Haggai 2:17 (DRB)

Passage

When you went to a heap of twenty bushels, and they became ten: and you went into the press, to press out fifty vessels, and they became twenty.

Nearby Context

Haggai 2:15 And Haggai answered, and said: So is this people, and so is this nation before my face, saith the Lord, and so is all the work of their hands: and all that they have offered there, shall be defiled.

Haggai 2:16 And now consider in your hearts, from this day and upward, before there was a stone laid upon a stone in the temple of the Lord.

Haggai 2:17 When you went to a heap of twenty bushels, and they became ten: and you went into the press, to press out fifty vessels, and they became twenty.

Haggai 2:18 I struck you with a blasting wind, and all the works of your hand with the mildew and with hail, yet there was none among you that returned to me, saith the Lord.

Haggai 2:19 Set your hearts from this day, and henceforward, from the four and twentieth day of the ninth month: from the day that the foundations of the temple of the Lord were laid, and lay it up in your hearts.

Study Lenses

The verse centers on "went", "heap", "twenty", "bushels", "became", and "press". It is saying that the verse draws attention to "went" and "heap", so its meaning should be read from those terms before moving to application.

The nearby context moves from verse 16's "And now consider in your hearts from..." into verse 18's "I struck you with a blasting wind...", so "went" and "heap" belong inside that flow. In Haggai context, the local focus is covenant, worship, and faithfulness.

A plain takeaway is to answer the verse's own emphasis on "went" and "heap" with trust shaped by these words, not by a vague optimism outside the passage.