“The dead bodies of thy servants have they given to be meat unto the fowls of the heaven, the flesh of thy saints unto the beasts of the earth.”
The desecration continues: "They have given the bodies of your servants to the birds of the air for food, and the flesh of your faithful to the wild animals of the earth." The denial of proper burial—leaving corpses exposed to scavengers—represents a final indignity and violation of covenantal dignity. In ancient Near Eastern thought, the inability to bury the dead and the exposure of bodies to wild animals constituted the ultimate humiliation. The phrase "your servants" and "your faithful" emphasizes that these are God's own people being subjected to this degradation.
Church Fathers on Psalms 79:2
1. Over the title of this Psalm, being so short and so simple, I think we need not tarry. But the prophecy which here we read sent before, we know to be evidently fulfilled. For when these things were being sung in the times of King David, nothing of such sort, by the hostility of the Gentiles, as yet had befallen the city Jerusalem, nor the Temple of God, which as yet was not even built. For that after the death of David his son Salomon made a temple to God, who is ignorant?…
Nicene & Post-Nicene / Ante-Nicene Fathers translations · public domain
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