Whereas there is little instruction about how to bury the dead in the
Hebrew Bible, it is quite clear throughout that the lack of proper sepulture
and mourning is viewed as a horrible fate, as I the curse of Deut 28:26: “Your corpses
shall be food for every bird of the air and the beasts of the earth, and there
shall be no one to frighten them away” (cf. also 1 Kgs 13:22; 14:11-13; 2 Kgs
9:10; Ps 79:3; Eccl 6:3; Ezek 29:5). The threat of exposure is a particularly persistent
theme in Isaiha and Jeremaih: “Human corpses shall fall like dung upon the open
field, like sheaves behind the reaper, and no one shall gather them” (Jer 9:22;
cf. 7:33; 8:1-2; 14:16; 16:4; 19:7; 22:18; 26:23; 36:30; Isa 14:19-20). There
is also a phenomenon of burning kings (or their remains), probably as
punishment for political “rebellion” (Amos 2:1; Isa 30;22), which reflects
historical practices known in Egypt and Assyria . . . In light of the other ancient
Near Eastern cultures already surveyed, the Bible’s focus on the need for
proper burial is what one would expect.
One might close this discussion of burial in the Bible with reference to
a cogent recent study by Saul Olyan, which outlines a “hierarchy of burial
types, form most desirable to least”: (Saul M. Olyan, “Some Neglected Aspects
of Israelite Internment ideology,” JBL 124 [2005]: 603-7)
1. honorable burial in the family tomb;
2. honorable interment in a substitute for the family tomb (e.g., Abner in 2
Sam 3);
3. honorable burial in someone else’s family tomb (e.g., the disobedient man of
God in 1 Kgs 13);
4. dishonorable forms of internment (e.g., the burial of Absalom in a pit
covered with stones in 2 Sam 18);
5. nonburial (both of these last two types frequently occur with forms of שׁלך, “throw
away”).
This is a helpful list, and apart from the fact that instances of the
second and third types of burials may not be numerous enough to derive a rule
therefrom, I would make only one adjustment, subdividing non-burial into simple
non-burial )abandonment of the corpse) and “anti-burial,” i.e., violation of
the corpse and/or exposure of the remains. (Christopher B. Hays, A Covenant
with Death: Death in the Iron Age II and its Rhetorical Uses in Proto-Isaiah [Grand
Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2015], 161)
