Since those days, &c.— The prophet is here speaking of the dearth and famine consequent upon their neglect of building the temple. The present verse is very elliptical; if the first clause were to be explained by the second, which it reasonably may, it should be rendered, When one came to an heap for twenty measures; that is to say, when a person came to a heap of corn, to draw out twenty measures from it, it was found so deficient, as to supply only ten. Such also was the case with respect to those who came to draw out fifty measures of wine from the wine-press. Dr. Gill explains it, "When the husbandman, having gathered in his corn, who is generally a good judge of what it would yield, came to a heap of it on his corn floor, either of sheaves unthreshed, or of corn unwinnowed, and expected that it would have produced at least twenty measures, after it was threshed and winnowed; to his great disappointment he had but ten out of it."
Related Commentaries of Haggai 2:16
Haggai 2:16
16 Since those days were, when one came to an heap of twenty measures, there were but ten: when one came to the pressfat for to draw out fifty vessels out of the press, there were but twenty.