Intertextuality Pair

Galatians 3:13 → Deuteronomy 21:23

Quotation

Later text

Galatians 3:13BSB

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

Deuteronomy 21:23BSB

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.
+ 1 more earlier text

Earlier text

Deuteronomy 21:22-23BSB

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.
Walk the Square · a single-voice walk of this pair around the Clowney square9:10

Significance

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).

Found via
Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Reference Type
Direct Quotation
Connection Method(s)
Contrast (the curse-axis of the covenant lawsuit — penal substitution: the sanction the covenant-breakers incurred falls on the one Vassal who kept the covenant; reversal, not escalation, so not Typology on this axis — as TT 037 classifies it) + Typology only as the lifted-up atonement locus owned by TT 021 (Providential Type, Backward-Looking)

▸ Cursed Is He Who Hangs

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