Isaiah 64:11 - Exposition

Our holy and our beautiful house . This is the true meaning. The exiles have the tenderest and most vivid remembrance of the holiness and the beauty (or glory) of that edifice, which had formed the centre of the national life for above four centuries, and had been a marvel of richness and magnificence. Many of them had seen it with their own eyes ( Ezra 3:12 ), and could never forget its splendours. Where our fathers praised thee. Though in the later times of the Captivity there were still some of the exiles who had seen the temple, and probably worshipped in it, yet with the great majority it was otherwise. They thought of the temple as the place where their "fathers" had worshipped. Burned up with fire (see 2 Kings 25:9 ; 2 Chronicles 36:19 ; Jeremiah 52:13 ). Our pleasant things; or, our delectable things—as in Isaiah 44:9 ; the courts, gardens, outbuildings of the temple, are probably meant.