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Psalm 79:2

They have given the dead bodies of your servants to be food for the birds of the sky, the flesh of your saints to the animals of the earth.

1A Psalm by Asaph. God, the nations have come into your inheritance. They have defiled your holy temple. They have laid Jerusalem in heaps.
2They have given the dead bodies of your servants to be food for the birds of the sky, the flesh of your saints to the animals of the earth.
3They have shed their blood like water around Jerusalem. There was no one to bury them.
4We have become a reproach to our neighbors, a scoffing and derision to those who are around us.
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← Psalm 79:1Psalm 79:3 →
Notice

Bodies left as food for birds and animals make Jerusalem’s devastation hard to read, while “your servants” names the bond with God that the lament still claims.

Questions to write on. Each one opens a new entry with this verse already attached.

What changes in your reading when the dead are called “your servants” and “your saints”?

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What would you want to say to God about the indignity these bodies suffered?

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Connect

Where else Scripture says this

5 passages readers most often link with this verse, and the thread each one shares with it.

This verse's connections, by chapterThe Bible's strongest chapter linksHover or tap a book to trace it
Jeremiah 7:33The dead bodies of this people will be food for the birds of the sky, and for the animals of the earth. No one will frighten them away.Both passages describe dead bodies becoming food for birds and animals, exposing the indignity suffered after death.
Jeremiah 34:20I will even give them into the hand of their enemies and into the hand of those who seek their life. Their dead bodies will be food for the birds of the sky …Both texts describe people given over to enemies, with their bodies left as food for birds and animals.
Jeremiah 16:4“They will die grievous deaths. They will not be lamented, neither will they be buried. They will be as dung on the surface of the ground. They will be …Jeremiah describes deaths without burial, matching the psalm’s scene of bodies consumed by creatures with no one to bury them.
Jeremiah 19:7“‘“I will make the counsel of Judah and Jerusalem void in this place. I will cause them to fall by the sword before their enemies, and by the hand of those who …Both passages place the dead in Jerusalem’s devastation, where enemies kill and bodies become food for birds and animals.
Deuteronomy 28:26Your dead bodies will be food to all birds of the sky, and to the animals of the earth; and there will be no one to frighten them away.Deuteronomy uses the same stark description of human bodies becoming food for birds of the sky and animals of the earth.
Where this verse fits

Grief. injustice and anger. death and what comes after.

What the Bible says about grief →What the Bible says about anger →What the Bible says about death →
One step

Something small to carry out of this verse

Write a lament for people killed in violence

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Encouragement

Such violence can leave you without words of comfort. This lament speaks to God from that place: even in their desecration, the dead are named as his servants.

Now put it in your words.

Start an entry on Psalm 79:2. Write what it stirs. Psalmlog sets your words beside Scripture and gives you one next step. Your first entry is free, no account needed.

Keep goingPsalm 79 · the whole chapter with its connection mapPsalms · every chapterBuild a reading plan through Psalms

Cross-reference data from OpenBible.info (CC BY). Scripture from the World English Bible (public domain). Arc diagram after Chris Harrison and Christoph Römhild (2007).