Giving someone a burial was (and is) a final way to show them honour. Conversely, leaving someone unburied (and therefore food for dogs and birds) is the ultimate disgrace (see Deuteronomy 28:26; Psalm 79:1–3). This is how the people who heard and rejected their prophesying express their contempt for the testimony of these witnesses concerning the life and work of Jesus Christ.
8 and their dead bodies will lie in the street of the great city that symbolically is called Sodom and Egypt, where their Lord was crucified.