Ezekiel 39:14

14 After the seven months are over, men will be chosen to travel through the land in order to find and bury those bodies remaining on the ground, so that they can make the land clean.

Ezekiel 39:14 Meaning and Commentary

Ezekiel 39:14

And they shall sever out men of continual employment
That is, the principal of the house of Israel, their magistrates and governors, shall select certain persons, to be daily employed in the following work, till ended: passing through the land to bury with the passengers those that remain
upon the face of the earth, to cleanse it;
these men will be appointed to go through the land of Israel, to gather up such carcasses and bones of dead men as remain anywhere after the seven months' burial before observed; and all passengers or travellers shall be assisting to them in it, both in directing where any such carcasses and bones may lie, and in bringing them to the common place of burial; that so the land may he thoroughly cleansed from such disagreeable objects: after the end of seven months shall they search
or begin to search, as the Targum; when seven months are ended, in which the people in general will be employed in burying the dead; these men before mentioned will be sent out into each part of the land, to search in caves, and dens and ditches; among thickets, thorns, and briers, where the slain may fall; or where soldiers, being wounded, might betake themselves and die; or their carcasses or bones be dragged and left by beasts and fowls; to find them out, and bring them to the place of interment.

Ezekiel 39:14 In-Context

12 It will take the Israelites seven months to bury all the corpses and make the land clean again.
13 Everyone in the land will help bury them, and they will be honored for this on the day of my victory. I, the Sovereign Lord, have spoken.
14 After the seven months are over, men will be chosen to travel through the land in order to find and bury those bodies remaining on the ground, so that they can make the land clean.
15 As they go up and down the country, every time they find a human bone, they will put a marker beside it so that the gravediggers can come and bury it in the Valley of Gog's Army.
16 (There will be a town nearby named after the army.) And so the land will be made clean again."

Footnotes 1

  • [a]. [Some ancient translations] those bodies; [Hebrew] the travelers.
Scripture taken from the Good News Translation - Second Edition, Copyright 1992 by American Bible Society. Used by Permission.