Ezekiel Chapter 39 verse 14 Holy Bible

Pulpit Commentary

Pulpit CommentaryVerse 14. - When the work of burying Gog should have gone on for seven months, at the end of that time the Israelites should sever out (comp. Deuteronomy 10:8) men of continual employment; literally, men of con-t/nuance; i.e. persons hired for a continuous work or devoted to a constant occupation, whose business it should be passing through the land to bury with the passengers those that remain - or, as the Revised Version reads, to bury them that pass through, that remain - upon the face of the land. Here, again, the old play upon the word "passengers" recurs, and with it two or three difficulties. (1) It is not clear whether the commissioners consisted of two classes of officers, "passers through," or "searchers," who scoured the land in search of unburied skeletons or bones, which, however, they did not bury; and "buriers" proper, who, accompanying these searchers, conducted the interment of such skeletons or bones as were found (Hengstenberg, Keil); or whether the commissioners were only one body, who both searched and buried (Ewald and Smend). (2) It is doubtful whether the אֶת in אֶת־הָעֹבְרִים should be taken as the sign of the accusative, and the clause translated as in the Revised Version, in which case the "passengers" that should be buried could only be the "invaders" as above (see ver. 11); or as a preposition, in which case the rendering of the Authorized Version must stand, and the "passengers" be regarded as the "searchers." (3) It is open to debate whether ver. 14 should not close with the initial words of ver. 15, as Ewald proposes, "And the passengers shall search and pass through in the land;" or at least whether the first clause in ver. 15 should not form an independent sentence, thus: "And they that pass through in the land shall pass through," as in the Revised Version, in which case the sighting of unburied bones (ver. 15) would not necessarily be the work of "searchers," but of any one, the verb וְרָאָה being impersonal. It is impossible to decide dogmatically in a question of so much difficulty; but the Revised Version appears to present the most exact rendering of the Hebrew, and upon the whole the most intelligible account of what was intended to take place, viz. the appointment of a special body of commissioners, who should be designated both "passengers," in ironical allusion to Gog who had meant to pass through the land, and "buffers," from the nature of the task delegated to them, viz. the interment of the "passengers," i.e. the Gogites, and who should begin their work after the main body of the slain had been removed, i.e. at the end of the seven months of burying.

Ellicott's Commentary

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers(14) Men of continual employment.--The word for "continual" is the same as that translated always in Ezekiel 38:8, where see Note. It implies that this occupation is to be one of long continuance, and the fact that they are to search the land through for the remains shows that the army of Gog is not conceived of as perishing when collected in one place, but when distributed all over the land. This search is only to begin after the close of the burying for seven months already described.