Commentary for Haggai 1:2

This people has said Since their enemies stopped them the first time, they think that I will not fulfill My words that I said, (Dan. 9:2) “According to the completion of seventy years from the destruction of Jerusalem”; and that the time for the House to be rebuilt will never come. Say to them that now the time has come, but the first time was only a remembrance at the completion of the seventy years from the inception of the kingdom of Babylon. And so it was that at the end of seventy years they were remembered for going up by the sanction of Cyrus; but the [time for the] building of the House depended upon [counting from] the destruction of Jerusalem, which took place eighteen years later than [the inception of] the kingdom of Babylon, as the master said (Meg. 11b): “They were exiled in the eighteenth year; they were exiled in the nineteenth year.” Now, the eighteen years are complete.