Ulangan 28:26

28:26 Your carcasses will be food for every bird of the sky and wild animal of the earth, and there will be no one to chase them off.

Ulangan 28:1

The Covenant Blessings

28:1 “If you indeed ¹  obey the Lord your God and are careful to observe all his commandments I am giving ²  you today, the Lord your God will elevate you above all the nations of the earth.

1 Samuel 17:44

17:44 The Philistine said to David, “Come here to me, so I can give your flesh to the birds of the sky and the wild animals of the field!” ³ 

1 Samuel 17:46

17:46 This very day the Lord will deliver you into my hand! I will strike you down and cut off your head. This day I will give the corpses of the Philistine army to the birds of the sky and the wild animals of the land. Then all the land will realize that Israel has a God

Mazmur 110:5-6

110:5 O sovereign Lord, ⁴  at your right hand

he strikes down ⁵  kings in the day he unleashes his anger. ⁶ 

110:6 He executes judgment ⁷  against ⁸  the nations;

he fills the valleys with corpses; ⁹ 

he shatters their heads over the vast battlefield. ¹⁰ 

Yeremia 7:33

7:33 Then the dead bodies of these people will be left on the ground for the birds and wild animals to eat. ¹¹  There will not be any survivors to scare them away.

Yeremia 16:4

16:4 They will die of deadly diseases. No one will mourn for them. They will not be buried. Their dead bodies will lie like manure spread on the ground. They will be killed in war or die of starvation. Their corpses will be food for the birds and wild animals.

Yeremia 19:7

19:7 In this place I will thwart ¹²  the plans of the people of Judah and Jerusalem. I will deliver them over to the power of their enemies who are seeking to kill them. They will die by the sword ¹³  at the hands of their enemies. ¹⁴  I will make their dead bodies food for the birds and wild beasts to eat.

Yeremia 34:20

34:20 I will hand them over to their enemies who want to kill them. Their dead bodies will become food for the birds and the wild animals. ¹⁵ 

Yehezkiel 29:5

29:5 I will leave you in the wilderness,

you and all the fish of your waterways;

you will fall in the open field and will not be gathered up or collected. ¹⁶ 

I have given you as food to the beasts of the earth and the birds of the skies.

Yehezkiel 39:18-20

39:18 You will eat the flesh of warriors ¹⁷  and drink the blood of the princes of the earth – the rams, lambs, goats, and bulls, all of them fattened animals of Bashan. 39:19 You will eat fat until you are full, and drink blood until you are drunk, ¹⁸  at my slaughter ¹⁹  which I have made for you. 39:20 You will fill up at my table with horses and charioteers, ²⁰  with warriors and all the soldiers,’ declares the sovereign Lord.

Matius 24:28

24:28 Wherever the corpse is, there the vultures ²¹  will gather. ²² 

Lukas 17:37

17:37 Then ²³  the disciples ²⁴  said ²⁵  to him, “Where, ²⁶  Lord?” He replied to them, “Where the dead body ²⁷  is, there the vultures ²⁸  will gather.” ²⁹ 

[28:1]  ¹ tn The Hebrew text uses the infinitive absolute for emphasis, which the translation indicates with “indeed.”

[28:1]  ² tn Heb “commanding”; NAB “which I enjoin on you today” (likewise in v. 15).

[17:44]  ³ tc Many medieval Hebrew mss have “the earth” here, instead of the MT’s “the field.”

[110:5]  ⁴ tn As pointed in the Hebrew text, this title refers to God (many medieval Hebrew mss read יְהוָה, yehveh, “Lord” here). The present translation assumes that the psalmist here addresses the Lord as he celebrates what the king is able to accomplish while positioned at God’s “right hand.” According to this view the king is the subject of the third person verb forms in vv. 5b-7. (2) Another option is to understand the king as the addressee (as in vv. 2-3). In this case “the Lord” is the subject of the third person verbs throughout vv. 5-7 and is depicted as a warrior in a very anthropomorphic manner. In this case the Lord is pictured as being at the psalmist’s right hand (just the opposite of v. 1). See Pss 16:8; 121:5. (3) A third option is to revocalize אֲדֹנָי (’adonay, “Lord”) as אֲדֹנִי (’adoniy, “my lord”; see v. 1). In this case one may translate, “My lord, at his [God’s] right hand, strikes down.” In this case the king is the subject of the third person verbs in vv. 5b-7.

[110:5]  ⁵ tn The perfect verbal forms in vv. 5-6 are understood here as descriptive-dramatic or as generalizing. Another option is to take them as rhetorical. In this case the psalmist describes anticipated events as if they had already taken place.

[110:5]  ⁶ tn Heb “in the day of his anger.”

[110:6]  ⁷ tn The imperfect verbal forms in vv. 6-7 are understood here as descriptive-dramatic or as generalizing, though they could be taken as future.

[110:6]  ⁸ tn Or “among.”

[110:6]  ⁹ tn Heb “he fills [with] corpses,” but one expects a double accusative here. The translation assumes an emendation to גְוִיּוֹת גֵאָיוֹת(בִּ) מִלֵּא or מִלֵּא גֵאָיוֹת גְּוִיוֹת (for a similar construction see Ezek 32:5). In the former case גֵאָיוֹת(ge’ayot) has accidentally dropped from the text due to homoioteleuton; in the latter case it has dropped out due to homoioarcton.

[110:6]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “he strikes [the verb is מָחַץ (makhats), translated “strikes down” in v. 5] head[s] over a great land.” The Hebrew term רַבָּה (rabbah, “great”) is here used of distance or spatial measurement (see 1 Sam 26:13).

[7:33]  ¹¹ tn Heb “Their dead bodies will be food for the birds of the air and the beasts of the earth.”

[19:7]  ¹² sn There is perhaps a two-fold wordplay in the use of this word. One involves the sound play with the word for “jar,” which has been explained as a water decanter. The word here is בַקֹּתִי (vaqqoti). The word for jar in v. 1 is בַקְבֻּק (vaqbuq). There may also be a play on the literal use of this word to refer to the laying waste or destruction of a land (see Isa 24:3; Nah 2:3). Many modern commentaries think that at this point Jeremiah emptied out the contents of the jar, symbolizing the “emptying” out of their plans.

[19:7]  ¹³ sn This refers to the fact that they will die in battle. The sword would be only one of the weapons that strikes them down. It is one of the trio of “sword,” “starvation,” and “disease” which were the concomitants of war referred to so often in the book of Jeremiah. Starvation is referred to in v. 9.

[19:7]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “I will cause them to fall by the sword before their enemies and in the hand of those who seek their soul [= life].” In this context the two are meant as obvious qualifications of one entity, not two. Some rearrangement of the qualifiers had to be made in the English translation to convey this.

[34:20]  ¹⁵ sn See this same phrase in Jer 7:33; 16:4; 19:7.

[29:5]  ¹⁶ tc Some Hebrew mss, the Targum, and the LXX read “buried.”

[39:18]  ¹⁷ sn See Rev 19:17-18.

[39:19]  ¹⁸ sn Eating the fat and drinking blood were God’s exclusive rights in Israelite sacrifices (Lev 3:17).

[39:19]  ¹⁹ tn Or “sacrifice” (so also in the rest of this verse).

[39:20]  ²⁰ tn Heb “chariots.”

[24:28]  ²¹ tn The same Greek term can refer to “eagles” or “vultures” (L&N 4.42; BDAG 22 s.v. ἀετός), but in this context it must mean vultures because the gruesome image is one of dead bodies being consumed by scavengers.

[24:28]  sn Jesus’ answer is that when the judgment comes, the scenes of death will be obvious and so will the location of the judgment. See also Luke 17:37.

[24:28]  ²² tn Grk “will be gathered.” The passive construction has been translated as an active one in English.

[17:37]  ²³ tn Here καί (kai) has been translated as “then” to indicate the implied sequence of events within the narrative.

[17:37]  ²⁴ tn Grk “they”; the referent (the disciples, v. 22) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[17:37]  ²⁵ tn Grk “answering, they said to him.” This is redundant in contemporary English and has been simplified in the translation.

[17:37]  ²⁶ sn The question “Where, Lord?” means, “Where will the judgment take place?”

[17:37]  ²⁷ tn Or “corpse.”

[17:37]  ²⁸ tn The same Greek term can refer to “eagles” or “vultures” (L&N 4.42; BDAG 22 s.v. ἀετός), but in this context it must mean vultures, because the gruesome image is one of dead bodies being consumed by scavengers.

[17:37]  sn Jesus’ answer is that when the judgment comes, the scenes of death will be obvious and so will the location of the judgment.

[17:37]  ²⁹ tn Grk “will be gathered.” The passive construction has been translated as an active one in English.