The temple of Solomon was demolished in 586 BC, sixty-six years before Haggai’s prophecy. Despite this passage of time, there would still have been some older individuals among Haggai’s hearers who had seen the temple in its former glory. At the time of the relaying of the foundation stone of the temple in 536 BC, Scripture records that the rejoicing of the people was mixed with weeping from older men who remembered what the temple’s former splendour (Ezra 3:8–13). Even if the youngest of these individuals had been children at the time—say around five years old—they would have been about fifty-five in 536 BC. By the time of Haggai’s prophecy (520 BC), they would have been those who would have remembered would have been around seventy.
Haggai’s question, then, draws out the discouragement felt by these older witnesses, who could vividly compare the modest beginnings of the rebuilt temple with its former grandeur.
3 ‘Who is left among you who saw this house in its former glory? How do you see it now? Is it not as nothing in your eyes?