Haggai / Question
Haggai tells them to look back to the time “before stone was placed upon stone in the temple of the LORD” Haggai 2:15. He describes shortfalls such as expecting twenty measures and getting ten, and similar loss at the wine vat Haggai 2:16.
In Haggai 2:14–17, Yahweh applies a purity lesson to the whole community: they themselves, and therefore everything they do and bring, is treated as unclean. Haggai then urges them to look back over the period before rebuilding resumed, when their expected harvests repeatedly came up short. These verses sit inside Haggai’s fourth dated message (2:10–19). Just before this, Haggai asks the priests two questions about ritual transfer: holiness does not spread easily by contact, but uncleanness does (2:11–13).
Haggai 2:14–17 applies the priestly rulings about impurity (2:11–13) to the whole community. Yahweh declares that “this people” and “this nation” are unclean “before me,” and that this uncleanness reaches what they do and what they bring as offerings (verse 14).
A careful answer keeps the immediate passage, the book's argument, and the whole-Bible storyline together, so the question is answered in context instead of as a detached idea.
Start with Haggai 2:15, then read the surrounding section so the answer stays connected to the passage's flow.
15Now, please consider from this day and backward, before a stone was laid on a stone in the temple of Yahweh.