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.
*Minor differences ignored. Grouped by changes, with first version listed as example.
The dead bodies of thy servants - They have slain them, and left them unburied. See 2-Chronicles 36:17. This is a description of widespread carnage and slaughter, such as we know occurred at the time when Jerusalem was taken by the Chaldeans. At such a time, it is not probable that the Chaldeans would pause to bury the slain, nor is it probable that they would give opportunity to the captive Hebrews to remain to bury them. That would occur, therefore, which often occurs in war, that the slain would be left on the field to be devoured by wild animals and by the fowls of heaven.
The dead bodies of thy servants - It appears that in the destruction of Jerusalem the Chaldeans did not bury the bodies of the slain, but left them to be devoured by birds and beasts of prey. This was the grossest inhumanity.
The (b) 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.
(b) The prophets show to what extremities God sometimes allows his Church to fall to exercise their faith, before he sets his hand to deliver them.
The dead bodies of thy servants have they given to be meat unto the fowls of the heaven,.... For such there were, both at the time of the Babylonish captivity, and in the times of Antiochus, who were good men, and served the Lord, and yet suffered in the common calamity. Nicanor, a general of Demetrius, in the time of the Maccabees, seems to have been guilty of such a fact as this, since, when he was slain, his tongue was given in pieces to the fowls, and the reward of his madness was hung up before the temple, as in the Apocrypha:
"And when he had cut out the tongue of that ungodly Nicanor, he commanded that they should give it by pieces unto the fowls, and hang up the reward of his madness before the temple.'' (2 Maccabees 15:33)
the flesh of thy saints unto the beasts of the earth; this clause and the following verse are applied to a case in the times of the Maccabees, when sixty men of the Assideans were slain, religious, devout, and holy men, so called from the very word here translated "saints";
"Now the Assideans were the first among the children of Israel that sought peace of them:'' (1 Maccabees 7:13)
"The flesh of thy saints have they cast out, and their blood have they shed round about Jerusalem, and there was none to bury them.'' (1 Maccabees 7:17)
*More commentary available at chapter level.