgetful ones. To dwell; to settle yourselves securely, and for continuance with stateliness. Ceiled; searched and with cedar wainscot, curiously carved and covered, and as richly adorned as if you were full of treasures. Houses: it seems to intimate some of them had more than one house, a city and a country house, and whilst God’ s house lay waste; they thus lavish out their wealth on private worldly conveniences, but grudge the charge on God’ s house. Can you thus live without a temple, an altar, a sacrifice, and yet cannot live without stately houses? Do you owe so much to yourselves, and so little to your God? so much to your bodies, so little to your souls? Lie waste; in its rubbish, or in bare, naked foundations without any superstructure.

Haggai 1:4 [Is it] time for you, O ye, to dwell in your cieled houses, and this house [lie] waste?Ver. 4. Is it time for you, O ye, to dwell in your ceiled houses, &c.] Not covered only, but ceiled with cedar (as the Chaldee here hath it), arched and garnished, as the Greek, carved and trimmed, as Ambrose rendereth it (Lib. 3. epist. 12). Sure, either your beds are very soft or your hearts very hard, that you can not only come into the tabernacles of your houses, but give sleep to your eyes, or slumber to your eyelids, before ye have found "a place for the Lord, a habitation for the mighty God of Jacob," Psalms 132:4-5. Good David could not find in his heart to dwell in a house of cedar when the ark of God dwelt within curtains, 2 Samuel 7:2. Valiant Uriah deemed it altogether unfit and unreasonable that when the ark, and Israel, and Judah, abode in tents, he should go to his house to eat and drink, and to take his ease and pleasure, 2 Samuel 11:11. Solomon first built a house for God, and then for himself. The Christian emperors, Constantine, Theodosius, Honorius, &c., exceeded in building churches, which, from their stateliness, were styled Basilicae, or places for a king. The very Turks to this day, though content to dwell in mean and homely houses, yet their Mosques or meeting houses are very sumptuously built and set forth. It is a principle in nature, that the things of God are older and more to be respected than the things of men (τατου Yεουπρεσβυτεραητατωνανθρωπων. Herodot.). A professor of the Turks’ laws proclaims, before they attempt anything, that nothing be done against religion. This is better than that which was written over the gate of the senate house in Rome (which yet is not to be disliked, in its place and order), Ne quid detrimenti Resp. capiat. Let nothing be done to the harm of the republic. Give unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’ s: but with all, and above all, Give unto God the things that are God’ s. The Greek article is twice repeated by our Saviour, when he speaketh for God, more than when for Caesar (τατουθεουτωθεω, Matthew 22:21); to show that our special care should be to give God his due, to "seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness," and then all other things shall seek us. Caetera aut aderunt, aut caetera non oberunt The rest either will happen or the rest will not harm. (Cicero). But most people are so busied about their own houses, their cottages of clay, 2 Corinthians 5:1, the body, that God’ s house, the soul, lies waste and neglected; the lean kine eat up the fat; the strength of the ground is spent in nourishing weeds. Earthly mindedness sucketh the sap of grace from the heart, as the ivy doth from the oak, and maketh it unfruitful.

(4) Is it time for you . . .—Literally, Is it time for you to dwell in your houses, and those ceiled?—i.e., probably with cedar and other costly woods. A crushing retort. If the adverse decree of Artaxerxes, which disallowed the building of Jerusalem (Ezra 4:21), had not hindered them from erecting magnificent residences for themselves, how could it reasonably excuse an utter neglect of God’s House?

Verse 4. Is it time for you] If the time be not come to rebuild the temple, it cannot be come for you to build yourselves comfortable houses: but ye are rebuilding your houses; why then do ye not rebuild the house of the Lord? The foundation of the temple had been laid fourteen years before, and some considerable progress made in the building; and it had been lying waste in that unfinished state to the present time.

4. for you, O ye] Lit., for you, you: you, yourselves, R. V. The repetition of the pronoun is emphatic, “you are the people I mean;” or you in implied contrast to Almighty God, comp. 1 Samuel 25:24, where Abigail, anxious to appease David’s anger at the churlishness of Nabal, exclaims, “upon me, my Lord, I (am the person at fault), let this iniquity be.” your cieled houses] Lit. your houses cieled, i.e. your houses (and they too) cieled. The adjective thus added without an article has the force of a predicate and so becomes emphatic. With the article it would form part of the subject. Comp. Psalms 143:10 : “Let Thy Spirit good (as it is, and therefore ready to help and guide the sinful and infirm), lead me,” &c. The translators in A. V., feeling the force of the adjective as a predicate, have broken the first part of the sentence into a separate proposition, “Thy Spirit is good, lead me,” &c. The Prayer-Book version is, “Let thy loving Spirit lead me,” &c. cieled] Lit. covered or boarded. The word is used with reference to the roof of the Temple, which was high-pitched like our modern roofs, and cieled with boards within. “He covered the house with beams (rafters) and boards of cedar,” 1 Kings 6:9. It is also used of the cieling with boards of Solomon’s house of the forest of Lebanon, 1 Kings 7:3, and of some kind of covering or boarding (the passage is obscure) of his “Porch of Judgment,” 1 Kings 7:7. The practice was luxurious and magnificent even in a king (Jeremiah 22:14). Yet they who professed themselves unable to restore the House of the Lord were indulging in it in their own houses. They built costly houses for themselves, even using, it may be, to decorate them, the cedar wood which had been brought for the Temple (Ezra 3:7; Dict. of the Bible, Art. Zerubbabel), and had grown indifferent to the ruin and desolation of the House of God.

Is it time for you - You, being what you are, the creatures of God, “to dwell in your ceiled houses,” more emphatically, in your houses, and those “ceiled,” probably with costly woods, such as cedar .

MESSAGE OF REBUKE FOR , 1-11.The Book of Haggai contains four separate prophetic utterances (Haggai 1:1-11; Haggai 2:1-23); to the first is added an historical section (Haggai 1:12-15), setting forth