Deuteronomy 21:22-23

He that is hanged is accursed of God.

Hanging

I. Hanging a disgraceful punishment. The body was exposed to insult and assault. Shameful deeds were kept in public memory, and the dead was a spectacle to the world. It was only inflicted on most infamous offenders. Cicero calls it a nameless wickedness. Its pain and disgrace were extreme.

II. Hanging a defilement of the land That thy land be not defiled. The vices of the living and the bodies of the dead defiled the land (Numbers 35:34).

1. Physically it would be defiled. In the hot climate its decomposition would injure the health and peril the life of others.

2. Morally, as the land of Jehovah, it would be polluted. Remembrance of crime would harden the heart and breed familiarity.

III. Hanging a warning to others. The punishment was designed to deter others. They saw the terrible consequences of guilt. Alas! “hanging is no warning,” and men leave the very gibbet or the gallows to commit their crimes.

IV. Hanging a type of the death of Christ (Acts 5:35; Galatians 3:13).

1. He became our substitute.

2. He was buried in the evening (John 19:31).

3. As the land was cleansed by removal of curse, so the conscience and the Church purified by Christ. (J. Wolfendale.)

The accursed tree

I. A shameful death awaits abominable crime. “Worthy, of death,” lit., if there be on a man a right of death, “he was hanged upon a tree.”

II. Public ignominy expressed in this shameful death. Penalty for crime, detestation of the perpetrator, and the curse of God.

III. The desirability of taking away the memory of this shame. “He shall not remain all night,” take him down from the tree and bury him; blot out his name and remove the curse.

IV. Christ alone removes the curse. The best of men treated as one of the vilest, died the just for the unjust, “who His own self bare our sins in His own body on the tree.” (J. Wolfendale.).