Acts 13:29 → Deuteronomy 21:22-23

Preaching in the Pisidian-Antioch synagogue, Paul narrates the close of the passion in Deuteronomy's own vocabulary: "When they had carried out all that was written about Him, they took Him down from the tree (ξύλου) and laid Him in a tomb" (Acts 13:29). Deuteronomy 21:22-23 is a post-execution land-purity regulation — a body displayed on a tree (ξύλον in the LXX) "must not remain overnight" but be "buried that day," for "anyone who is hung on a tree is under God's curse." Paul's choice of xylon for the cross (the standing apostolic idiom alongside Acts 5:30; 10:39; 1 Peter 2:24) and his pointed report that the body was taken down and laid in a tomb re-narrates Calvary as the exact enactment of the Mosaic protocol: the cursed one removed from the tree before nightfall and buried. This is not a citation formula but Allusion — Paul tells the story in the law's words. The method is Typology, not bare analogy or promise-fulfillment: the criminal hung under divine curse and buried the same day prefigures the crucified Christ, with the five marks operative (correspondence in the suspension-on-wood and same-day burial; historicity of both; pointing-forwardness of the curse-formula; retrospective clarity from the apostolic vantage). The decisive note is Contrast as the escalation marker — the Mosaic curse falls on the guilty for personal sin, whereas Christ, found with "no ground for a death sentence" (Acts 13:28), enters that divinely-defined cursed category innocently and vicariously, so that the curse He bears is ours and not His own. The telos: the body Paul saw taken down and laid in a tomb does not stay there — the very next breath is "But God raised Him from the dead" (Acts 13:30). To behold the cursed-and-buried One here is to see the One whose curse-bearing is the door to forgiveness "proclaimed to you" (13:38) — Christ not merely foreshadowed by an ancient burial-law, but desirable as the substitute who took the tree's curse so that we might be justified (13:39).