Deuteronomychapter 21
23 verses · BSBDeuteronomy book hub →
Key verse
you must not leave the body on the tree overnight, but you must be sure to bury him that day, because anyone who is hung on a tree is under God’s curse. You must not defile the land that the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance.
It stands in Cursed is everyone that hangs on a tree, verses 22 to 23.
The chapter
Chapter summary
The unsolved murder, the captive wife, the rebellious son, and the hanging on a tree. A corpse in the field. The nearest city's elders break a heifer's neck at an unploughed stream; they wash their hands over it and testify that this blood is not theirs. A captive woman taken as wife. Thirty days of mourning; then a full wife, not to be sold. A firstborn of two wives. The beloved's son does not supplant the hated's son if he is the firstborn. A stubborn, rebellious son. The elders of his city stone him. A hanged man: ‘he that is hanged is accursed of God; his body shall not remain all night upon the tree’. Galatians 3:13 reads this verse to the cross.
Context
Law · Moses · Deuteronomy overview
The world behind this chapter
Deuteronomy 21The history
The chapter is Moses speaking in the fortieth year, and it hands its cases to elders rather than to a central court. The house reading dates it to about 1406 BC, stated as a reading rather than a settled date. The place is the plains of Moab, and the cases are framed for towns and fields Israel has not yet occupied. The occasion is the settling of matters no court could prove, beginning with a body found in open country. A first hearer knew why the rite used untilled ground and a heifer that had never worked, since nothing in that setting had been put to human use before. A first hearer also knew that in the surrounding world a captured woman was property. That is what makes the month of mourning at verse 13 and the release at verse 14 read as brakes on a man's will. The double portion for the firstborn was the standard inheritance rule of the region, and in a land-based economy an inheritance was survival. The stubborn son was brought by both parents to the elders at the gate, so the charge was tried by the town rather than by the father in his own house.
The rest of the history, and what it meant to them
What it meant to them
The thread running through the chapter is that blood and shame do not simply evaporate. An unsolved killing still lay on the land, and the nearest town had to answer for it in public even when nobody could be named. The household statutes then took three decisions away from the man who would otherwise have made them alone. The last law required a hanged body taken down before nightfall so the land was not defiled, and to a first hearer that was a question of keeping the land clean.
Sources cited
- Roland de Vaux, Ancient Israel: Its Life and Institutions
- The Mishnah , translated by Herbert Danby
- This site's published exposition of Deuteronomy 21, in the store's exposition_notes
Where the chapter sits
Deuteronomy 21 falls in Second sermon, the law restated (chapters 5–26). The Decalogue repeated; the Shema; laws for the land, for worship, for kingship, for war, for the poor. The covenant's central exposition.
Before it: First sermon, retrospective, chapters 1–4. After it: Third sermon, blessings and curses, chapters 27–30.
The whole shape of Deuteronomy→The structure of this chapter
The heads below are this chapter's scenes. The numbered points under each are its verses.
A. A heifer in the valley for unsolved blood
1. (vv. 1-5)
Deuteronomy 21:1
“According to Jewish writers, the Sanhedrin, taking charge of such a case, sent a deputation to examine the neighborhood. They reported to the nearest town to the spot where the body was found. An order was then issued by their supreme authority to the elders or magistrates of that town, to provide the heifer at the civic expense and go through the appointed ceremonial.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
Deuteronomy 21:2
“Then thy elders and thy judges shall come forth,.... From the city or cities near to which the murder was committed, to make inquiry about it, and expiation for it; so Aben Ezra interprets it of the elders of the cities near, but others understand it of the elders of the great sanhedrim at Jerusalem; so the Targum of Jonathan,"then shall go out from the great sanhedrim two of thy wise men, and three of thy judges;''and more expressly the Misnah (l),"three go out from the great sanhedrim in Jerusalem;''R.”
1 more voice on this verse
Deuteronomy 21:2
“The elders represented the citizens at large, the judges the magistracy: priests Deu 21:5 from the nearest priestly town, were likewise to be at hand. Thus, all classes would be represented at the purging away of that blood-guiltiness which until removed attached to the whole community.”
Deuteronomy 21:3
“The requirements as regards place and victim are symbolic. The heifer represented the murderer, so far at least as to die in his stead, since he himself could not be found. As hearing his guilt the heifer must therefore be one which was of full growth and strength, and had not yet been ceremonially profaned by human use. The Christian commentators find here a type of Christ and of His sacrifice for man: but the heifer was not strictly a sacrifice or sin-offering. The transaction was rather figurative, and was so ordered as to impress the lesson of Gen 9:5.”
1 more voice on this verse
Deuteronomy 21:3
“Which hath not drawn in the yoke - A fit representative of the murderer, in whose stead it was killed, who would not bear the yoke of God's laws. A type also of Christ, who was under the yoke, but what he had voluntarily taken upon himself.”
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
Deuteronomy 21:4
“Shall bring down the heifer unto a rough valley - נחל איתן nachal eythan might be translated a rapid stream, probably passing through a piece of uncultivated ground where the elders of the city were to strike off the head of the heifer, and to wash their hands over her in token of their innocence. The spot of ground on which this sacrifice was made must be uncultivated, because it was considered to be a sacrifice to make atonement for the murder, and consequently would pollute the land.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Deuteronomy 21:5
“And the priests the sons of Levi shall come near,....”
1 more voice on this verse
Deuteronomy 21:5
“Every controversy - Of this kind: every controversy which shall rise about any stroke, whether such a mortal stroke as is here spoken of, or any other stroke or wound given by one man to another.”
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
An unsolved killing leaves guilt on the land itself, and the town measured nearest to the body is the town that answers for it. The heifer is one that has never been worked and never drawn in a yoke, and its neck is struck off in a valley that has never been ploughed or sown, so nothing in the rite has been put to human use before. Albert Barnes notes that the heifer is not called a sin offering and that its blood is never brought to an altar, which makes the transaction figurative rather than sacrificial. Standing behind it is Genesis 9:5, where God requires the blood of a man at the hand of every man, so a death that no court can trace still has to be answered by somebody.
2. (vv. 6-9)
Deuteronomy 21:6
“Shall wash their hands over the heifer - Washing the hands, in reference to such a subject as this, was a rite anciently used to signify that the persons thus washing were innocent of the crime in question. It was probably from the Jews that Pilate learned this symbolical method of expressing his innocence.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Deuteronomy 21:7
“They shall answer - To the priests who shall examine them. This blood - This about which the present enquiry is made: or this which is here present: for it is thought the corps of the slain man was brought into the same place where the heifer was slain.”
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
1 more voice on this verse
Deuteronomy 21:7
“And they shall answer and say,....”
Deuteronomy 21:8
“Forgiven - Though there was no mortal guilt in this people, yet there was a ceremonial uncleanness in the land, which was to be expiated and forgiven.”
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
Deuteronomy 21:9
“So shalt thou put away the guilt of innocent blood from among you,.... Which otherwise, the person not being found out, and brought to just punishment for it, would devolve upon the whole.”
The elders wash their hands over the beheaded heifer and say in the hearing of the priests that their hands have not shed this blood, neither have their eyes seen it. Psalm 26:6 uses the same picture for innocence, and Matthew 27:24 has Pilate wash his hands before the crowd and call himself innocent of the blood of Christ. Matthew Henry points out that Pilate had the words without the case, since he knew the man before him was innocent and sentenced him anyway. The prayer of verse 8 asks mercy for the whole people rather than for the elders, and the answer is that the blood shall be forgiven them, though nobody in that town did the killing.
B. A captive woman given a month to mournvv. 10-14
A woman taken captive is brought into the house and a full month passes before anything else happens, in which she shaves her head, puts off the clothes she was captured in, and mourns her father and her mother. The text gives no reason for the shaving and the nails, and readers have supplied different ones: Adam Clarke takes it as the mark of leaving her former religion, Matthew Henry as a check on the man's desire, and Clarke adds that the Hebrew rendered pare her nails may as easily mean letting them grow. If the man then has no delight in her she goes free where she will, and he may not sell her for money, because thou hast humbled her. Albert Barnes reads the war in view as one against nations outside Canaan, since chapter 7 and chapter 20 give a different rule for the Canaanite cities.
Deuteronomy 21:10
“But nevertheless I also intellectually have "gone out to war against my enemies, and I saw there" in the plunder "a woman with a beautiful figure." Whatever we find said well and reasonably among our philosophical enemies, or we read anything said among them wisely and knowingly, we must cleanse it. We must remove and cut off all that is dead and worthless. It is as if one were trimming the hairs of the head and the nails of the woman taken from the spoils of the enemy. Only then would you take her as a wife.”
Origen of Alexandria· written before 253· HOMILIES ON LEVITICUS 7.6.7patristic
1 more voice on this verse
Deuteronomy 21:10
“The regulations which now follow in the rest of this and throughout the next chapter bring out the sanctity of various personal rights and relations fundamental to human life and society. Deu 21:10-14. The war supposed here is one against the neighboring nations after Israel had utterly destroyed the Canaanites (compare Deu 7:3), and taken possession of their land.”
Deuteronomy 21:11
“And seest - a beautiful woman - No forcible possession was allowed even in this case, when the woman was taken in war, and was, by the general consent of ancient nations, adjudged as a part of the spoils. The person to whose lot or share such a woman as is here described fell, might, if he chose, have her for a wife on certain conditions; but he was not permitted to use her under any inferior character.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Deuteronomy 21:12
“She shall shave her head - This was in token of her renouncing her religion, and becoming a proselyte to that of the Jews. This is still a custom in the East; when a Christian turns Mohammedan his head is shaven, and he is carried through the city crying, la alahila allah we Mohammed resooli Allah; “There is no God but God, and Mohammed is the prophet of God.” Pare her nails - ועשתה את צפרניה veasethah eth tsipporneyha, “she shall make her nails.” Now whether this signifies paring or letting them grow, is greatly doubted among learned men.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Deuteronomy 21:13
“Bewail her father and her mother a full month - This is prescribed from motives of humanity, that the woman might have time and leisure to detach her affections from their natural ties, and prepare her mind for new ones.”
1 more voice on this verse
Deuteronomy 21:13
“The [Deuteronomic] law wishes males to have responsible sexual relations with their marriage partners, solely for the generation of children. This is clear when a bachelor is prevented from enjoying immediate sexual relations with a woman prisoner of war. If he once falls in love with her, he must let her cut her hair short and mourn for thirty days. If even so his desire has not faded away, then he may father children by her. The fixed period of time enables the overpowering impulse to be scrutinized and to turn into a more rational appetency.”
Clement of Alexandria· written before 215· The Stromata Book 3patristic
Deuteronomy 21:14
Thou shalt not make merchandise of her - Rather, thou shalt not constrain her: literally “treat her with constraint,” or “treat her as a slave.”
1 more voice on this verse
Deuteronomy 21:14
“If his love should afterwards cool and he become indifferent to her person, he was not to lord it over her, neither to sell her in the slave market, nor retain her in a subordinate condition in his house; but she was to be free to go where her inclinations led her.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
C. The unloved wife's son keeps his double portionvv. 15-17
Deuteronomy 21:15-21
Both household laws take the matter out of the father's hands. The double portion is protected against a father's preference for a favoured wife's son, and the phrase used of the firstborn here, the beginning of his strength, is Jacob's phrase for Reuben at Genesis 49:3, spoken in the house where Genesis 29:31 says Leah was hated. Albert Barnes observes that a father could still set the birthright aside for cause, as Jacob did with Reuben, and that what this statute forbids is doing it out of partiality. A stubborn son is then brought by both parents to the elders in the gate and charged as a glutton and a drunkard, the pair of words at Proverbs 23:20, and the stoning is done by the men of the city, while the rabbinic tradition collected in tractate Sanhedrin narrows the conditions so far that it preserves the opinion that no such case ever came to trial.
Deuteronomy 21:15
“If a man have two wives,.... Which is supposed, but not approved of, though permitted because of the hardness of men's hearts; for it was not so from the beginning, when only one man and one woman were created, and joined together in marriage; but as it was connived at, and become customary, a law is made to prevent confusion, and preserve order in families: one beloved and another hated; or less loved, yet continued his wife, and not divorced.”
2 more voices on this verse
Deuteronomy 21:15
“Moses did not originate the rights of primogeniture (compare Gen 25:31), but recognized them, since he found them pre-existing in the general social system of the East. Paternal authority could set aside these rights on just grounds Gen 27:33, but it is forbidden here to do so from mere partiality.”
Deuteronomy 21:15
“It shows how Providence commonly sides with the weakest, and gives more abundant honour to that part which lacked; for the first-born son is here supposed to be hers that was hated; it was so in Jacob's family: because the Lord saw that Leah was hated, Gen. xxix.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Deuteronomy 21:16
“Then it shall be, when he maketh his sons to inherit that which he hath,....”
Deuteronomy 21:17
“But he shall acknowledge the son of the hated for the firstborn,....”
1 more voice on this verse
Deuteronomy 21:17
“This digression then of ours from one part of the Law to the other, for the purpose of shewing that the firstborn is not the son of the beloved, that is of the more remiss and voluptuous wife, has not been needless, although the words of the chapter before us express the same truth: He may not make the son of the beloved first-born before the son of the hated, which is indeed the first-born.”
Ambrose of Milan· written before 397· Letters 31-40patristic
D. A stubborn and rebellious sonvv. 18-21
Deuteronomy 21:18
“If a man have a stubborn and rebellious son,....”
2 more voices on this verse
Deuteronomy 21:18
“The stubborn, rebellious, gluttonous, and drunken son is to be stoned to death - This law, severe as it may seem, must have acted as a powerful preventive of crime. If such a law were in force now, and duly executed, how many deaths of disobedient and profligate children would there be in all corners of the land!”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Deuteronomy 21:18
“The formal accusation of parents against a child was to be received without inquiry, as being its own proof. Thus the just authority of the parents is recognized and effectually upheld (compare Exo 20:12; Exo 21:15, Exo 21:17; Lev 20:9); but the extreme and irresponsible power of life and death, conceded by the law of Rome and other pagan nations, is withheld from the Israelite father. In this, as in the last law, provision is made against the abuses of a necessary authority.”
Deuteronomy 21:19
“And it cannot reasonably be supposed that both would agree without the son's abominable and incorrigible wickedness, in which case it seems a righteous law, because the crime of rebellion against his own parents did so fully signify what a pernicious member he would be in the commonwealth of Israel, who had dissolved all his natural obligations.”
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
Deuteronomy 21:20
“And they shall say unto the elders of his city,....”
Deuteronomy 21:21
“And all the men of his city shall stone him with stones, that he die,....”
E. Cursed is everyone that hangs on a treevv. 22-23
a sin worthy of death: The rule governs a body hung up after execution rather than execution by hanging, and it requires burial the same day so the land is not defiled. Joshua 8:29 and Joshua 10:26 show Joshua keeping it to the hour, and John 19:31 has the same concern raised at the cross on the eve of a sabbath. Galatians 3:13 quotes the line that he that is hanged is accursed of God and applies it to Christ, made a curse for us, and Peter uses the same wood at Acts 5:30 and Acts 10:39. The verse that made a hanged corpse a defilement of the land is therefore the verse Paul reaches for to say where the curse of the law went.
Deuteronomy 21:22
“There were four methods of execution in use among the ancient Jews; stoning (Exo 17:4; Deu 13:10, etc.), burning Lev 20:14; Lev 21:9, the sword Exo 32:27, and strangulation. The latter, though not named in Scripture, is regarded by the rabbis as the most common, and the proper one to be adopted when no other is expressly enjoined by the Law. Suspension, whether from cross, stake, or gallows, was not used as a mode of taking life, but was sometimes added after death as an enhancement of punishment.”
Deuteronomy 21:23
“He that is hanged is accursed of God - i. e. “Bury him that is hanged out of the way before evening: his hanging body defiles the land; for God’s curse rests on it.” The curse of God is probably regarded as lying on the malefactor because, from the fact of his being hanged, be must have been guilty of a especially atrocious breach of God’s covenant. Such an offender could not remain on the face of the earth without defiling it (compare Lev 18:25, Lev 18:28; Num 35:34).”
1 more voice on this verse
Deuteronomy 21:23
“If any of our own people also inquire, not from love of debate but from love of learning, why he suffered death in no other way except on the cross, let him also be told that no other way than this was good for us and that it was well that the Lord suffered this for our sakes. For if he himself came to bear the curse laid upon us, how else could he have "become a curse" unless he received the death set for a curse? And that is the cross.”
Athanasius of Alexandria· written before 373· On the Incarnation of the Word 25patristic
Deuteronomy 21:23
- Quoted inGalatians 3:13Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us. For it is written: “Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree.”
'Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree' (Christ made a curse)
This page carries no textual note on Deuteronomy 21. Where this site has examined a place the manuscripts differ, the examination is in the manuscripts room. Every place this site examines →
Sources for this chapter
The summary
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory; John Calvin, Commentaries; John Wesley, Notes on the Old Testament and Matthew Henry, Complete Commentary.
The exposition
Adam Clarke, Commentary on the Bible; Albert Barnes, Notes on the Old Testament; John Calvin, Commentary on the Four Last Books of Moses Arranged in the Form of a Harmony; John Gill, Exposition of the Old Testament; Keil and Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament: The Pentateuch and Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible.