Charles Ellicott Commentary Jeremiah 26:23

"and they fetched forth Uriah out of Egypt, and brought him unto Jehoiakim the king, who slew him with the sword, and cast his dead body into the graves of the common people." — Jeremiah 26:23 (ASV)

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 Jewish tradition holds, had been sawn asunder (Hebrews 11:37). The fact now recorded was, according to Jewish sentiment, an act of brutal outrage. The body of the prophet was not allowed to rest in the tomb of his fathers, with the due honor of embalming, 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 honors 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.