Jeremiah 7:33

And the carcases of this people shall be meat for the fowls of the heaven, and for the beasts of the earth; and none shall fray them away.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(33) None shall fray them away.—No picture could be more appalling in its horrors—streets and valleys filled with the bodies of the slain, vultures and jackals feeding on them, and not one hand raised, like that of Rizpah (2Samuel 21:10), to protect the dead from that extremest desecration. Here, again, we have an almost literal quotation from Deut. (Deuteronomy 28:26).

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

7:29-34 In token both of sorrow and of slavery, Jerusalem must be degraded, and separated from God, as she had been separated to him. The heart is the place in which God has chosen to put his name; but if sin has the innermost and uppermost place there, we pollute the temple of the Lord. The destruction of Jerusalem appears here very terrible. The slain shall be many; they having made it the place of their sin. Evil pursues sinners, even after death. Those who will not, by the grace of God, be cured of vain mirth, shall, by the justice of God, be deprived of all mirth. How many ruin their health and property without complaining, when engaged in Satan's service! May we learn to relish holy joys, and to sit loose to all others though lawful.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

The valley of slaughter - Where they killed their helpless children, there shall they be slaughtered helplessly by their enemies.

Till there be no place - Rather, for want of room elsewhere.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

33. fray—scare or frighten (De 28:26). Typical of the last great battle between the Lord's host and the apostasy (Re 19:17, 18, 21).

Matthew Poole's Commentary

The birds and beasts of prey shall feed on them, being exposed to open view for want of interment, Jeremiah 19:7,

and none shall fray them away; ( a piece of humanity that even nature itself teacheth;) either by reason of the enemy’s presence, for fear of whom they durst not; or rather, because there will be none left to do it: and this is reckoned among the curses, Deu 28:26.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

And the carcasses of this people shall be meat for the fowls of the heaven, and for the beasts of the earth,.... That is, those which remain unburied, for which there will be found no place to bury them in; all places, particularly Tophet, being so full of dead bodies; not to have a burial, which is here threatened, was accounted a great judgment:

and none shall fray them away; or frighten them away; that is, drive away the fowls and the beasts from the carcasses. The sense is, either that there should be such a vast consumption of men, that there would be none left to do this, and so the fowls and beasts might prey upon the carcasses without any disturbance; or else that those that were left would be so devoid of humanity, as not to do this office for the dead.

Geneva Study Bible

And the carcases of this people shall be meat for the fowls of the heaven, and for the beasts of the earth; and none shall fray them away.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

33. fray] frighten. The word is obsolete, except as a provincialism. It is the root of affray (participle, afraid). Cp. “he thought hir to affraye.” Chaucer’s Clerk’s Tale. (Bible Word-Book.)

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 33. - And the carcasses etc.; almost verbally identical with Deuteronomy 28:26. Jeremiah 7:33

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

Even the number of the dead will be so great that the corpses shall remain unburied, shall become food for beasts of prey, which no one will scare away. This is taken almost literally from Deuteronomy 28:26.