In Galatians 3:13 the apostle Paul, under divine unction, taught: “Messiah liberated us from Torah’s curse, having become a curse for us (for it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree‘).”

We may ask two questions. First, where had this been written before? This question is answered in few words: Deuteronomy 21:22-23. In Galatians 3 the Holy Spirit drew out the Messianic essence of those verses, a Torah passage which was well known to all Jews including Paul.

The second question would be, what is “Torah’s curse”? This question could also be answered from Deuteronomy, but it takes many more verses to do so, for example Deut. 28:15-68 (53 verses) or Deut. 27:15-26 (11 verses). For these portions the New King James version (NKJV) offers the sub-headings “Curses for Disobedience” and “Curses Pronounced” respectively. Other scriptures such as Leviticus 26:14-39 also describe the “curse” associated with the Torah, and the NKJV sub-heading for that passage is “Results of Disobedience”. I find that the best caption, the whole point being that the Torah (often translated “the Law”) after listing the wonderful benefits of obedience to God’s instructions, also lists the awful results or consequences of disobedience to God’s laws. The fact that God was blunt enough in the Torah to pronounce or articulate these results does not make God responsible for them (in the sense of one being responsible for one’s actions). His going to lengths to expound on these results of sin was actually an act of love, to deter humankind from actions of their own which would lead to dire consequences.

But God’s love didn’t stop there. We know from reading Matthew to Revelation that He found a way to save those who want to be saved from the consequences of their sins – those curses – as well as the ultimate “wages” of sin (Roman 6:23) which was to perish in death. John 3:16 explains, “For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.”

This is what Paul was alluding to, as a mouthpiece of the Holy Spirit (or the Spirit of Yeshua – Acts 16:6-7, Philippians 1:19). God wanted us to enrich us with more understanding of what Yeshua achieved by letting his incarnate body be crucified – suspended on that “tree” on Golgotha until He said, “It is finished” (“It has been finished” – John 19:30 Interlinear) and his body was taken down from the “tree”. Mission accomplished!

What was this aspect of Yeshua’s mission that God wanted to reveal by harking back to Deuteronomy 21:22-23?  It was this: in hanging on a tree Yeshua was to fulfil the Law by becoming “a curse for us”, thus saving us from Torah’s curse and bringing us into victory over the wages of sin – over death and the grave!

My next post will examine the words translated “tree” and “cross” in this context, to address the misgivings that some people express, regarding the concept and veneration of the cross of Yeshua haMashiach (The Messiah).