Jeremiah is now given a message from the Lord to speak to the people. So great will the devastation be that dead bodies will fall like dung upon the open field.
It is an agricultural image that speaks of dead bodies being used as fertilizer for the fields. The agricultural image continues with the reaper gathering the harvest but no one to gather it up after him. It is a chilling picture of so many people dying that there is no one left to bury the dead. This prospect of the dead not being buried has troubled Jeremiah more than once (see Jeremiah 8:2; Jeremiah 16:4, Jeremiah 16:6; Jeremiah 20:6; Jeremiah 25:33), and illustrates the horror of the Lord’s judgment that is coming.1
22 Speak: “Thus declares the LORD, ‘The dead bodies of men shall fall like dung upon the open field, like sheaves after the reaper, and none shall gather them.’”