What Does Deuteronomy 21:22 Mean?
And if a man has a shortcoming bearing the judgment of death, and he is put to death, and you hang him on a tree.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
And if a man have committed a sin worthy of death, and he be to be put to death, and thou hang him on a tree:THE KEY
The verse carries a death verdict past execution into the body’s public suspension on wood.
THE MEANING
A human being stands under a death judgment, and execution is followed by the body’s suspension on a tree. The verse makes that exposure part of what the sentence names.
THE ROOT
וְתָלִיתָ
wəṯālîtā
GROWS FROM
תלה
t-l-h
to hang, suspend
“hang” in this verse is wəṯālîtā. The command’s תלה is the concrete act of suspending a body; the Hebrew verb keeps the physical action in view. Its use for Haman on the gallows in Esther likewise names an actual execution, not a metaphor.
ALSO GROWS
wəṯālîtā: and you hang or suspend
וְתָלִיתָ
This is the verb used for the body’s suspension after execution in this verse.
wayyitlū: and they hanged
וַיִּתְלוּ
Esther 7:10 uses the same root for Haman on the gallows, preserving its concrete sense of execution.
מָוֶת
māweṯ
GROWS FROM
מות
m-w-t
to die; death, to be dead
“bearing the judgment of death” in this verse is māweṯ. English separates “death” from “put to death,” while Hebrew forms both from מות. The verse moves from death as the judgment to death enacted on the body, then immediately to its suspension.
ALSO GROWS
mūṯ: to die
מוּת
The verb and the noun for death share the same root, joining the judgment to the act itself.
hūmaṯ: he was put to death
הוּמַת
This form appears in the verse, carrying the death judgment into its bodily enactment.
חֵטְא
ḥēṭʾ
GROWS FROM
חטא
ḥ-ṭ-ʾ
to miss, err
“has a shortcoming” in this verse is ḥēṭʾ. The word beneath “sin” carries the sense of missing or erring. Here that sense stands beside an explicit death judgment, opening the root without softening the violence the verse states.
ALSO GROWS
ḥāṭāʾ: to miss, err
חָטָא
The verb exposes the root sense carried by the noun translated “sin.”
ḥaṭṭāʾt: missing, sin; in ritual use, an offering for the missing
חַטָּאת
This related form preserves the same root across the language of wrongdoing and the offering associated with it.
THE PATTERN
Scripture describes hanging as a visible bodily consequence of execution.
His corpse does not lodge on the tree through the night, but you surely bury him on that day, for the hanged one is a curse of God; so that your ground, which the LORD your God gives you as an inheritance, is not defiled.So they hanged Haman on the tree that he had prepared for Mordecai. Then the king's heat settled.The God of our fathers raised up Jesus, whom you put to death by hand and hanged on a tree.THE THREAD
The Anointed One bought us out of the curse of instruction, becoming a curse for us, for it stands written, Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree.The adjoining verse in Deuteronomy says that the one hanged is accursed, and Galatians quotes that line directly. It carries the image of the exposed body on a tree into its account of Christ’s death.
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