“And seven months will the house of Israel be burying them, that they may cleanse the land. Yes, all the people of the land will bury them. And it will bring honour on them (be to them a renown) in the day that I will be glorified,” says the Lord Yahweh. “And they will set apart men with the continual employment of passing through the land to bury those who pass through, who remain on the face of the land, to cleanse it. At the end of seven months they will search.”
Again the emphasis is on the huge number of dead. At first the whole of Israel will be involved in burying the multitude of the dead for ‘seven months', that is, the divinely appointed time necessary. Then the task of clearing up the remainder will be handed over to specialists, ‘the passers through'. These latter will be specifically employed on a continual basis for the task of searching out and ensuring the burial of all the bones picked clean by the scavengers which have been missed in the above operation. (We are reminded of the assiduous searching out of leaven at the feast of the Passover - see Exodus 12:19).
Note that the purpose is not to give them a decent burial but to get rid of the bones and corpses of the accursed of God so that the land will be ‘clean' (Deuteronomy 21:23). The whole purpose of the operation is the purity of God's people which must be the concern of the whole people. While such bodies remained unburied the land was ‘unclean' and ‘defiled'. The everlasting Israel must be free from all taint and totally pure for their everlasting future.
And by these actions great honour will come on Israel, for they will be having their part in the great glory brought on the name of God by what has happened in the defeat of the forces of darkness in ‘the day that He is glorified'.