Later text
Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us. For it is written: “Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree.”
Intertextuality Pair
Quotation
Later text
Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us. For it is written: “Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree.”
Earlier text
you 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.
Earlier text
If a man has committed a sin worthy of death, and he is executed, and you hang his body on a tree, you 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.
Originally Deuteronomy 21:23 explained why a criminal's corpse (executed by stoning, then suspended from a tree for public exposure) was not to hang overnight. Roman crucifixion, though different from OT execution methods, shared the element of shameful public exposure on a gibbet—such exposure reflected divine curse according to Deuteronomy. First-century Jews would have seen the connection: Jesus, suspended on a wooden cross for public viewing and ridicule, fell under a curse. Paul omits "by God" (present in LXX)—perhaps to avoid unnecessary complication, since he couldn't afford distraction from the major issue. The two Deuteronomy quotations work together: the law pronounces a curse (3:10 from Deuteronomy 27:26), and Christ redeemed us from that curse by becoming a curse (3:13 from Deuteronomy 21:23).