“The ravens of the valley pluck it out”
As for the eye that mocks a father and scorns obedience to a mother, may the ravens of the valley pluck it out and young vultures devour it. (Proverbs 30:17 BSB)
What it sounds like today
A gruesome, over-the-top image of birds and eyeballs.
The cultural key
This sounds like shock-value exaggeration to modern ears. It invokes a specific and dreaded fate: to die and lie unburied, your body left in the open for scavenging birds. In Israel and its world, proper burial was essential to honor, and to be denied it, left as carrion for 'the ravens of the valley' and 'young vultures,' was among the most shameful ends imaginable, often named as a curse or divine punishment. The Law warns that the disobedient will become 'food for all the birds of the air' with no one to drive them away (Deuteronomy 28:26), and Goliath vows to give David's flesh 'to the birds of the air' (1 Samuel 17:44). So the proverb pronounces a fitting doom on the child who despises father and mother: the eye that scorned its parents will itself be pecked out by scavengers, the disgraced, unburied end reserved for the utterly dishonored. The horror is the point, and it lands hardest once you know that being left to the birds was the ancient world's picture of total disgrace.
Recovered meaning
Being left for ravens and vultures pictures the curse of dying unburied, the ultimate disgrace in that culture. The proverb pronounces this dishonored, scavenged end on the child who mocks father and mother.