If a man guilty of a capital offense is put to death and his body is hung on a tree, you must not leave his body on the tree overnight. Be sure to bury him that same day, because anyone who is hung on a tree is under God’s curse. You must not desecrate the land the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance. (Deuteronomy 21:22-23 NIV84)
Not all stories are happy tales, even stories about trees. The trees of the Bible we’ve encountered to this point have provided beauty, food, vocation, testing, shelter, shade, deliverance, landmarks, and by the providence of God, even sweet water in a desert for a company of complainers.
Now we come to a sad story about trees. Cruel and godless peoples have used trees for torture and punishment, at least as far back as Israel’s exodus from Egypt in the second millennium B.C. Victims were hanged, impaled, or tied to trees until they died. Often their bodies were left on the trees to decay or to be eaten by insects and birds of prey.
Sadly, capital punishment was necessary under Old Testament law because human life, created in the image of God, is sacred. But the sanctify of life also meant that bodies were not to be abused after death. The corpse must be buried on the day of death. Executioners were not allowed to display the bodies of their victims to terrorize or oppress other people.
Generally, the Israelites did not execute their criminals by hanging them on a tree like the nations around them. Instead, they stoned those guilty of capital crimes, which ensured immediate burial. Criminals executed on a tree like pagans were cursed by God. The tree used as an instrument for death was a cursing tree, an oppressive system of terror. A recent revision changed “tree” to “pole” in our newer NIV Bibles, but it’s the normal Hebrew word for tree, in this case, a cursing tree. But even that curse had a limit. The victim’s body must be taken down on the day of execution so that the land would not be desecrated from a decaying human body which had been created in the image of God.
The passage which regulated this tree (Deut. 21:22-23) contained a hint of things to come. Surprisingly, the cursing tree also will appear in the New Testament. But first, we’ll see it in action when Israel entered the land of Canaan. That’s next time.
Prairie Pastor 