Who is left among you! etc. It is quite possible that there should be some old people present who had seen Solomon's temple. Many have thought that Haggai himself was of the number. It was sixty-eight years ago that the temple was destroyed, and we can well believe that its remarkable features were deeply impressed on the minds of those who as boys or youths had loved and admired it.
Ezra tells us (Ezra 3:12) that "many of the priests and Levites" [when the foundation first was laid] and chief of the fathers, who were ancient men, that had seen the first house,… wept with a loud voice."
This house. The prophet identifies the present with Solomon's temple, as being adapted for the same purposes, to fill the same place in the national life, built on the same hallowed spot, and partly with the same materials.
In the Jews' eyes there was one only temple, whatever might be the date of its erection or the comparative worth of its decorations and materials. First; former, as verse 9. How do ye see it now? (Numbers 13:18).
In what condition do ye see this house now? Is it not in your eyes in comparison of it as nothing? The words, "in comparison of it," ought to be omitted, as not required by the Hebrew idiom. Does it not seem in your eyes as if it had no existence?
If the injunction of Cyrus (Ezra 1:3, etc.) had been carried out, the dimensions of. the new temple would have exceeded those of the old; but Zerubbabel seems to have been unable, with the small resources at his disposal, to execute the original design, though even so the proportions were not greatly inferior to those of the earlier temple.
But the chief inferiority lay in the absence of the splendour and enrichment with which Solomon adorned his edifice. The gold which he had lavished on the house was no longer available; the precious stones could not be had.
Besides. these defects, the Talmudists reckon five things wanting in this second temple, viz. the ark of the covenant, with the cherubim and mercy seat; the holy fire; the Shechinah; the spirit of prophecy; the Urim and Thnmmim.
It was, according to Josephus, only half the height of Solomon's-sixty cubits ('Ant.,' 15:11, 1), and it appears to have been in many respects inferior to the first building ('Ant.,' Ezra 4:2). Hecabaeus of Abdera gives the dimensions of the courts as five hundred feet in length and a hundred cubits in breadth (double the width of the court of the tabernacle), and the size of the altar as twenty cubits square and ten cubits high.