Deuteronomy 28:26

Hebrew (Westminster Leningrad Codex)

English Translation

Your dead body shall be food to all birds of the sky, and to the animals of the earth; and there shall be none to frighten them away.

World English Bible · Public Domain

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לְמַאֲכָ֔ל

maʼăkâl

H3978

“to/for · food”

Preposition + Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute

Appears 30× in the Hebrew Bible
First appears at Genesis 2:9

Full BDB Definition

Origin: from H398

TWOT: 85d

food, fruit, meat

About this verse

These counts appear in no published source. They are computed here, from the morphology-tagged text and Lemma’s own curated glosses. What Lemma adds →

10: words
10: distinct lemmas
Pentateuch: section

Shared distinctive vocabulary

לְמַאֲכָ֔ל food H3978 occurs in 29 verses of the Hebrew Bible. Also found in:

Grammatical profile

2 verbs
7 nouns
1 particle

Verb forms

וְהָיְתָ֤ה Qal · Sequential Perfect
מַחֲרִֽיד Hiphil · Participle Active

Hebrew & Septuagint length

In English translation the verse runs 28 words from the Hebrew and 29 from the Septuagint (LXX English) — closely comparable.

A rough comparison of the two English renderings, which tokenize alike — not a word-level alignment.

Word counts can differ between the Hebrew and the Greek without any difference in meaning — e.g. the Hebrew direct-object marker אֵת has no separate Greek word, and Greek often adds the article ὁ.

Cross-references

Topical passages linked to Deuteronomy 28:26 in the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge — connected by theme and wording, ordered by reader-vote popularity; previews shown in the World English Bible.

Jeremiah 16:4 They shall die grievous deaths: they shall not be lamented, neither shall they be buried; they shall be as dung on the surface of the ground; and they shall be consumed by the sword, and by famine; and their dead bodies shall be food for the birds of the sky, and for the animals of the earth.
Jeremiah 34:20 I will even give them into the hand of their enemies, and into the hand of those who seek their life; and their dead bodies shall be for food to the birds of the sky, and to the animals of the earth.
Jeremiah 7:33 The dead bodies of this people shall be food for the birds of the sky, and for the animals of the earth; and none shall frighten them away.
Jeremiah 19:7 I will make void the counsel of Judah and Jerusalem in this place; and I will cause them to fall by the sword before their enemies, and by the hand of those who seek their life: and their dead bodies will I give to be food for the birds of the sky, and for the animals of the earth.
Jeremiah 8:1 At that time, says Yahweh, they shall bring out the bones of the kings of Judah, and the bones of his princes, and the bones of the priests, and the bones of the prophets, and the bones of the inhabitants of Jerusalem, out of their graves;
1 Samuel 17:44–46 The Philistine said to David, Come to me, and I will give your flesh to the birds of the sky, and to the animals of the field.
Psalms 79:1–3 God, the nations have come into your inheritance. They have defiled your holy temple. They have laid Jerusalem in heaps.
Isaiah 34:3 Their slain also shall be cast out, and the stench of their dead bodies shall come up; and the mountains shall be melted with their blood.

Ezekiel 39:17–20 You, son of man, thus says the Lord Yahweh: Speak to the birds of every sort, and to every animal of the field, Assemble yourselves, and come; gather yourselves on every side to my sacrifice that I do sacrifice for you, even a great sacrifice on the mountains of Israel, that you may eat flesh and drink blood.

Cross-references courtesy of OpenBible.info (CC BY 4.0).

Hebrew and Greek witnesses Masoretic Hebrew ↔ Greek Septuagint

The same verse in the two great witnesses to the Old Testament, shown verse-for-verse.

These are two independent witnesses, not word-aligned to each other, and the Septuagint is shown in lemma (dictionary) form.

Hebrew Deuteronomy 28:26 Masoretic · Westminster Leningrad Codex

וְהָיְתָ֤ה נִבְלָֽתְךָ֙ לְמַאֲכָ֔ל לְכָל ע֥וֹף הַשָּׁמַ֖יִם וּלְבֶהֱמַ֣ת הָאָ֑רֶץ וְאֵ֖ין מַחֲרִֽיד

Your dead body shall be food to all birds of the sky, and to the animals of the earth; and there shall be none to frighten them away.

World English Bible · Public Domain

Greek LXX Deuteronomy 28:26 Septuagint · lemma form

καί εἰμί ὁ νεκρός σύ κατάβρωμα ὁ πετεινόν ὁ οὐρανός καί ὁ θηρίον ὁ γῆ καί οὐ εἰμί ὁ ἀποσοβέω

And your dead men shall be food to the birds of the sky, and to the beasts of the earth; and there shall be none to scare them away.

LXX2012 (modern English Septuagint) · Public Domain

Hebrew: Westminster Leningrad Codex (CC BY 4.0). Greek: Septuagint (public domain); English from LXX2012 (modern English Septuagint) (Public Domain). How the Septuagint differs from the Hebrew →

Targum (Aramaic paraphrase)

The Targum is the ancient Jewish Aramaic paraphrase of the Hebrew Scriptures — an interpretive translation, not the Hebrew text itself. Onkelos (literal) and Pseudo-Jonathan (expansive) render the Torah, and Jonathan the Prophets. Coverage is partial: where no permissively-licensed English translation exists for a verse, only the Aramaic is shown. This is verse-level text, not a word-by-word alignment to the Hebrew.

Targum Onkelos Torah (Genesis–Deuteronomy)

וּתְהֵי נְבִלְתָּךְ מְשַׁגְרָא לְמֵיכַל לְכָל עוֹפָא דִשְׁמַיָא וְלִבְעִירַת אַרְעָא וְלֵית דְמָנִיד

(no public-domain English translation for this verse)

Targum Onkelos — Aramaic: “Onkelos Genesis” (public domain); “Onkelos Exodus” (public domain); “Onkelos Leviticus” (public domain); “Onkelos Numbers” (public domain); “Onkelos Deuteronomy” (public domain). English: “Sefaria Community Translation” (CC0 1.0 (public-domain dedication)); “J.W. Etheridge. The Targums of Onkelos and Jonathan Ben Uzziel on the Pentateuch. London: Longmans, Green, 1862” (public domain). Text via Sefaria.
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan Torah (Genesis–Deuteronomy)

וּתְהֵי נְבֵלְתְּכוֹן מְשַׁגְרָא לְמֵיכַל לְכָל עוֹפָא דִשְׁמַיָא וְלִבְעִירָא דְאַרְעָא וְלֵית דְמָנִיד יַתְהוֹן מֵעִילַוֵי נְבֵילְתְּכוֹן

And your carcases will be cast out to be meat for all the fowls of the sky, and for the beasts of the earth, and no one will scare them away from your corpses.

Targum Pseudo-Jonathan — Aramaic: “Targum Jonathan on Genesis” (public domain); “Targum Jonathan on Exodus” (public domain); “Targum Jonathan on Leviticus” (public domain); “Targum Jonathan on Numbers” (public domain); “Targum Jonathan on Deuteronomy” (public domain). English: “The Targum of Jonathan ben Uzziel, trans. J. W. Etheridge, London, 1862” (public domain). Text via Sefaria.

Commentary

Notes on Deuteronomy 28:26 from classic Christian and Jewish commentators (each source and its license shown beneath its notes). The classic Christian expositions comment on the surrounding passage and are grouped to its opening verse, so a note may address several verses; the Jewish commentaries on the Tanakh (Rashi and others) are per-verse, so they appear only where the commentator wrote on this verse.

Lemma curates 59 commentaries, every one of them public domain or Creative Commons licensed, each selected and text-cleaned for this edition rather than reprinted as found. About our sources →

Trapp's Complete Commentary

John Trapp

Deu 28:26 And thy carcase shall be meat unto all fowls of the air, and unto the beasts of the earth, and no man shall fray [them] away.

Ver. 26. And thy carcass shall be meat.] Thou shalt want the honour of honest burial; which the Jews accounted worse than death, {Ecc 6:3} and the Gentiles extreme misery.

John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Geneva Bible (1599)

Geneva Bible translators

Thou shalt be cursed both in thy life and in thy death: for the burial is a testimony of the resurrection which sign for thy wickedness thou shalt lack.

Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain. Text via Bolls.life.

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(26) And thy carcase shall be meat.—Repeated in Jer_7:33, and to be fulfilled in Tophet, when they had buried until there was no more room. (Comp. also Jer_15:3.)

No man shall fray (i.e., frighten) them away.—Not even a woman like Rizpah, who at the foot of the gallows watched her children’s bodies for half the year, and “suffered neither the birds of the air to rest on them by day, nor the beasts of the field by night” (2Sa_21:10). There shall be no one to do it.

A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne

26. Jer_7:33; cp. Jer_16:4, Jer_19:7, Jer_34:20.

The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

John Gill's Exposition

And thou shalt grope at noon day as the blind gropeth in darkness,.... That is, being in darkness through the loss of their sight; otherwise the darkness and the light are alike to them, and they grope in the one as well as in the other. This comparison shows that the darkness and blindness of the Jews, threatened them, is to be understood not of the darkness of their bodily eyes, but of their minds; not being able to understand, or form a judgment of things that are as clear as noon day; and being at the utmost loss what methods to take and pursue, when they are plain and manifest before them; but being infatuated and besotted, follow the lusts and counsels of their own hearts, which lead them wrong:

and thou shall not prosper in thy ways; in any steps they may take to extricate themselves out of their difficulties, distresses, and calamities, or to bring themselves into easy and comfortable circumstances; to get wealth and riches, and honour and esteem with men; but, on the contrary, become forlorn and miserable, poor and wretched, mean and despicable:

and thou shalt be only oppressed and spoiled evermore; continually, every day, all the days of their lives, oppressed with taxes and tributes, with mulcts and fines, and spoiled of their goods and substance under one pretence or another; which has been generally their case in Popish countries; for this seems not to refer to the Babylonish captivity, where they built houses, and dwelt in them, and planted gardens, and ate the fruit of them; and in the peace of cities had peace themselves, Jer 29:5,

and no man shall save thee; from the oppressions, exactions, and spoils of their enemies, nor deliver them out of their hands; whereas in process of time they had deliverance and salvation from the Babylonish captivity, by the means of Cyrus king of Persia.

John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary

CHAPTER XXVIII.

Away. No threat could be more terrible to the Jews. They did not refuse burial to those who had been hung on the gibbet, chap. xxi. 23. Even the high priest, if he should find a corpse in the field, was obliged to bury it; though he was not allowed on other occasions, to attend the funeral of his relations. God threatens the impious king (Calmet) Joachim, that he shall be buried with the burial of an ass, Jeremias xxii. 19. (Haydock) --- The ancient Christians allowed the sacred vessels to be sold, in order to bury the dead. "For we shall not suffer the figure and the work of God to be exposed a prey to the wild beasts and birds." (Lactantius 6.)

George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).

Whedon's Commentary on the Bible

Daniel D. Whedon

26. Meat unto all fowls of the air — The corpses of the slain in battle would be food for birds and beasts. The ancients looked with dread upon the idea of the body lying unburied. Comp. Jer_7:33; also 1Ki_14:11.

Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Lesson kit

Teaching starters — assembled from the data on this page, not authored interpretation. Every prompt links to the verse data it draws on. Edit before teaching.

Deuteronomy, in the Pentateuch, opens this verse with 10 words (10 distinct Hebrew lemmas). Its most distinctive word is maʼăkâl (“food”). A historical commentator’s framing appears above. Read the whole chapter for the surrounding context.

Discussion questions

What does “food” (maʼăkâl) contribute to the verse as a whole?
How does Genesis 2:9, which shares the word «food», read alongside this verse?
These translations render this verse differently; the difference is in the English rendering, not the original. What questions does that raise?
«וְהָיְתָ֤ה» is a Qal Sequential Perfect verb. How does that grammatical form shape the action described?
Compare how Trapp's Complete Commentary and Geneva Bible (1599) read this verse. Where do they agree or differ?

Things to notice

These translations choose different wording for 22 words in this verse.
10 distinct Hebrew lemmas span 10 words in this verse.