15) Galatians 3:13-14
Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree”— so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith. (Galatians 3:13-14, ESV Bible)
The Asham Talui
Within Judaism, Yeshua of Nazareth has been often known by the name Talui, or haTalui, which literally translated means "the Hanged One," or contextually, "the Crucified One." In old anti-Christian writings, the pejorative is sometimes combined with other unflattering descriptions, but in general Talui means Jesus, the crucified one.
Ironically, the word talui is also a Talmudic-era Hebrew term, still in use today, for uncertainty. Because it means "hanging," it is used to express a matter hanging in doubt. For example, in English we sometimes speak of a "hung jury." Something hanging swings back and forth, so hanging can mean uncertainty. In the days of the apostles, Jewish people offered a special kind of a sacrifice in the Temple called an asham talui, which literally means "a guilt offering hanging," but idiomatically "a guilt offering of uncertainty." One who was in doubt as to whether he had committed a transgression or not brought a guilt offering of uncertainty. The Talmud says that Bava ben Buta brought an asham talui to the Temple every day because he thought, "Perhaps I have transgressed and did not realize it. "
Our Master is contemptuously called Talui, meaning the crucified one, but ironically the name also implies uncertainty: Might he not be the promised Messiah? What if his claims are true? Even more ironic, Isaiah 53:10 predicts that the Messiah will suffer on behalf of the nation "when his soul makes an offering for guilt (asham)." Yeshua, the crucified one (talui), went to the cross as an asham talui, so to speak.
Our Master's detractors called him Talui as a pejorative, but God meant the name for good. It comes from the Torah:
And if a man has committed a crime punishable by death and he is put to death, and you hang (talita) him on a tree, his body shall not remain all night on the tree, but you shall bury him the same day, for a hanged man (talui) is cursed by God. You shall not defile your land that the LORD your God is giving you for an inheritance. (Deuteronomy 21:22-23)
Hung upon a Tree
The Torah says that if a corpse is hung upon a tree, it is not to be left hanging overnight. Instead, the corpse must be taken down and buried that same day. This passage is relevant to the Master's death. However, the Torah is not speaking of crucifixion. In Tractate Sanhedrin (46b), the Talmud points out that the man hung on a tree in Deuteronom 21:22 was not crucified. He was already dead prior to being hung on the tree.
In the ancient world, authorities sometimes hung the corpse of an executed man as a public warning to others. Hopefully, those who saw the executed man's body on display would resolve not to commit the same crimes. The Torah does not actually prescribe such a grisly method of dissuasion. Instead, the Torah's legislation aims to ensure the dignity of the corpse by requiring a timely burial.
Hanging on a tree is not a Torah-prescribed means of delivering a death sentence. Crucifixion was never a Jewish mode of execution and would itself be a violation of Jewish law. In Roman law, however, a person could be crucified for piracy, highway robbery, assassination, forgery, false testimony, mutiny, sedition, or rebellion. The Romans also crucified soldiers who deserted to the enemy and slaves who denounced their masters.
The Romans used crosses of different shapes. Some were in the form of a capital T. Others were shaped like the letter X, while still others were in the traditional shape that Christian iconography identifies with the Master's cross.
According to Christian tradition, several of the Master's disciples also died by crucifixion in Roman cities. According to church legend, the Romans crucified Peter. He did not deem himself worthy to be crucified in the same manner as his Master, so he begged them to crucify him upside down. The Romans accommodated the request.
A cross could be a tree or simply a post embedded in the ground. The condemned carried the crossbeam to the place of execution with the titulus (an inscription identifying his crime) hanging from his neck. The executioners might have used ropes and pulleys to raise the executed man, nailed to the crossbeam, up into position. The Romans stripped the man to be executed and crucified him naked. Typically, a crucified man agonized at least twelve hours, and in some cases languished for up to three days on the cross. This explains why it was necessary on the day of the Master's death to break the legs, so that the men would die quicker from asphyxiation. Normally, outside of Judea and in the greater Roman world, the bodies were not taken down. Instead they remained on the cross, food for birds of prey until they rotted or were cast before wild beasts.
Rome introduced this cruel means of execution in Judea as a way of punishing zealot rebels. Routine crucifixions had been going on for as long as three decades before the birth of the Master. Thousands of Jewish men died by crucifixion. Josephus claims that by the end of the Jewish revolt, the Romans had cut down all the trees of Judea for crosses.
The Romans did not observe Deuteronomy 21:22-23. The bodies of the crucified might be left hanging indefinitely. In the case of the Master's execution, however, the Jewish authorities entreated Pilate "that the bodies would not remain on the cross on the Sabbath" (John 19:31). Since the Sabbath was about to begin, they wanted the men dead and removed. When the soldiers came to break the legs of the crucified men, they found that Yeshua was already dead. Joseph of Arimathea, one of the sages of the Sanhedrin, "took courage and went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus" (Mark 15:43). In taking his body down from the cross, Joseph kept the commandment of not leaving the body hanging overnight. In Targum Pseudo-Yonatan's translation of Deuteronomy 21:23, it says, "you shall bury him at the going down of the sun." According to Luke 23:54, Joseph of Arimathea closed the tomb of the Master right at the going down of the sun, as it says, "and the Sabbath was beginning."
Regarding the commandment of taking down the body and not letting it hang overnight, Rabbi Meir brings a parable in the Talmud:
Rabbi Meir said, "There is a parable about this matter. To what can it be compared? It can be compared to two identical twin brothers. Both lived in a certain city. One was appointed king, and the other became a bandit. At the king's command they hanged the bandit. But everyone who saw him hanging there said, 'The king has been hung!' Therefore the king issued a command and he was taken down." (b.Sanhedrin 46b)
In other words because the human body is made in the image of God, it would be a sacrilege against God to leave a corpse hanging overnight. Like the identical twin in the story, Yeshua is the "image of the invisible God" (Colossians 1:15) and "the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature" (Hebrews 1:3). As the parable says, "Everyone who saw him hanging there said, 'The king has been hung!' Yeshua is the king. The sign above his cross said, "King of the Jews."
Accursed of God
But you shall surely bury him on the same day (for talui is accursed of God), so that you do not defile your land which the Lord your God gives you as an inheritance. (Deuteronomy 21:22-23)
Deuteronomy 21:23 says, "He who is hanged is accursed of God." This passage explains why the name Talui, the Crucified One, the Hung One, became a common title for Yeshua in Judaism. As the Jewish people struggled under the polemics and persecutions of the church, the Talui moniker provided an inside joke. Who is Yeshua? He is Talui, the Crucified One. And what does the Torah say? "Talui is accursed of God."
Anti-missionaries still use the passage today, and I suspect that this joke goes all the way back to the earliest years of the Yeshua movement. As the apostles proclaimed "Christ crucified" within the Jewish community, the early detractors who resisted their message probably responded with this passage: "Talui is accursed of God. The Crucified One is Accursed of God."
Opponents of the early believers used this passage to argue that Yeshua could not be the Messiah, just as anti-missionaries do today. They probably said, "You see, he could not be Messiah because he was hung on a tree, and everyone hung on a tree is accursed of God. Surely the real Messiah is not accursed of God."
The most learned and most vicious anti-missionary whom the believers ever faced was Paul of Tarsus. Paul knew this passage. He used it in his debates against the early believers in contempt of Yeshua haTalui, the Crucified One.
Reflecting on this matter, Paul wrote to the Corinthians, "I make known to you that no one speaking by the Spirit of God says, 'Jesus is accursed'; and no one can say, 'Jesus is Lord,' except in the Holy Spirit" (1 Corinthians 12:3). He also brought it up in the book of Galatians.
Under the Curse
In Galatians 3, Paul returned to his old anti-Yeshua, Talui-polemic and cited Deuteronomy 21:22-23 in reference to Yeshua again. That passage was always popular with the anti-Yeshua crowd, but in Galatians 3, Paul put a new spin on it:
Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us for it is written, [in Deuteronomy 21:23] "Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree"- so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith. (Galatians 3:13-14)
Previously, Paul declared that "all who rely on works of the law are under a curse; for it is written, 'Cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the Book of the law, and do them'" (Galatians 3:10). Those who are "of the works of the law" are those who are already Jewish or becoming Jewish through legal conver-sion. Paul said that everyone who is Jewish or a proselyte falls under the curse when they do not keep the Torah and walk in obedience to the covenant obligations stipulated in the Torah as explained in Deuteronomy 28. Therefore, Paul wanted to warn the God-fearing Gentiles along these lines: "Do not suppose that becoming Jewish is the easy ticket to salvation. In fact, it's just the opposite. If you become Jewish, the standard goes up. You place yourself under responsibility to the whole Torah, and under a curse if you fail to meet that responsibility."
This argument, however, seems to imply two different paths of salvation. Jewish people must keep the Torah to earn life in the world to come, but Gentile believers need only faith. On the contrary, Paul goes on to demonstrate that both Jew and Gentile must rely upon Messiah.
A Blessing and a Curse
According to Paul's view, the curse for failing to keep the Torah was not just a run of bad luck; it extended beyond this world and into the next. He said, "The righteous man will live by faith," that is to say, live in the world to come; and he said, "The one who does the commandments will live by them." In that respect, to fall under the curse for disobedience is to forfeit the resurrection and the world to come. Like Moses, Paul sets before his readers a choice of blessing and curse.
Blessing: Those who are of faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith. (Galatians 3:9)
Curse: For all who rely on works of the law are under a curse; for it is written, "Cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the Book of the law, and do them." (Galatians 3:10)
According to Paul, the final curse of the Torah is condemnation in the eternal court of judgment. Elsewhere, he points out that "the [Torah] brings wrath" (Romans 4:15). It does so because it defines sin. He said, "the [Torah] came in to increase the trespass" (Romans 5:20). In other words, one of the functions of the Torah is that man might be made more aware of his sin. Because the Torah-in its broad, ethical sense-defines sin and condemns sin, Paul identified one role of the Torah as "the ministry of condemnation" (2 Corinthians 3:9). When Paul spoke of the "curse of the [Torah] in Galatians 3:13, he referred to the Torah's condemnation of sin. Yet for those who rely on the faithfulness of Messiah, whether they be Jewish or Gentile, there is no longer any condemnation:
There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set vou free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the [Torah], weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. (Romans 8:1-4)
When Messiah came, he accomplished what the Torah could not accomplish. Paul reasoned that since Messiah was completely righteous, he had not earned the condemnation (curse) of the Torah. Yet the Torah clearly savs: "If a man has committed a crime punishable by death and he is put to death, and you hang him on a tree..." Despite the fact that in his innocence, he had committed no crime or sin, much less a crime punishable by death, the Master was put to death and hung upon a tree. He who is hanged (talui) is accursed of God.
The Accursedness of Messiah
If Yeshua was accursed of God and yet had not earned that curse through his own transgressions, from where did he acquire the curse of being hung on a tree? Paul believed he took the Torah's condemnation for the sins of others upon himself. He took upon himself the curse due to Jewish believers, who were previously included under the curse of the law, and he also opened the Abrahamic blessing to Gentiles:
Christ redeemed us [i.e., the Jewish believers] from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us-for it is written, "Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree"-so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we [all believers] might receive the promised Spirit through faith. (Galatians 3:13-14)
Paul took an old taunt, a taunt that he himself had probably used against believers in Talui, and turned it around. Our Master became, so to speak, accursed, in that he took upon himself the accursedness of his people and suffered on behalf of all those under the curse of the law-and not only for the Jewish people, but for all who will believe in him and rely upon his faithfulness.
Referneces
This lesson was curated from teachings from First Fruits of Zion “Holy Epistle to the Galatians.”