22. (a) I was delayed by the rain.
(b) I was made late by the rain.
(c) We were delayed by the rain.
23. (a) The village was destroyed by the fire.
(b) The village was destroyed by fire.
With the arguments swapped, the light verb (22b) comes to sound a bit marked, to me anyway. Is this because the light verb invites an intentional interpretation, and when we defer the agent to a complement—by the rain—we confound this invitation? Strangely, even the lexical version, (22a), feels a bit marked in a side-by-side comparison with the plural patient. Somehow we sounds more apt as the patient of rain delay than I.
In (23) the difference is even subtler. In a sense there’s no comparison to be made, because the choice of (23a) or (b) is wholly determined by whether the fire in question was previously introduced as a topic of discourse. If it was, you’d have to go with (23a), if not with (23b). Even so, with the arguments swapped, (23a) tugs at me just a bit: if you’ve gone so far as to attribute agency to the fire, if you’ve issued the invitation to an intentional interpretation, why confound that invitation by swapping the arguments?