Isaiah 16:12
And it shall come to pass, when it is seen that Moab is weary on the high place, that he shall come to his sanctuary to pray; but he shall not prevail. And it shall come to pass, when it is seen that Moab is weary on the high place, that he shall come to his sanctuary to pray; but he shall not prevail.
The verse belongs to the prophecy against Moab, one of the oppressors of Judah. It describes a sequence in which Moab becomes weary on the high place while seeking help, then comes to his sanctuary to pray, but does not prevail and fails to obtain what he seeks. The weariness comes in worship at the high place, and the turn to the sanctuary for prayer ends without success.
The sanctuary in the verse is Moab's own heathen temple of idolatrous worship, a place of prayer, worship, religious gathering and religious practice, and a rival to God's temple. It is a Moabite sanctuary, not the Lord's earthly or heavenly sanctuary, and it does not denote God's earthly tabernacle or temple or God's temple in heaven. The verse proves that the word sanctuary is used of heathen and idolatrous worship and devotion, not only of Jehovah's dwelling, so a sanctuary could belong to heathen worship.
This is one of the very few exceptions to the Bible's use of sanctuary for the tabernacle erected by Moses, the temple built by Solomon as its enlargement and continuation, and the heavenly sanctuary after whose pattern they were made and which they represented while the typical system lasted, and just as false deities being called gods does not change the real meaning of the term god, this pagan use does not change the real meaning of the term sanctuary. The Moabite sanctuary takes its name from the Lord's sanctuary. The verse is an instance of the word's use for Moses's place of prayer, rather than for the tabernacle or temple.
The verse establishes that there are two opposing sanctuaries, the sanctuary of Satan and the sanctuary of Jehovah. The pagan sanctuary in the verse shows that Paganism as the daily of Daniel 8 has a sanctuary whose place was to be cast down. The verse means that when the will stays committed to disobedience and self-seeking and braced in stubborn resistance to God, all effort to work up religious feeling is weary labor spent for nothing that shall not prevail. A person may try to feel sorrow for sin while holding fast to sin and try to force tender emotions of sorrow and love and gratitude toward God while the controversy is not yielded and the will is not submitted, but the tender emotions cannot be brought into exercise while hardness of will remains, and the striving ends in vain weariness without prevailing.