12. If someone carries sanctified meat in the fold of a garment and the fold touches bread, soup, wine, oil, or any other food, do they become sanctified? “No,” the priests answered.
13. Then Haggai asked: “If a person defiled from contact with a corpse touches any of these, do they become defiled?” The priests answered, “They become defiled.”
14. Then Haggai replied:So is this people, and so is this nationin my sight—oracle of the Lord—And so is all the work of their hands;what they offer there is defiled.
15. Now reflect, from this day forward—before you set stone to stone in the temple of the Lord,
16. what was your experience?When one went to a heap of grain for twenty ephahs,there were only ten;When one went to a vat to draw fifty ephahs,there were only twenty.
17. I struck you, and all the work of your hands,with searing wind, blight, and hail,yet you did not return to me—oracle of the Lord.
18. Reflect from this day forward, from the twenty-fourth day of the ninth month. From the day on which the temple of the Lord was founded, reflect!