"10 On the twenty-fourth day of the ninth month, in the second year of Darius, the word of the Lord came by Haggai the prophet, 11 “Thus says the Lord of hosts: Ask the priests about the law: 12 ‘If someone carries holy meat in the fold of his garment and touches with his fold bread or stew or wine or oil or any kind of food, does it become holy?’” The priests answered and said, “No.” 13 Then Haggai said, “If someone who is unclean by contact with a dead body touches any of these, does it become unclean?” The priests answered and said, “It does become unclean.” 14 Then Haggai answered and said, “So is it with this people, and with this nation before me, declares the Lord, and so with every work of their hands. And what they offer there is unclean. 15 Now then, consider from this day onward. Before stone was placed upon stone in the temple of the Lord, 16 how did you fare? When one came to a heap of twenty measures, there were but ten. When one came to the wine vat to draw fifty measures, there were but twenty. 17 I struck you and all the products of your toil with blight and with mildew and with hail, yet you did not turn to me, declares the Lord. 18 Consider from this day onward, from the twenty-fourth day of the ninth month. Since the day that the foundation of the Lord's temple was laid, consider: 19 Is the seed yet in the barn? Indeed, the vine, the fig tree, the pomegranate, and the olive tree have yielded nothing. But from this day on I will bless you.”
Haggai 2:10-19
To understand the message Haggai is imparting, and the application of the parable, we need to think of the general background. Haggai had prophesied in the sixth month, and had said to them that the reason why they had sown much and brought forth little, and why they had economic stringency and insolvency was that they had not been right with God. He had summoned them to repent; and they had done so, and got down to the work of rebuilding. They had been hard at it for three months, but things had not improved in any appreciable way; their crops were no more prosperous, the seed was not yet in the barn, the vine and the fig tree had not brought forth. And they were, in effect, reproaching the prophet, saying, 'You said that if we repented, God would prosper us'. And, against that attitude, Haggai spoke this word, saying, 'There has not been time, as yet, for the change to work. Holiness is not so infectious as uncleanness and disease. If contact with a holy thing has but a slight effect, but contact with the unclean a much greater (11-13), your attempts to rebuild the Temple have less good effect on your condition now than the bad influence of your past sinfulness. That is why adversity still continues.' The truth is, the effects of sin and corruption are very pervasive; getting rid of them is not an easy matter. Holiness, the work of restoration, is uphill work, and does not become established without much patience and perseverance. It takes longer by far than the process of deterioration and declension. G. Adam Smith comments, 'These poor colonists, in their hope deferred, were learning the lesson, which humanity finds hard, that repentance and new-born zeal do not immediately change our material condition; but the consequences of sin often outweigh the influence of conversion, and though devoted to God and industrious we may still be punished for a sinful past. Evil has an infection greater than holiness. Its results are more extensive and lasting. By no casuistry did Haggai appeal to the priests, but by ethical truth embedded in human experience.'