Ps. 63.9-11 (the wicked: a mock sacrifice)

Those / who seek to take my life / will be destroyed;
they / will go down / into the depths / of the earth.
Those / who would hand over the king / to the sword
will be left / as food for jackals.
But / he will rejoice / in God
Everyone / who swears by him / will rejoice,
for the mouths/ of the lie-speakers / will be shut. 

Here we see that the psalmist may, in fact, be the king. The two lines regarding the destruction of the wicked appear to be parallel, such that “my life” is, in the next verse, “the king.” Perhaps more important (or, interesting), is the how the death/destruction of the wicked is described and how it takes place. There is a dual movement of descent and remaining. Upon being ‘destroyed’ they “go down into the depths of the earth.” However, their death is also one that remains ‘on the earth’, in that their bodies will be left for the jackals to consume. We could say that this exemplifies the shade “going down”, while the body “stays above”. However true that may be, I think there is something else going on here. The point of the second verse is that the bodily exposure of the wicked is, intentionally, an exposure to shame. It is a profoundly disturbing thing to have one’s body not only not buried but left as food for wild animals in the ancient world. To intentionally leave the body thus, is a public act of shaming and desecration. It is meant to be so. We have pointed in this direction before when we examine the nature of the king—the king is a public figure. To attack the king opens one up to a punishment that is equally public—i.e., it opens one up to shame. Here, those who attack “me” are attacking the king and their destruction must partake of the same dynamic as their attack. Furthermore, there has been a very intentional play on the image of food throughout the same, from bodily longing and deprivation to the sacrificial meal eaten in the presence of God. Here, that wholly positive image of satiation is reversed completely when the wicked are punished: now, they are made into a mockery of the sacrificial meal by being made food for the wild animals in a place away from human habitation. It is some dark-sacrificial meal, the utter opposite of that life-giving type found by the psalmist in the Temple. For the psalmist, he was fed; the wicked are eaten (in a horrifying and embarrassing fashion). This ‘great reversal’ is also exhibited in the final verse, where the mouths of the righteous sing praises whereas the mouths of the lie-speakers are shut. The righteous ascend into music while the wicked descend into silence. It is telling that every other act of lip-praise in the psalm has taken place in the Temple—it is perhaps likely therefore that the wicked are found to now exist in the place of deprivation that the psalmist found himself in verse 1.