A Bag with Holes
David Davies. Haggai 1:6 You have sown much, and bring in little; you eat, but you have not enough; you drink, but you are not filled with drink… (a talk with children): — In olden times folk kept their money in bags, and still people keep it in little bags which we call purses. "What is the good of a money-bag if it is full of holes?" Yet the prophet says that the people of his day put their money into suck bags. He means that they tried to keep something far more precious than money in this reckless fashion. He speaks of their "wages." We are always sorry to lose anything valuable. Yet the way to lose anything is to put it in a bag with holes. What disappointment therefore is expressed here by the prophet! The feeling of loss is all the keener when we lose something that we have earned. There are some people who have what we call windfalls. Such a" windfall" has generally, like fallen apples, a bruise about it. It is not half so good as when we earn it ourselves. Now these people in the text had earned what they lost. The word here used for "wages" denotes hard earnings. I hope you children will learn in life to earn wages of your own, The best thing in life is to work for what we get. They are few who know how to use money without first knowing how to earn it. These people knew how to earn money, but they did not know how to take care of it. Half the battle of life is to earn; and the other half is to know where to place and how to use what we earn. But I have seen people who worked very hard, and yet at the close of life entered eternity as paupers. They took care of what we call money: they did not put their wealth into a bag with holes. But they never remembered that the money of this world does not pass current in the next. There is another kind of coin necessary for the next world. To die rich in the things of the world very often means to die poor with regard to the world to come. (David Davies.) Parallel Verses KJV: Ye have sown much, and bring in little; ye eat, but ye have not enough; ye drink, but ye are not filled with drink; ye clothe you, but there is none warm; and he that earneth wages earneth wages to put it into a bag with holes. WEB: You have sown much, and bring in little. You eat, but you don't have enough. You drink, but you aren't filled with drink. You clothe yourselves, but no one is warm, and he who earns wages earns wages to put them into a bag with holes in it."