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Isaiah 64 · a question people ask

"Our holy and our beautiful house … is burned with fire" (64:11). When did that happen?

In the text

The chapter doesn't say. It calls the house "Our holy and our beautiful house where our fathers praised you" (64:11) and says it "is burned with fire" (64:11), after "Your holy cities have become a wilderness. Zion has become a wilderness, Jerusalem a desolation" (64:10). The verse before the chapter says, "Our adversaries have trodden down your sanctuary" (Isaiah 63:18). The prayer names no year, no king and no enemy, and these notes add no date and apply the ruin to no city or place today.

The verses

“Your holy cities have become a wilderness. Zion has become a wilderness, Jerusalem a desolation. Our holy and our beautiful house where our fathers praised you is burned with fire. All our pleasant places are laid waste.”
Isaiah 64:10-11 · World English Bible
“Your holy people possessed it but a little while. Our adversaries have trodden down your sanctuary.”
Isaiah 63:18 · World English Bible

From Favor's study of Isaiah 64

Isaiah 64: We are the clay

In Hebrew 64:1 and 64:3 end with the same four words: the prayer asks the LORD to come down just as it remembers him coming down. In Hebrew its "a God besides you" (64:4) has the same two words as David's prayer (2 Samuel 7:22), and Paul gives as Scripture words that share some of 64:4's (1 Corinthians 2:9). And every leaf in Isaiah fades.

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Scripture quotations are from the World English Bible, which is in the public domain. Every answer cites the verses it rests on. What we believe · All Bible questions