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Cursed Is Anyone Hung on a Tree
Deuteronomy 21:22–23 — Cursed Is Anyone Hung on a Tree. Each verse below carries the full apparatus: the Berean Standard Bible, the vocalized original (tap any word), and a parsed breakdown of every term transcribed from the interlinear. Synthesized commentary, canonical threads, and the reading of Christ gather at the end, over the whole unit.
22If a man has committed a sin worthy of death, and he is executed, and you hang his body on a tree,
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Hebrew — tap a word ↓
wə·ḵî- ḇə·’îš yih·yeh ḥêṭ miš·paṭ- mā·weṯ wə·hū·māṯ wə·ṯā·lî·ṯā ’ō·ṯōw ‘al- ‘êṣ
Literal — word-for-word from the original
“And-when there-comes-to-be against a-man a-sin (a-judgment-of-death, mišpaṭ-māweṯ), and-he-is-put-to-death, and-you-hang him upon a-tree —”
Where the English smooths the original
if a man have committed a sin … and thou hang him on a tree—Hanging was not a Hebrew form of execution (gibbeting is meant), but the body was not to be left to rot or be a prey to ravenous birds; it was to be buried "that day,"
Suspension, whether from cross, stake, or gallows, was not used as a mode of taking life, but was sometimes added after death as an enhancement of punishment. Pharaoh's chief baker Genesis 40:19 was hanged after being put to death by the sword; and similarly Joshua appears Joshua 10:26 to have dealt with the five kings who made war against Gibeon.
If there was a sin upon a man, מות משׁפּט, lit., a right of death, i.e., a capital crime (cf. Deuteronomy 19:6 and Deuteronomy 22:26 ), and he was put to death, and they hanged him upon a tree (wood), his body was not to remain upon the wood over nightK&D read mišpaṭ-māweṯ literally as “a right of death,” a capital crime.
Hanging (or impalement? see below) was not the form of the criminal’s death but was subsequent to the execution and an aggravation of its dishonour. This is clear not only from Deuteronomy 21:22 , but from Joshua 8:29 ; Joshua 10:26 , 1 Samuel 31:10 , 2 Samuel 4:12
We cannot see why he should be pronounced cursed, except for the sake of that which was designed by “the determined counsel and foreknowledge of God,” that His Son Jesus Christ should bear our sins in His own body on the tree, and redeem us from the curse of the Law, by being “made a curse for us.”Ellicott reads the otherwise puzzling curse-clause as written for the cross — the “tree” of the statute foreshadowing the body borne on the tree (1 Pet. 2:24; Gal. 3:13).
23you must not leave the body on the tree overnight, but you must be sure to bury him that day, because anyone who is hung on a tree is under God’s curse. You must not defile the land that the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance.
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Hebrew — tap a word ↓
lō- niḇ·lā·ṯōw ‘al- hā·‘êṣ ṯā·lîn kî- qā·ḇō·wr tiq·bə·ren·nū ha·hū bay·yō·wm kî- tā·lui ’ĕ·lō·hîm qil·laṯ wə·lō ṯə·ṭam·mê ’eṯ- ’aḏ·mā·ṯə·ḵā ’ă·šer Yah·weh ’ĕ·lō·he·ḵā nō·ṯên lə·ḵā na·ḥă·lāh
Literal — word-for-word from the original
“His-corpse shall-not-lodge upon the-tree, but burying you-shall-bury him on that-day, for a-curse-of-God is the-one-hung; and-you-shall-not defile your-ground which YHWH your-God is-giving to-you as-an-inheritance.”
Where the English smooths the original
He that is hanged is accursed of God; that is, it is the highest degree of disgrace and reproach. Those who see a man thus hanging between heaven and earth, will conclude him abandoned of both, and unworthy of either. Moses, by the Spirit, uses this phrase of being accursed of God, when he means no more than being treated most disgracefully, that it might afterward be applied to the death of Christ, and might show that in it he underwent the curse of the law for us
He that is hanged is accursed of God ; literally, a curse of God . Some take this as meaning an insult to God, a contemning of him, "since man his image is thus given up to scorn and insult" (Rashi). But the more probable meaning is "a curse inflicted by God," which the transgressor is made to endurePreserves the live ambiguity in qilelaṯ ’ĕlōhîm — “insult to God” (Rashi) vs. “curse inflicted by God.”
The LXX version of these words: κεκαταραμένος ὑπὸ θεοῦ πᾶς κρεμάμενος ἐπὶ ξύλου is quoted by Paul with a difference— ἐπικατάρατος πᾶς ὁ κρεμάμενος ἐπὶ ξύλου —in support of his statement that Christ was made a curse for us.Cambridge records the exact LXX-to-Paul variation: Paul drops “by God” and substitutes epikataratos.
the words are not a reason of his being hanged, but a reason why being hanged, and so openly accursed, he should not remain hanging, but be taken down and buried: the meaning is not, as Onkelos gives it, that"because he sinned before the Lord he is hangedGill argues the curse-clause grounds the command to take down and bury, not the reason for hanging.
For God's law is satisfied by his death, and nature abhors cruelty.The Geneva marginal note (m) on the same-day-burial clause: even under the curse, the law's claim is met by death itself, so the corpse need not be left to further indignity.
The verse-by-verse work is done. What follows gathers the whole unit. All three layers below are machine-generated (⚙). Weigh them; they have no authority.
AI synthesis — woven from the public-domain voices above and the original text; generated and fallible.
The first thing the Hebrew settles — and on which every named voice agrees — is sequence. The man is already executed when he is hung. Benson states it flatly: the hanging “was done after the malefactor was put to death some other way; this public shame being added to his former punishment.” Jamieson, Fausset & Brown insist on the same: “Hanging was not a Hebrew form of execution (gibbeting is meant).” Barnes catalogues the four Israelite modes of execution — stoning, burning, the sword, strangulation — and concludes that “suspension, whether from cross, stake, or gallows, was not used as a mode of taking life, but was sometimes added after death.” The grammar confirms them: wəhūmāṯ (Hophal, “he is put to death”) precedes wəṯālîṯā (“and you shall hang”). The tree is not the gallows; it is the pillory of the dead.
The opening clause is not “if a man sins” but, as Keil & Delitzsch render the Hebrew, “if there was a sin upon a man… a capital crime.” The phrase mišpaṭ-māweṯ (literally “a judgment of death”) is a verdict. The Cambridge editors weigh whether it is “a fusion of a sin of death… and a sentence of death… Or mišpaṭ is a gloss” — but either way the term plants the law in a court. This restraint is itself the law’s mercy: hanging is reserved, in the Mishnaic tradition Gill cites, for the gravest cases (“none are to be hanged but the blasphemer and idolater”), and only after lawful conviction.
The body is called a nəḇêlāh — a carcass, the word for unclean dead. It may not lûn, “lodge,” on the tree past sundown; the doubled qāḇōwr tiqbərennū (“burying you shall bury him”) makes same-day burial absolute. Gill records the practice the Targum already assumed: “ye shall bury him at sun setting.” The reason given is the polluted ’ăḏāmāh, the gift-soil. Keil & Delitzsch resist a merely physical reading: “We are not to think of any bodily defilement of the land through the decomposition… the land was defiled… by the exposure to view of criminals who had been… smitten by the curse of God.” The Geneva note hears mercy in the clock itself: the body comes down “for God’s law is satisfied by his death, and nature abhors cruelty.”
Here the voices split, and honestly so. The Hebrew qilelaṯ ’ĕlōhîm is a bare construct — “a curse of God” — and the genitive runs two ways. The dominant Christian reading, Barnes’, takes it as a curse inflicted by God: “God’s curse rests on it.” But the Pulpit Commentary preserves the older Jewish reading from Rashi: “an insult to God, a contemning of him, ‘since man his image is thus given up to scorn and insult’.” Ellicott reports Rashi’s parable of the twin brothers — one king, one hanged thief — where the passerby cries, “There hangs the king!” Matthew Henry threads the needle: Moses “uses this phrase of being accursed of God, when he means no more than being treated most disgracefully, that it might afterward be applied to the death of Christ.” Gill adds a structural point easily missed: the curse-clause is “not a reason of his being hanged, but a reason why… he should not remain hanging, but be taken down and buried.”
Read under the rule that Scripture is its own interpreter, this small burial-law turns out to be one of the load-bearing stones of the gospel — and the New Testament tells us so itself. Three things stand out, offered as a reading to be tested, not a verdict to be trusted. First, the law’s own logic is mercy under judgment. Even the justly condemned man is not to be left to rot; the image of God in him forbids it (so Rashi’s reading), and the Geneva note is right that “God’s law is satisfied by his death.” The penalty has a floor of dignity. Second, the curse is real, public, and located on the tree. Whatever the precise sense of qilelaṯ ’ĕlōhîm, to hang on the wood is to be displayed as cursed — the most visible shame Israel knew. Third, and decisively, Paul reads this verse as written ahead of time about Christ. He quotes the Greek of v. 23 — “cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree” — to say that Christ “redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us” (Galatians 3:13). The crucified Messiah was buried the same day He died (John 19:31–42), the Sabbath approaching, the bodies not to remain on the tree — this very law observed at the cross. The hanged man under the curse, taken down before night and buried, is the shape the apostle finds fulfilled in the One who bore the curse to lift it. This is the tool’s reading; weigh it against the text, and keep what the Word supports.
The law that buried the cursed before nightfall was quietly drawing the outline of a cross, and an empty tomb by sundown.
AI-generated connections. Each carries a verification badge with a recorded basis; contested links are flagged.
The narrative of Joshua applies this exact statute: a defeated enemy is executed, then “hanged on a tree” (tālāh, ‘êṣ), and the body — called a nəḇêlāh, “carcass” — is taken down and buried “that day” before sunset. Cambridge, Barnes, Keil & Delitzsch, and the Pulpit Commentary all cross-reference these scenes as the law’s enactment. The shared vocabulary is unusually tight: the rare verb tālāh (only 27 verses in the canon), ‘êṣ (“tree/wood”), nəḇêlāh (“carcass”), and yôwm (“day”) all recur in Joshua 8:29.
Joshua 8:29 · Joshua 10:26
basis: Verifier on Deuteronomy 21:23 ↔ Joshua 8:29 returns four shared lexemes including the rare pair H8518 tâlâh (27 vv) + H5038 nᵉbêlâh (41 vv), plus H6086 ʻêts and H3117 yôwm; Joshua 10:26 shares H8518 tâlâh + H6086 ʻêts (+ H4191 mûwth). The density of the two rare lexemes marks this as a verbal link (shared rare wording), not mere thematic overlap. Held precisely: Joshua narrates the statute's enactment in the same vocabulary — it does not formally cite the law, so the 'quotation' here is the shared rare diction, not a citation formula.
When David executes the assassins of Ish-bosheth he “hanged them up” (tālāh) by the pool at Hebron, then has the remains buried (qābar) — the same pairing of exposure-then-burial this law governs. Matthew Poole and Cambridge list 2 Samuel 4:12 among the law’s outworkings. The link rests on the shared rare verb tālāh together with qābar, “to bury.”
2 Samuel 4:12
basis: shared lexemes H8518 tâlâh (27 vv) and H6912 qâbar (122 vv); same hang-then-bury pattern, no quotation claimed.
Before Sinai the motif already exists: Pharaoh hangs his chief baker “on a tree” (Genesis 40:19), and Barnes cites it as a non-Israelite precedent for suspension-after-death. The motif recurs in the violent court-tales of Esther, where Haman is hung on the very ‘êṣ he built (Esther 7:10). These are the same two words — tālāh and ‘êṣ — but they describe a widespread Near-Eastern practice, not a citation of Deuteronomy; the law in fact restrains what these scenes do freely.
Genesis 40:19 · Esther 7:10
basis: shared lexemes H8518 tâlâh (27 vv) and H6086 ʻêts (288 vv); a common cultural motif of impalement/hanging, not a verbal quotation of the statute.
The clause “you shall not defile your ground” (ṭāmê’, “to make unclean”) draws this burial-law into the larger theology of a land that vomits out its defilers. Barnes, the Pulpit Commentary, and Keil & Delitzsch all cross-reference Leviticus 18:24–28 and Numbers 35:33–34: blood and exposed wickedness pollute the gift-soil. The shared lexeme is ṭāmê’, the defilement verb.
Leviticus 18:25 · Numbers 35:34
basis: Leviticus 18:25 shares H2930 ṭâmêʼ (142 vv) with the unit; the land-defilement theology is shared pattern, not quotation. (Numbers 35:34 is cited by the commentators on the same theme.)
Paul quotes this verse — “cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree” — to expound the crucifixion: “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us” (Galatians 3:13). The named voices are unanimous that this is the verse’s deepest reach: Henry, Benson, Poole, Barnes, Gill, Keil & Delitzsch, and Cambridge all point to Galatians 3:13. Held honestly: this is a cross-Testament link (Greek New Testament citing the Greek Septuagint of a Hebrew verse), so it cannot rest on a shared Strong’s number — the lexicons index Hebrew and Greek separately. Moreover, as Cambridge documents, Paul’s wording differs from the LXX he echoes: the LXX reads kekataramenos hypo theou (“cursed by God”), while Paul writes epikataratos and pointedly omits “by God.” The connection is certain and apostolic, but the textual transmission is debated, so it is flagged for the reader to verify rather than asserted as a clean quotation.
Galatians 3:13
basis: Cross-Testament (Greek↔Hebrew): no shared Strong’s lexeme is possible — the verifier finds none. Paul cites the LXX of this verse but alters it (LXX kekataramenos hypo theou → Paul epikataratos, dropping “by God”); the citation is apostolic and certain in substance, the exact textual basis debated, so flagged.
AI-generated reading; weigh it against the text.
This is the verse the New Testament most directly applies to the cross. The crucified Messiah hangs on the xylon, the “tree” of v. 23, and Paul reads the ancient curse-clause as the very thing being transacted there: “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us — for it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree’” (Galatians 3:13). Matthew Henry states the design plainly: Moses uses “accursed of God” so “that it might afterward be applied to the death of Christ, and might show that in it he underwent the curse of the law for us.” Benson agrees the curse is “appropriated to those that are hanged, to signify beforehand that Christ should undergo this execrable punishment.” This is not a novel reading; it is the apostle’s own and the unbroken witness of the commentators.
Galatians 3:13
The companion command — the body must not lodge on the tree overnight but be buried “that day” — was kept at the cross with striking precision. The Jews asked Pilate that the bodies not remain on the cross on the Sabbath, “for that Sabbath was a high day,” and Jesus was buried before nightfall (John 19:31–42). Ellicott marks the providence: this is “another law, remarkably and providentially fulfilled in our Lord’s death.” Gill draws the typological line further: the taking-down and burial “signified the removing the curse from him and his people,” and the undefiled gift-land was “typical of the undefiled inheritance” of 1 Peter 1:4 — secured for those for whom He bore the curse.
John 19:31-42 · 1 Peter 1:4
The biblical text is the Berean Standard Bible (BSB), public domain (CC0). Hebrew/Greek text, transliteration, morphology and Strong’s are transcribed from the Berean interlinear (CC0) + Strong’s lexicons (PD); the literal renderings, divergence notes, word notes and all synthesis are this tool’s own work (⚙) — fallible; verify them.
Named voices, quoted verbatim from public-domain works:
The biblical text is the Berean Standard Bible (CC0). The named voices are quoted verbatim — each a contiguous substring of its source — from public-domain commentaries on Deuteronomy 21:22 and 21:23 (Ellicott, Benson, Henry, Barnes, JFB, Poole, Gill, Geneva, Cambridge, Pulpit, Keil & Delitzsch), attributed in place. Hebrew transliterations, parsings, literal renderings, and the “where the English smooths the Hebrew” notes are this tool’s own work (⚙) — fallible; check against BDB/HALOT.
Two honesty notes specific to this unit. (1) The curse genitive is genuinely open. qilelaṯ ’ĕlōhîm can mean “cursed by God” (Barnes, Paul) or “an insult to God” (Rashi, via the Pulpit Commentary). The synthesis preserves both rather than collapsing the ambiguity; the BSB’s “under God’s curse” chooses one. (2) The Galatians 3:13 thread is flagged on purpose — not because the connection is weak (it is apostolic and certain in substance) but because it is a cross-Testament link that cannot rest on a shared Strong’s number, and because, as Cambridge documents, Paul’s wording (epikataratos, no “by God”) diverges from the Septuagint of this verse. The flag shows the verifier working in the open. “Search the Scriptures daily, whether those things were so.” (Acts 17:11)
✦ = human, public-domain source, quoted and named. ⚙ = machine synthesis, to be verified. Flagged cross-references are left visible on purpose — the verifier working in the open. “Search the Scriptures daily, whether those things were so.” (Acts 17:11)