His body shall not remain all night upon the tree, but you shall surely bury him that day; (for he that is hanged is accursed of God;) that your land be not defiled, which the LORD your God gives you for an inheritance.
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Athanasius the Apostolic
AD 373
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. For this is exactly what is written: “Cursed is he that hangs on a tree.”
Of God. Chaldean, "he has been fixed on the gibbet for sinning against God. "Symmachus and Arabic, "he has blasphemed the Lord. "Syriac, "the man who has blasphemed shall be hung. "Only people accused of great crimes, such as blasphemy and idolatry, were condemned to this reproachful death, and prayers were not said for them in the synagogue, as they were for other persons, during the 11 months following their decease. (Calmet)
They are not to be remembered before God. Their dead bodies are to be buried before sunset, that the country may not be defiled. The punishment itself is extremely infamous, and the name of God is often used by the Jews, to express something in the highest degree, as the cedars of God (Haydock)
Some understand this passage, as if the body were not to be left on the gibbet, because man, being created to the likeness of God, he will not allow the body to be insulted. Homer (Iliad xxiv.) says that Achilles offered an insult to the earth, when he dragged the dead ...
