Ps. 79.2 (the feeding)

They have left / the corpses / of your servants
as food / for the birds / of the heavens
the flesh / of your devoted ones / for the beasts / of the land. 

The leaving. In verse one the summation of the nations defilement is described as their “coming into your inheritance”. When the people “coming into your inheritance” it is not only a glorious and festive occasion but the fulfillment of a grand promise that had gestated in Israel for generations. Now, however, the ‘coming into the land’ was the ‘nations’ and it was the precise opposite of the people’s entrance. Here, in verse 2, there is a contrasting movement. In verse 1, they “come in”. Here, “they have left…”. In the first verse, they sweep in a horrendous act of defiling destruction. Here, the leave in a horrendous act of defiling indifference. The first verse spoke of the ‘death’ of the temple and Jerusalem. Here, it speaks of the remains of ‘his people’. The thing to notice here is that the ‘leaving’ itself partakes of and furthers the desecration of the destruction. Even their leaving is performed with an intentionality that is abhorrent. There is no remainder to their desecration. 

The corpses. It was not uncommon in the ancient world to leave the bodies of enemy soldiers unburied. But it was always an intentional act of supreme and final shame. Supreme and final in the sense that it surrounds the dead (and their community) in a veil that encompasses a reality beyond the order of life. By shaming the person even in death it creates in the community an almost objective form of perpetual death. Death’s weakness and impotence infects those who cannot bury their own. 

The feeding. The exposure is the intentional act of the ‘nations’ with a view toward the animal-effect of the feeding. To have a body exposed contains within itself not one but several horrors. A significant one is the fact that it is utterly defenseless from animals, that it can be chewed and consumed without any regard or fear. The animals can and do have an utter disregard for the ‘sanctity’ of the body parts (eyes are eaten with the same relish as a finger; genitals are consumed with the same fervor as a calf muscle). In this we see a very real resemblance to the destruction the Temple (and perhaps our most accessible analogy). This is bodily defilement of the same order as that which occurred to Temple. And the horror that accompanies it is very much tied to the willful disregard for holiness and sanctity they both share. A final note to make on the feeding: this is a meal, a defiling meal. In this way it functions like a type of mockery of the sacrifices of animals in the Temple. There, animals are eaten in the presence of God. Here, animals eat humans in God’s seeming absence. This is the world without the Presence (an entirely indifferent consumption of the sacred). 

The devoted ones. It is key to point out that these are not just human bodies. If they are to find their analogy (or their resonance) in the destruction of the Temple and Jerusalem, then they too partake of the special devotion of Yhwh. Just as the Temple was the ‘pinnacle of glory’ , so too do these people represent the ‘pinnacle of human servanthood’. They are, in this sense, the bodily representation of the holiness of the Temple. These are God’s servants being eaten by animals. 

The heavens and the land.  There is an important act of encompassing in this verse: the “birds of the heavens” and the “beasts of the land”.  What we see here is dual (at least). First, the entire animal realm (from high to low) is involved in the consumption of the “faithful servants”. With the ‘flood of desecration’ comes not only the nations (human) but the animals as well. They are participating, in their own way, in the act of defilement. In this they become agents of desecration and defilement. Further, the ‘heavens’ and the ‘land’ is to point toward the totality of the desecration. It is as if all of creation itself is imploding into the people, literally feeding off of the holy ones. It is a very disturbing image of utter, and total, indifference.