Revelation 11:8

‘And their dead bodies lie in the street of the great city, which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt, where also their Lord was crucified.'

Here the city in mind is clearly identified as Jerusalem. It is the place where the Lord was crucified. John could not have made it plainer. It is a clear indication of how God sees Jerusalem at this point. He sees it as a place of sexual perversion (Sodom - Genesis 19; Jeremiah 23:14; Jude 1:7) and of idolatry and worldly aggrandisement (Egypt - see below), the very sins God had especially warned the seven churches against in readiness for this day. The people were guilty of following the ways of the land of Egypt and the land of Canaan (Leviticus 18:3). They were in direct disobedience to God, in contrast with the witnesses and the church of Christ. They prefer idolatry (Nehemiah 9:18; Ezekiel 23:3 with 7), and the luxuries of Egypt to the Lord's fare (Numbers 11:5), for they honour the Beast who demands the one (Revelation 13:4; Revelation 13:12) and provides the other (Revelation 13:17).

For Jerusalem as ‘the great city' brought to humiliation see Jeremiah 22:8. For Israel as Sodom, apart from the holy remnant, see Isaiah 1:9. How far this idolatry will be literal, and how far spiritual idolatry, only time will tell. Religious artefacts can soon become idols as witness the brazen serpent of Moses (2 Kings 18:4).

‘Their dead bodies lie in the street'. No one is permitted to bury them. They are exposed to total shame just as Christ was. Psalms 79:1 is illustrative of this episode and is probably in John's mind. ‘Oh God, the nations are come to your inheritance, your holy sanctuary have they defiled. They have laid Jerusalem in heaps. The dead bodies of your servants they have given to be food to the fowls of heaven, the flesh of your saints to the beasts of the earth --- there was none to bury them. We are become a reproach to our neighbours, a scorn and derision to those who are round about us'. It is probable we are to see here the last remnants of the church in Jerusalem. One by one they have been hunted down, but these, with their two prophets, had been preserved for the task they were given. Now they too have been put to death.