Walk in Wisdom

Deuteronomy 21:22-23
“And if a man has committed a crime punishable by death and he is put to death, and you hang him on a tree, his body shall not remain all night on the tree, but you shall bury him the same day, for a hanged man is cursed by God.”

While our LORD’s redeeming death on a cross is undoubtedly the most crucial application of the peculiar Scripture above, the answer to the question, “Why is a man hanging from a tree a cursed thing?” can’t be, “Because Christ will one day hang on a tree to bear our sins,” since Deuteronomy 21:22-23 is law as much as prophecy. Christ’s Passion might be the ultimate picture we see when gazing back through years of revelatory hindsight, but even the Passion doesn’t explicate why a man hanging on a tree is a cursed endeavor in the first place, nor why leaving the dead man hanging overnight incites a sort of double curse. In other words, why is this sort of death so grievous to God at all, and why does a dead body need removing before a 24-hour period, lest it stain the society on the whole (ultimately, the society is the thing cursed here because the hanged man is already dead)?

Here’s a thought to consider. What if this law has something to do with the biblical principle that man is of the earth, that God effectively knelt down and fashioned Adam from the ground, and that death returns a man to that former state (Genesis 3:19)? After all, burial ceremonies are as old as time because man intuitively recognizes his double-nature, that he’s a spiritual being and a material being. So maybe there’s something symbolically sacrilegious about a dead man artificially suspended above the ground when God meant for his body to be inhumed by nature. After all, isn’t it God Who raises up a man to glory? Isn’t ascension His redemptive work in us? Perhaps the inventors of crucifixion and hangings were implicitly playing God in a way. Justice never inspired men to hang criminals on trees and crosses with ropes and nails, nor to leave them suspended there. Because, mysterious though it seems, such practice is a sacrilege to ourselves, to nature, and to the God Who made both, and in our heart of hearts we know it intuitively.