A Corpse Left Hanging Overnight Is a “Cursing of God”

Mishnah Sanhedrin 6:4 records a debate about whether a woman can also be hanged. The majority opinion is that only men are hanged. The Bible itself is silent on this matter, though it does not record the hanging or impaling of any woman.

So also Samuel R. Driver, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Deuteronomy, 3^rd ed. (Edinburgh: T and T Clark, 1986) p. 248: “…not, as with us, for the purpose of execution, but after execution, as an additional disgrace.”

In theory, the verse might be saying that the law does not require hanging anyone. The phrase ותלית אותו על עץ—and you hang him on a tree, is part of the protasis (the “if clause”), and could simply mean that if you choose to display the body, these are the conditions that apply. This understanding is not found in classical rabbinic literature.

Editors’ note: For more on the relationship of Joshua and Kings to the Deuteronomic Law Collection, see David Glatt-Gilad, “Deuteronomy: The First Torah,” TheTorah (2015).

The anonymous author of the medieval work, Sefer ha-Ḥinukh (Commandment 536) says that this verse is the source for the commandment to bury the dead.

מצות קבורה לנהרג על פי בית דין וכן לכל מת.

The mitzvah of burying someone who was killed by a Jewish court, and also anyone else who dies.

His source for this claim is Mishnah Sanhedrin 6:5, which deals with the mitzvah of burial as an ancillary part of the prohibition against leaving a criminal’s body unburied overnight:

ולא זו בלבד אמרו, אלא כל המלין את מתו עובר בלא תעשה

They did not say only [that an executed criminal must be buried on the same day], but also that anyone who delays burial to the next day has transgressed a negative commandment.

See Daniel Schwartz, (12, מקוללי אלוהים ואנשים' (מגילת המקדש סד' Leshonenu 47.1 (1983), 18–24. As Schwartz puts it, the question is whether we have here a genetivus objectivus or a genetivus subjectivus.

See also Acts 5:30 and 10:39.

See the note by Shaye J. D. Cohen in the Jewish Annotated New Testament, second edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), p. 380, which points out that two Dead Sea Scrolls (11QSTemple and 4QpNahum) also view Deut 21:23 as a reference to crucifixion. See also J. Louis Martyn, Galatians, Anchor Bible (New York: Doubleday, 1997), p. 278, note 187: “In Qumran, Deut 21:23 was read as a reference to crucifixion as the form of punishment appropriate to an Israelite cursed by God for a heinous crime.” In medieval Jewish polemical texts, Jesus is often referred to as התלוי—the hanged (i.e., crucified) one.

קרוב מהתלוי in ibn Ezra’s Hebrew is equivalent to קרוב לתלוי in later Hebrew.

Gerhard Von Rad, Deuteronomy: A Commentary (London: SCM Press, 1966), p. 138.

See the commentary of Rabbi Joseph Bekhor Shor, cited below, which attempts to deal with this problem.

A straightforward reading of the biblical verse is that all executed criminals are hanged (or may be hanged), but neither of the positions in the Mishnah takes it that way (m. Sanhedrin 6:7, Kaufmann MS):

כל הניסקלים ניתלים דברי ר' אליעזר. וחכמ[ים] אומ[רים] אינו ניתלה אלא המגדף והעובד עבודה זרה.

“[The bodies of] all who are executed by stoning are hanged”—the words of Rabbi Eliezer. The Sages say: “Only [the body of] one who cursed God or worshipped foreign gods is hanged.”

Rabbi Eliezer limits the corpse-hanging punishment to those who were executed by stoning; those killed by the other three death penalties—by fire, by sword, or by suffocation—are not hanged. The Sages limit it even further, to only two specific transgressions. Whether the Sages’ position is the one assumed in the derasha quoted above, or whether the derasha reflects a third position limiting the punishment only to those who curse God, is unclear.

For a discussion of the difference between the parable of Bekhor Shor and the parable of Rabbi Meir (cited below), see Jonathan Jacobs, המשל הסיפורי בפרשנות צפון צרפת במאות האחת-עשרה והשתיים-עשרה ר' יוסף קרא ; ר' יוסף בכור שור; ר' אלעזר מבלגנצי [“‘The Literary Parable’ in Northern French Exegesis in the 11^th and 12^th centuries (R. Joseph Kara, R. Joseph Bekhor Shor, R. Eliezer of Beaugency)”], Shnaton: An Annual for Biblical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies 25 (2017): 223–251 [240–241].

Notably, to arrive at this interpretation, Bekhor Shor must read the phrase in two ways at the same time: the midrashic way from the Mishnah (“a person who cursed God should be hanged”) and his peshat way (“a hanged body is a curse to God”).

Otzar HaGeonim, Sanhedrin, p. 359; see discussion in fn. 70. See also the notes in the Steinsaltz Talmud, which cites this view.

Text follows the version in the Bavli as per MS Munich 95, with abbreviations filled out.

The version in the Tosefta reads (Sanhedrin 9:3 [7 ]):

היה ר' מאיר אומ' מה תלמ' לומר כי קללת אלהים תלוי לשני אחים תאומים דומין זה לזה אחד מלך על כל העולם כולו ואחד יצא לליסטייא לאחר זמן נתפס זה שיצא לליסטיא והיו צולבין אותו על הצלוב והיה כל עובר ושב או' דומה שהמלך צלוב לכך נאמר כי קללת אלהים תלוי:

Rabbi Meir would say: What does the verse “For a hanged person is a curse to God” teach us? [It is like] two identical twin brothers. One became king of the world; the other became a highwayman. After a while, the highwayman was captured and crucified on a crucifix, and everyone who passed by would say “It looks like the king has been crucified!” Therefore, it says “for a hanged man is a curse to God.”

See the discussion in David Hanshke, לתולדות מדרש הכתוב "קללת אלהים תלוי": בין הלכה כיתתית לחז"ל ובין המשנה לתוספתא, Tarbiz 69 (2000), 507-537; and Moshe Bernstein, “Deut 21:23: A Study in Early Jewish Exegesis,” Jewish Quarterly Review 74 (1983), 21-45.

Commentary on Sanhedrin, ibid., s.v. לשני תאומים: אדם עשוי בדיוקנו של מקום—humans were created in the image of God.” In his Torah commentary (Deut 21:23, s.v. כי קללת), Rashi repeats this idea but phrases it more particularistically: “שאדם עשוי בדמות דיוקנו וישראל הם בניו—for humans are made in the image of God, and the Israelites are God’s children.” For kabbalistic reasons that are not clear to me, Nahmanides takes issue with Rashi’s formulation in the Torah commentary:

והמשל בשני האחים התאומים יש לו סוד; איננו כאשר חשב הרב בישראל שנקראו בנים למקום.

The parable about the twin brothers has an esoteric meaning; it is not [to be understood] the way the [great] rabbi of Israel [= Rashi] thought, namely, that the Israelites are God’s children.

See similarly Targum Pseudo-Jonathan:

אֲרוּם קִילוּתָא קֳדָם אֱלָהָא לְמִצְלוֹב גְּבַר אֱלָהֵן חוֹבוֹי גָרְמוּ לֵיהּ וּמִן בִּגְלַל דִּבְדִיוּקְנָא דַיְיָ אִתְעֲבֵד תְּקַבְּרוּנֵיהּ.

It is an affront to God to crucify a man unless the man’s sins caused this; and since he was made in the image of God, bury him.

Night (New York: Hill and Wang, 2006), p. 83. Many editions of Night, including this one, have a Foreword by Francois Mauriac who argues (on p. 10) that the image of seeing God hanged in the concentration camp was alluding to the crucifixion. More likely Wiesel was alluding to the Talmudic passage under discussion here.

I am grateful to my friend Rabbi Shmuel Klitsner for pointing out to me this connection between Deuteronomy and Genesis.

Modern translators, as well as some medieval Jewish exegetes, say that the root ק-ל-ל is better understood as “affront” than as “curse.” See e.g., Rashi on our verse: כל קללה שבמקרא לשון הקל וזילזול — Wherever the term קללה occurs in Scripture it means “holding in low esteem or belittling.”

The idea that אלוהים can mean judges is common among rabbinic interpreters (see, e.g., Rashi, Rashbam, and ibn Ezra on Exod 21:6 and 22:27), though the specific application to our verse in Deuteronomy is not. Daniel Schwartz (cited above) argues that the interpretation that אלוהים in our verse means “judges” can be found already in the Dead Sea Temple Scroll (but the Scroll’s interpretation ultimately differs from Rashbam’s).

Rashbam there connects the verse explicitly with ours:

אלהים לא תקלל ונשיא בעמך לא תאר - דבר הכתוב בהווה, לפי שהמלכים והדיינין דנין דיני ממונות ונפשות רגילים בני אדם לקללם. וכן הוא אומר גם במדעך מלך אל תקלל, וכן הוא אומר כי קללת אלהים תלוי, כשרואין את האדם תלוי מקללין את הדיינין לכך ציוה לא תלין נבלתו:

The text describes the most likely occurrence. Since kings and judges are the ones who adjudicate monetary and capital cases, it is common for people to curse them. So it is written (Eccl 10:20) “Do not revile a king, even in your thoughts” and it is written (Deut 21:23) “a hanged man (תלוי) [leads to] קללת אלהים,” i.e. when people see a person hanged, they generally curse the judges; that is why the verse says (ibid.), “You must not let his corpse hang.”

Rashbam’s originality extends to the next clause of the verse, too. He rejects the interpretation that וְלֹא תְטַמֵּא אֶת אַדְמָתְךָ—you shall not defile the land—reflects a concern about spiritual defilement as a result of a curse from or upon God. Instead, Rashbam prosaically points out that in biblical and rabbinic law, dead bodies are the source of טומאה, ritual impurity, until they are buried (based on Numbers 19). Not burying someone who was executed then has two drawbacks: public contempt for the court, and a greater risk of ritual impurity, because a dead body was left unburied. On Rashbam’s penchant for offering prosaic explanations for verses to which others impute spiritual meaning, see my פירוש הרשב"ם על התורה (Jerusalem: Horeb, 2009), pp. 15-16.

Aderet Eliyyahu commentary, Deut 21:23. For a discussion of this type of superlative particle, see D. Winton Thomas, “A Consideration of Some Unusual Ways of Expressing the Superlative in Hebrew,” Vetus Testamentum 3.3 (1953): 209–224.

So NJPS there.

So NJPS there.

See David Kimhi’s commentary to Psalms 36:7 where he makes the same point about Jonah 3:3 (עיר גדולה לאלוהים—NJPS: an enormously large city); I Sam 14:15 (חרדת אלוהים, which he understands as a very strong fear); Jer 2:31 (מאפליה—NJPS: deep gloom); Song 8:6 (שלהבתיה, as Elijah of Vilna later explained); and Psalms 80:11 (ארזי אל—NJPS: mighty cedars). Kimhi writes: וכן מנהג הלשון, כשרוצה להגדיל הדבר סומך אותו אל האל—such is the custom of the [biblical Hebrew] language: when the text wishes to magnify something, it links it to [one of the names of] God.