Ps. 79.3 (consummation)

They poured out their blood / like water
all around Jerusalem
and there was no one / to bury the dead. 

Circled and encompassed. These lines conclude the litany of horrors and they strike a concluding thematic note that began in verse 1 and was continued in verse 2. That is, the sense of ‘total horror’. In verse 1 we see noted it in the first phrase, “your inheritance”, and how that has variously referred to the Temple, the Land and/or the people. Here, it refers to all of them. Furthermore, by describing not only the destruction of the Temple but the reducing of Jerusalem to run the psalmist points to the total destruction wrought by the nations. The entire sacred precincts is desecrated. In verse 2 that momentum continues, flooding over into God’s servants themselves. There, we saw three manners of this totality: first, the ‘coming in’ of verse one is now matched by the ‘leaving’ of the nations, both of which constitute acts of sacrilege; second, whereas in verse 1 the desecration was human (nations), now it is animal; third, the animals themselves span ‘heaven and earth’. It is now, in verse 3, where Jerusalem is literally encircled with the blood of desecration. Here, the Land itself is now subjected to profanation. This act concludes and consumes God’s inheritance. It is clear from Scripture that animal blood that is ‘poured out like water’ does not, necessarily, curse the ground (although it can if an act of improper sacrifice…). However, human blood that is ‘poured out’ on the ground “cries out to God”. The earth itself becomes tainted and profaned. Here, this human blood is holy blood—God’s servants and holy ones. The Land is, literally, now drenched is sacrilege. Temple, people and Land—all of them are brought together in this single ‘pouring of blood’. 

Exposure. Finally, this act is complemented by the repeated horror of the non-burial of the dead. The horror is not hidden or concealed but left, not as a statute of remembrance, but a thing of rot and decay. Death itself has been enabled to work its course in the light of day. This ‘publicity of death’ is outworking of the destruction of the Temple itself. As the Temple ‘smolders’ so too do the people lie exposed. The act perpetuates death; it brings it ‘above ground’ (where it should not be). In this we find the consummation of the sacrilege as now the Land beneath is drenched in profane blood while the Land above is forced to bear the decaying and consumed bodies of God’s servant.