Комментарий к Дварим 21:23

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).

כי קללת אלוהים תלוי, every disembodied creature is known as elohim; this includes the soul of human beings known as צלם אלוהים, “image of G’d.” [as He is without body, so this essence of a human being is without a body, does not need a body. Ed.] (Genesis 1,27) This is how we can understand the woman, known as בעלת אוב in Samuel I 28,13 whom King Sha-ul approached and asked to raise the prophet Samuel for him producing a disembodied image. Seeing that the disgrace done to a person after he has died is also an insult to this disembodied essence of him, the Torah describes it as קללת אלוהים, equivalent to cursing the dead person’s eternal essence. קללת אלהים, leaving the dead corpse hanging without burial is an insult to that very eternal essence of a human being called אלהים.

כי קללת אלוקים תלוי, when passers by view the corpse of a person who has been hanged they are in the habit of cursing the judge who decreed this penalty, or the relatives of the victim curse the judges accusing them of handing down a harsh verdict for a “minor” offence, such as the collecting of kindling on the Sabbath. (Numbers 15,33) If the Torah considered it asr necessary to warn the people against cursing their judges, (אלוהים לא תקלל, Exodus 22,27) it did so because it is familiar with people’s psyches, more so than people themselves. Therefore, to counteract such violation of the law not to curse judges, לא תלין נבלתו, “his corpse is not to spend the night unburied,” but כי קבור תקברנו...ולא תטמא את אדמתך, “you must proceed forthwith to bury him, for as long as he stays unburied people may contract severe ritual impurity through contact with that body, or through being under the same roof as the corpse.”