Deuteronomy 28:26

And thy carcase shall be meat unto all fowls of the air, and unto the beasts of the earth, and no man shall fray them away.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(26) And thy carcase shall be meat.—Repeated in Jeremiah 7:33, and to be fulfilled in Tophet, when they had buried until there was no more room. (Comp. also Jeremiah 15:3.)

No man shall fray (i.e., frighten) them away.—Not even a woman like Rizpah, who at the foot of the gallows watched her children’s bodies for half the year, and “suffered neither the birds of the air to rest on them by day, nor the beasts of the field by night” (2Samuel 21:10). There shall be no one to do it.

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

28:15-44 If we do not keep God's commandments, we not only come short of the blessing promised, but we lay ourselves under the curse, which includes all misery, as the blessing all happiness. Observe the justice of this curse. It is not a curse causeless, or for some light cause. The extent and power of this curse. Wherever the sinner goes, the curse of God follows; wherever he is, it rests upon him. Whatever he has is under a curse. All his enjoyments are made bitter; he cannot take any true comfort in them, for the wrath of God mixes itself with them. Many judgments are here stated, which would be the fruits of the curse, and with which God would punish the people of the Jews, for their apostacy and disobedience. We may observe the fulfilling of these threatenings in their present state. To complete their misery, it is threatened that by these troubles they should be bereaved of all comfort and hope, and left to utter despair. Those who walk by sight, and not by faith, are in danger of losing reason itself, when every thing about them looks frightful.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

Shalt be removed - See the margin. The threat differs from that in Leviticus 26:33, which refers to a dispersion of the people among the pagan. Here it is meant that they should be tossed to and fro at the will of others, driven from one country to another without any certain settlement.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

24. the rain of thy land powder and dust—an allusion probably to the dreadful effects of tornadoes in the East, which, raising the sands in immense twisted pillars, drive them along with the fury of a tempest. These shifting sands are most destructive to cultivated lands; and in consequence of their encroachments, many once fertile regions of the East are now barren deserts.

Matthew Poole's Commentary

No text from Poole on this verse.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

And thy carcass shall be meat unto all fowls of the air, and unto the beasts of the earth,.... Which was always reckoned a very grievous calamity, have no other burial than in the bowels of beasts and birds; and was the case of many of the Jews in the Antiochian persecution, Psalm 79:2; and in a treatise of theirs (h), which relates their many afflictions and sufferings in their present captivity, speaking of a persecution of them in Spain, in the Jewish year 5172, it is reported, how that those that fled to avoid punishment were killed in the fields, where their carcasses lying unburied became a prey to beasts:

and no man shall fray them away; the fowls and the beasts; none of their friends being left to do it, and their enemies would not show so much respect to them, and care of them.

(h) Shebat Judahm sive Hist. Jud. a Gentio, sect. 46. p. 312.

Geneva Study Bible

And thy {m} carcase shall be meat unto all fowls of the air, and unto the beasts of the earth, and no man shall fray them away.

(m) You will be cursed both in your life and in your death: for the burial is a testimony of the resurrection a sign you will lack because of your wickedness.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

26. Jeremiah 7:33; cp. Jeremiah 16:4, Jeremiah 19:7, Jeremiah 34:20.

Deuteronomy 28:26

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

Defeat in battle, the very opposite of the blessing promised in Deuteronomy 28:7. Israel should become לזעוה, "a moving to and fro," i.e., so to speak, "a ball for all the kingdoms of the earth to play with" (Schultz). זעוה, here and at Ezekiel 23:46, is not a transposed and later form of זועה, which has a different meaning in Isaiah 28:19, but the original uncontracted form, which was afterwards condensed into זועה; for this, and not זועה, is the way in which the Chethib should be read in Jeremiah 15:4; Jeremiah 24:9; Jeremiah 29:18; Jeremiah 34:17, and 2 Chronicles 29:8, where this threat is repeated (vid., Ewald, 53, b.). The corpses of those who were slain by the foe should serve as food for the birds of prey and wild beasts - the greatest ignominy that could fall upon the dead, and therefore frequently held out as a threat against the ungodly (Jeremiah 7:33; Jeremiah 16:4; 1 Kings 14:11, etc.).