Isaiah 63:18

The people … while The want of an acc. to the verb excites suspicion, for it is hardly possible to take "thy sanctuary" as the obj. common to the two clauses. The text of the LXX., which reads "mountain" instead of "people" and has the verb in the first pers. plu., is perhaps to be preferred: For a little while have we possessed Thy holy mountain. Comp. ch. Isaiah 57:13.

The second part of the verse speaks of a desecration of the Temple, which apparently followedthe possession of the land. The difficulty of reconciling these two facts has been pointed out in the Introductory Note above. If any destruction of the second Temple were known to have taken place about the time of Ezra, the circumstances would be explained. But the stronger statements in Isaiah 64:10-11 make it unlikely that if such a calamity had really happened it should not have been expressly mentioned, even in the meagre historical records which have been preserved of that period.