Ezekiel 39:14

14 Men will be hired full-time for the cleanup burial operation and will go through the country looking for defiling, decomposing corpses. At the end of seven months, there'll be an all-out final search.

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 "Israel will bury the corpses in order to clean up the land. It will take them seven months.
13 All the people will turn out to help with the burials. It will be a big day for the people when it's all done and I'm given my due.
14 Men will be hired full-time for the cleanup burial operation and will go through the country looking for defiling, decomposing corpses. At the end of seven months, there'll be an all-out final search.
15 Anyone who sees a bone will mark the place with a stick so the buriers can get it and bury it in the mass burial site, Gog's Mob.
16 (A town nearby is called Mobville, or Hamonah.) That's how they'll clean up the land.
Published by permission. Originally published by NavPress in English as THE MESSAGE: The Bible in Contemporary Language copyright 2002 by Eugene Peterson. All rights reserved.