Hanging the Body After Execution

Parshat Ki Tetze

by Rabbi Avi Billet

The last two verses of Chapter 21 seem to describe a very clear case. A person who is executed by the court is to have his body hanged from a tree for display for a short period of time (the hanging is not the execution – as the person is already dead), presumably so people will learn a lesson to want to avoid crimes which incur the death penalty. After the brief hanging, the body is to be taken down and buried.

Many of the commentaries note two things here: the person in this case is guilty of cursing God, and the punishment was stoning. The person who is stoned is thus subsequently put on display, albeit briefly, so people will learn the gravity of the crime.

Seriously? Blasphemy = Stoning?

The truth is that the Torah depicts two stories for which the punishment was stoning. In both cases the stoning verdict was delivered by God to Moshe, and Moshe in turn gave over the execution responsibility to all of Israel. The first case is in Parshat Emor – the case of the blasphemer, and the second case is in Parshat Shlach – the case of the Sabbath-day wood gatherer.

Whether people found the execution distasteful or embraced the Divine edict, they participated knowing that this was God’s will.

So here are a few preliminary thoughts, before we look at some interesting commentary. First, we do not execute people for these kinds of crimes. Second, execution of any type must be an extremely serious undertaking. Many cultured societies today do not approve of execution because who are we to play God? Killing a murderer, they argue, makes us no better than the murderer. [I’ve argued in this column before that capital punishment for murderers is mercy for everyone else! But the argument of capital punishment for non-capital crimes such as the two cases in the Torah is a difficult one to counter with our modern sensibilities.] Third, not everything God tells us to do must be to our liking. Fourth, without a leader with a connection to the Divine such as the one Moshe had, this kind of pronouncement is useless, ineffective, and not to be followed.

Now for commentary. Targum Yonatan explains why the body must be buried immediately after being put on display and taken down. “It is a disgrace before God to hang a person up. But this person’s sins caused it! And yet, since he is created in the image of God, he must be taken down and buried so people don’t mock him, and they shouldn’t have a chance to look upon the corpses of sinners…”

This would indicate there is a lesson for the people to learn. But it’s not as much about punishment as it is about the dignity of a person, even after the person has been executed.

Rashbam comes at the scenario from the opposite perspective. “When people see a person hanging on a tree, they are wont to curse the judges or the relatives of the executed, or they want to curse anyone because they’re simply mad over the “small sin” that has led to an execution, such as the Sabbath wood-gatherer. Since these kinds of things tend to upset people, there’s no sense in giving further fuel for the cursing of the judges.” Therefore the body put on display is to be taken down right away.

It’s a difficult balance to understand God’s laws of this nature, while reconciling our own distaste for seeing people treated that way – whether simply executed or further displayed – especially when the crime is one whose capital punishment is hard to understand.

And so I want to take the message to a level I hope we can understand. Kohelet teaches us that (7:20) “There is no righteous person in the land who does good and does not sin.” In other words, people are imperfect. Humans are flawed. No one is a tzaddik (perfectly righteous) all the time.

It is impossible to be that way.

For some errors in judgment, moral lapses, ethical lapses, people suffer humiliation, a deed which is compared to murder when perpetrated by another person (“one who whitens the face of his friend is as if he has murdered him”). In other words, persons who embarrass themselves on account of their deeds, that humiliation is upon them. It’s their fault.

But the person who aims to humiliate them again is guilty of murder!

How quick are we to remember only the negative things we know about a person? How ready are we to share the deed someone we know did a long time ago, when there is no evidence that the person is still doing it?

It’s true of bad things people did, but it’s also true of good things people did! Which Jew do you still refer to as a “Baal Teshuvah” even though the person has been living a Torah lifestyle for many years? Which Jew, who chose to join the Jewish people years ago, do you still refer to as a “convert?”

These titles should be points of honor! But the reality is that too many people look at those they label this way as people with deficiencies, as people who are not good enough, as people who don’t really know everything a Jew knows, as people whose Jewish-lapses need to be explained because they “didn’t grow up the way we grew up.”
This is humiliation. This is hanging the corpse again. This should be as detestable and as distasteful as having our own skeletons taken out of the closet by others just to destroy our lives again.

Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur are around the corner. Let us be extremely mindful not to embarrass those who have suffered humiliation and embarrassment due to whatever past when that past is history and they are living a new life void of those past behaviors.

Teshuvah is possible! If they’ve achieved it, their past deeds should never come up again in conversation, because we’d be guilty of making associations about people we know, using deeds of people who look and sound like them, but no longer exist.

And that is a terrible crime.