Your holy people held possession for a little while; our adversaries have trampled down your sanctuary.
The foregoing praises were intended as an introduction to this prayer, which is continued to the end of the next chapter, and it is an affectionate, importunate, pleading prayer. It is calculated for the time of the captivity. As they had promises, so they had prayers, prepared for them against that time of need, that they might take with them words in turning to the...
Commenting on Isaiah 63:15-19
The people of thy holiness have possessed it but a little while,.... Either the land of Canaan, which the Jews, the Lord's holy people, whom he had separated from others, possessed about fourteen hundred years, which was but a little while in comparison of "for ever", as was promised; or they enjoyed it but a little while in peace and quiet, being often disturbed by...
people of . . . holiness--Israel dedicated as holy unto God (Isa 62:12; Deu 7:6). possessed--namely, the Holy Land, or Thy "sanctuary," taken from the following clause, which is parallel to this (compare Isa 64:10-11; Psa 74:6-8). thy--an argument why God should help them; their cause is His cause.