Revelation (11:8) "The Two Witnesses"...cont.

"And [the two witnesses] dead bodies will lie in the street of the great city that symbolically is called Sodom and Egypt, where their Lord was crucified."

(Revelation 11:8)

This introduces the aftermath of the witnesses' death. The picture here probably indicates not a literal and complete extermination but that the true church will seem defeated in its role of witness, will appear small and insignificant throughout history may be temporarily silenced (as in parts of the world even today), a universal silence will fall on the church at the very end of history. And just as small groups of believers continued to exist through earlier local and temporary silencings, so a small remnant of witnesses remain in the future scenario of verse 8. 

The great city is compared here to Sodom (because of its wickedness) and to Egypt (because it persecuted the saints). The city is to be understood symbolically, this means that the city is not located in any one geographical place but is to be understood as any ungodly spiritual realm existing on earth. The last clause, where also their Lord was crucified, continues the spiritual description of the city begun by the identification with Sodom and Egypt.

In this light, the world city is also spiritually like Jerusalem, which had become like other ungodly nations, and even worse, by killing Christ. In John's time, the reference to "the great city" would be primarily to Rome and any of its allies, since it was the center of the ungodly empire which persecuted God's people at that time.

(G.K. Beale)