Jeremiah 26:23 - Ellicott's Commentary On The Whole Bible

And they fetched forth Urijah out of Egypt. — The martyr-death of the prophet had its parallels in the earlier history of Judah. So Jezebel had slain the prophets of Jehovah with the edge of the sword (1 Kings 18:4; 1 Kings 19:10; 1 Kings 19:14), and Zechariah the son of Jehoiada had been stoned to death at the command of Joash (2 Chronicles 24:21), and Isaiah, as the Jewish tradition runs, had been sawn asunder (Hebrews 11:37). The fact now recorded was to Jewish feeling an act of brutal outrage. The body of the prophet was not allowed to rest in the sepulchre of his fathers, with the due honour of embalmment, but flung into the loathsome pits of “the sons of the people,” in the Kidron valley (2 Kings 23:6). It is not without interest to those who believe in a special as well as righteous retribution, to note the fact that the king who thus added brutality to cruelty was himself afterwards “buried with the burial of an ass,” without honours or lamentations (Jeremiah 22:18-19). For the phrase, “children of the people,” see Note on Jeremiah 17:19. The circumstances are apparently narrated in detail either by the prophet himself or by the compiler of his prophecies, to show how narrow his escape had been.