כִּי קִלְלַת אֱלֹהִים תָּלוּי

(22) If any party is guilty of a capital offense and is put to death, and you impale the body on a stake, (23) you must not let the corpse remain on the stake overnight, but must bury it the same day. For an impaled body is an affront to God: you shall not defile the land that your God יהוה is giving you to possess.

Rabbi Meir said: The phrase “for he that is hung is a curse [kilelat] of God” should be understood as follows: When a man suffers in the wake of his sin, what expression does the Divine Presence use? I am distressed [kallani] about My head, I am distressed about My arm, meaning, I, too, suffer when the wicked are punished. From here it is derived: If God suffers such distress over the blood of the wicked that is spilled, even though they justly deserved their punishment, it can be inferred a fortiori that He suffers distress over the blood of the righteous. And the Sages said not only this, that an executed transgressor must be buried on the same day that he is killed, but they said that anyone who leaves his deceased relative overnight with-out burying him transgresses a prohibition. But if he left the deceased overnight for the sake of the deceased’s honor, e.g., to bring a coffin or shrouds for his burial, he does not transgress the prohibition against leaving him unburied overnight. After the executed transgressor is taken down he is buried, and they would not bury him in his ancestral burial plot. Rather, two graveyards were established for the burial of those executed by the court: One for those who were killed by decapitation or strangled, and one for those who were stoned or burned.

§ The mishna teaches: That is to say: Were the dead man’s corpse to remain hanging, reminding everyone of his transgression, people would ask: For what reason was this one hung? They would be answered: Because he blessed God, a euphemism for blasphemy, and the name of Heaven would be desecrated. It is taught in a baraita that Rabbi Meir says: The Sages told a parable: To what is this matter comparable? It is comparable to two brothers who were twins and lived in the same city. One was appointed king, while the other went out to engage in banditry. The king commanded that his brother be punished, and they hanged his twin brother for his crimes. Anyone who saw the bandit hanging would say: The king was hanged. The king, therefore, commanded that his brother be taken down, and they took the bandit down. Similarly, people are created in God’s image, and therefore God is disgraced when a corpse is hung for a transgression that the person has committed.

כי קללת אלהים תלוי FOR HE THAT IS HANGED IS A קללת אלהים — i.e., a degradation of the Divine King, for man is made in His image and the Israelites are His children. A parable! It may be compared to the case of two twin brothers who very closely resembled each other: one became king and the other was arrested for robbery and was hanged. Whoever saw him on the gallows thought that the king was hanged (Sanhedrin 46b). — Wherever the term קללה occurs in Scripture it has the meaning of bonding in light esteem and despising, as e.g., (1 Kings 2:8) “[Shimei the son of Gera, a Benjamite of Bahurim] who cursed me with a severe curse (קללני קללה נמרצת)” (cf. II Samuel 16:5—8).