Haggai 2:16

Since those days were Lit. from their being. We may supply either "days" as in A.V. or "things," since those things were, i.e. that reprehensible conduct of yours. The R. V. renders happily, through all that time.

when one came Lit. to come, i.e. there was coming, or one came.

twenty measures The word "measures" is not in the Hebrew. The LXX. supply seahs, (σάτα), the Vulg. bushels(modiorum). But the word is perhaps purposely omitted, because the prophet wishes to lay stress on the proportion. The heap, which when it was laid in the barn contained twenty measures (what measures they were it matters not for his present purpose), was found by the owner when he came to use it to have dwindled down to ten. The words as they stand are very forcible, "To come to a heap of twenty and there were ten."

there were The introduction of the verb "were" is perhaps intended to be emphatic: q. d. "the heap was expected to be twenty, it was(in real existence) ten." And so again lower down in the same verse.

pressfat i.e. the lower vat or reservoir into which the must squeezed out from the grapes in the press or upper vat flowed. "From the scanty notices contained in the Bible, we gather that the wine-presses of the Jews consisted of two receptacles or vats placed at different elevations, in the upper one of which the grapes were trodden, while the lower one received the ex-pressed juice. The two vats are mentioned together only in Joel 3:13: -The press (gath) is full: the fats (yekebim) overflow" the upper vat being full of fruit, the lower one overflowing with the must.… The two vats were usually dug or hewn out of the solid rock (Isaiah 5:2, margin; Matthew 21:33). Ancient wine-presses, so constructed, are still to be seen in Palestine, one of which is thus described by Robinson: -Advantage had been taken of a ledge of rock; on the upper side a shallow vat had been dug out, eight feet square and fifteen inches deep. Two feet lower down another smaller vat was excavated, four feet square by three feet deep. The grapes were trodden in the shallow upper vat, and the juice drawn off by a hole at the bottom (still remaining) into the lower vat." B. R. iii. 137, 603)." Dict. of Bible, Art Wine-press.

fifty vessels out of the press Lit. fifty purah. The A.V. supplies the word "vessels" after "fifty," just as it does "measures" after "twenty," in the former part of the verse, and then taking the word "purah" to mean the press (as it does in Isaiah 63:3, the only other place in which it occurs), again supplies "out of" before it. This preserves the parallelism between the two parts of the verse. Perhaps, however, "purah" may here mean a liquid measure (LXX. μετρητής); possibly, as Keil suggests, "the measure which was generally obtained from one filling of the wine-press with grapes;" lit. "fifty wine-presses." The earlier copies of R. V. print vessels in italics, and leave purahuntranslated. The mistake however has now been corrected.