Shmuel Bais 18:14 and the trajectory of Torah testimony to Golgotha — musar shelomeinu, the mevaser, the klalah of the Torah, and the piercing of the One who was cut off
For twelve years Caryl Chessman sat in a cell on death row at San Quentin and made himself, by his own relentless industry, into a jailhouse lawyer of real skill. He had represented himself at his own trial. From the row he kept on: writing briefs, filing appeals, finding procedural threads to pull, forcing the courts to look again. He earned eight stays of execution this way — an almost unheard-of run — each one bought by hours bent over law books, searching the statutes and the case reports for the sentence, the precedent, the technicality that would keep him alive one more season. On the morning of May 2, 1960, the last thread ran out. A telephone call meant to carry one more stay reached the death house at San Quentin just after the cyanide pellets had already dropped.
Chessman had, in his way, done what the Bereans of Acts 17:11 are commended for doing — Caryl had searched the records daily, diligently, to see whether a thing was so. But he searched the wrong books. Had he searched the Book that actually held his case, he would have found something no appeal could improve on: that the sentence had already been carried out — vicariously, in his place, by his proxy, on the fourteenth of Nisan, in the year 33 C.E. Not a stay. Not a technicality. A finished execution, borne by Another, whose record is not sealed in a courthouse but in the Torah, the Neviim, and the testimony of eyewitnesses. This exhibit follows that record — the trajectory of verses that converge on one Tree.
— the frame for this exhibit
Seven stations, from the false ben Dovid hanging in judgment to the true Ben Dovid hanging in grace
Avshalom ben Dovid — the son of David, the rebel prince — flees the battle on a mule. His head (his glory, per Rabbinic aggadah on his hair) is caught fast in the boughs of a great elah tree, and he is left suspended, the Ben Dovid hanging between heaven and earth, unable to free himself. Yoav does not wait for a verdict; he drives three sharpened shafts through Avshalom's heart while the Ben Dovid still hangs, alive, on the tree.
Read against Devarim (Deuteronomy) 21:23, this is a text-book case of kilelat Elokim taluy — one hung on a tree, marked accursed, whose body may not remain overnight lest it defile the land. Avshalom hangs justly. He rebelled against his father the king, set himself up as a rival throne, and the tree receives him as the sign and seal of that accursed rebellion. He is pierced through the heart he had turned against Dovid.
The false ben Dovid is pierced in the Tree for his own treason. The trajectory now turns to ask: who hangs there, pierced, for treason NOT his own?
In the very next scene, before the body of the ben Dovid is even in the ground, two men contend for the honor of being the mevaser — the (later meaning herald evangelist) bearer of the tidings, the news. Yoav sends the Cushite first; Achima'atz begs leave to run also, and, taking the plain of the Yarden, outruns him. A tzofeh (watchman) on the wall of the Gilead town of Machanayim watches the runner's approach from far off and reports it to the King before the man arrives.
The report Achima'atz carries is double-edged: Hashem has judged and vindicated the king over his enemies — that is besorah, good news — yet it also means the death of the son. Achima'atz, sensing this, softens the second half; the Cushite, arriving after, delivers it plainly. Dovid's cry — "Beni Avshalom, beni beni Avshalom" — is the cry of a father who receives victory and bereavement in the same breath, through the same herald.
This is the pattern that Yeshayahu 52:7 will later crown: "How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth besorah, that publisheth shalom." The mevaser who runs eagerly to announce that the King has triumphed over His enemies — and who must, in the same message, announce the death of the Son — is the shape the Besuras HaGeulah will finally take.
The mevaser motif reaches its full stature here: the Avdi Tzemach, the Eved Hashem, is Himself both the herald and the content of the tidings. What Achima'atz carried in words — the King's victory purchased through the death of the Ben Dovid — the Ben Dovid Adon (Psalm 110:1; Isaiah 9:5; Malachi 3:1; Daniel 7:13-14) carries in His own body. Musar shelomeinu alav: the discipline that purchases our shalom falls, not on us, but on Him.
Peace (shalom) is not declared over a rebel who escaped judgment; it is purchased by One who absorbed it. This is the answer to Station Aleph: Avshalom hung and was pierced for his own rebellion; the Eved Hashem hangs and is pierced for the rebellion of others — for musar shelomeinu that brought "our" shalom, not His own shalom; He was already the Price of Peace.
Devarim 27:26 sets the standard no one keeps in full; 21:23 supplies the visible sign of that failure — a body on a tree, marked as under G-d's own kelalah. These two verses are the Torah's own vocabulary for what happens at Station Aleph: Avshalom, hung and pierced, is a walking exhibit of 21:23.
Sha'ul will bind these two verses together in the next station, and in doing so will answer a question Devarim itself does not resolve on its own: can the kelalah of 27:26 ever be absorbed rather than merely incurred?
Here is where the good news begins. The Scriptures do not tell the human being, "Become strong enough to defeat the Adversary." Scripture tells of a Deliverer instead — a Savior, a Redeemer, the Messiah, the One who came to destroy the accursed works of the Devil.
The One who, according to the Letter to the Hebrews, entered death itself and broke the power of the one who held the power of death.
Sha'ul quotes Devarim 21:23 directly and welds it to the logic of 27:26. Every child of Adam stands under the kelalah of 27:26 by falling short of "all the words of this Torah." The Ben Dovid who is Himself sinless (Isaiah 53:9) takes the visible sign of 21:23 — the tree, the taluy, the kilelat Elokim — not for His own treason (He has none) but as the legal instrument by which the kelalah of the many is exhausted.Here the two ben Dovids meet at the same word, taluy, and two ben Dovids part ways at the same point: one on the tree for himself, One on the Tree for others. This is the hinge of the whole exhibit — the reason the object itself is fitly called the Ben Dovid Accursed Tree.
A textual note: the Masoretic vocalization reads ka'ari, "like a lion," leaving the text groping without a verb while the Septuagint (ὤρυξαν, "they dug/pierced"), the Peshitta, and a Qumran fragment of this Psalm (Nachal Chever) do not translate "like a lion" (it may be a later scribal corruption coming after their time). Instead these ancient versions the Septuagint and the Peshitta and the Qumran fragment seem to point to an underlying karu, "they pierced." We are talking about something also attested in the ancient Hebrew manuscript tradition; the piercing sense is what the ancient Greek translators and at least one Dead Sea find preserved.
Zecharyah 12:10 leaves no textual ambiguity: dakar is unambiguous piercing (the word used for a spear-thrust, cf. Bamidbar 25:8). And Hashem speaks in the first person — "they have pierced Me" — while the mourning is for "him," the Yachid. The Pierced One and Hashem's own "Me" are held together in a single verse.
Yikareit is the standard Torah verb for kareit, being cut off from one's people — the covenantal penalty for the gravest offenses (see, e.g., Bereshis 17:14). Here it falls on the Anointed One Himself, and the phrase ve'ein lo — "and it is not for Him," — signals that whatever this cutting-off achieves, it is not for His own account. Read alongside Gal 3:13, the "nothing for Himself" of Daniel 9 and the "for us" of Sha'ul are the same transaction seen from two testaments.
The thread now closes: the false ben Dovid was cut down on the elah tree for his own rebellion (Aleph); the true Ben Dovid is cut off "not for Himself" (Zayin) — the whole arc from Shmuel Bais to Daniel converges on one Tree, one piercing, one klalah absorbed rather than merely incurred.
Strong's numbers governing the Tree-vocabulary of the B'rit Chadasha
| Strong's | Greek | Gloss | Key data |
|---|---|---|---|
| G4716 | σταυρός stauros |
upright stake; execution-post | The noun object itself. In the Synoptic discipleship sayings (Matt 16:24; Mark 8:34; Luke 9:23; 14:27) it is what the talmid must take up daily, the etz shel mesiros nefesh, the tree of self-sacrifice. |
| G4717 | σταυρόω stauroō |
to impale on a stake; to hang pierced on a tree | The verb of the act itself. Acts 2:36 — ὃν ὑμεῖς ἐσταυρώσατε, "whom you made talui al HaEtz (being hanged on the Tree)," (aorist active, ἐσταυρώσατε). |
| G2910 | κρεμάννυμι kremannymi |
to hang, hang up, suspend | The Septuagint's verb for Devarim 21:23's taluy. Sha'ul reaches for this word, not stauroō, when he wants to trigger the Deuteronomy text. |
| G3586 | ξύλον xylon |
wood, timber, tree | The LXX's rendering of Heb. etz in Deut 21:23. Reused throughout the B'rit Chadasha as the deliberately Torah-flavored name for the execution-Tree. |
| G1909 | ἐπί epi |
upon | The hinge preposition: κρεμάμενος ἐπὶ ξύλου (Gal 3:13), κρεμάσαντες ἐπὶ ξύλου (Acts 5:30; 10:39), ἐπὶ τὸ ξύλον (1 Pet 2:24). "Upon the Tree" is the fixed formula that keeps Gal 3:13 tethered to Deut 21:23. |
| Form | Parsing | Where it stands |
|---|---|---|
| κρεμάσαντες kremasantes |
aorist active participle, nom. pl. masc. | Acts 5:30 — "whom ye slew and hanged on a tree [κρεμάσαντες ἐπὶ ξύλου]." Acts 10:39 — same construction, of the Roman authorities. |
| κρεμάμενος kremamenos |
present middle/passive participle, nom. sing. masc. | Gal 3:13, quoting LXX Deut 21:23 — "Cursed is every one that is hanging upon a tree." This is the exact form that carries the Torah citation into the B'rit Chadasha. |
| κρεμασθέντων kremasthentōn |
aorist passive participle, gen. pl. masc. | Luke 23:39 — "one of the malefactors which were hanged [τῶν κρεμασθέντων κακούργων] railed on Him." The two others taluy alongside the Ben Dovid. |
| Reference | Form | Sense |
|---|---|---|
| Acts 5:30 | ξύλου | "hanged on a tree" — Kefa before the Sanhedrin |
| Acts 10:39 | ξύλου | "hanged on a tree" — Kefa to Cornelius's household |
| Acts 13:29 | τοῦ ξύλου | "took him down from the tree" — Sha'ul at Pisidian Antioch |
| Gal 3:13 | ξύλου | quoting Deut 21:23 directly |
| 1 Pet 2:24 | τὸ ξύλον | "bare our sins... on the tree" — Kefa's own summary of Yeshayahu 53 |
A note on Acts 2:36: it is often filed alongside the kremannymi group because it names the same act, but its verb is in fact G4717 (ἐσταυρώσατε, "ye have hanged on a tree"), not κρεμάννυμι — worth flagging precisely, since the two verb-families (stauroō/G4717 for the act of impaling, kremannymi/G2910 for the resulting suspension-on-wood) are complementary rather than interchangeable, and Sha'ul's choice of kremannymi in Gal 3:13 is deliberate: it is the word that lets him quote Devarim 21:23 verbatim.
Stauros (G4716) resolves to two distinct Yiddishkeit renderings, governed by context — not cosmetic substitution, but recovery of the underlying Hebraic frame Jewish Sha'ul himself is working from
etz mesiras nefesh — "the tree/stake of the surrender of the soul"
Matt 16:24; Mark 8:34; Luke 9:23; 14:27 — "let him take up his stauros and follow Me." No talmid literally carries a Roman execution-beam daily. What is meant, in terms a Bais Din or a talmid of any rav would recognize at once, is mesiras nefesh — the total surrender of the nefesh, the willingness to die rather than deny one's Rebbe, held as a daily posture. Rendering stauros here as etz mesiras nefesh keeps the concrete image (a wooden implement, carried, on the shoulder) while surfacing what qualifies a talmid: not admiration for the Rebbe, but this daily bodily Rom 12:1 korban chai death.
Etz HaKelalah shel Ben Dovid — "the Ben Dovid Accursed Tree"
Where stauros names the actual instrument on Golgolta — the object Yochanan and the execution accounts have in view — the fitting Yiddishkeit rendering carries the Devarim 21:23 kelalah-vocabulary forward (per Station Dalet/Hei above) and names whose Tree it is: not a generic gibbet, but the Tree of the true Ben Dovid, standing in the very place the false ben Dovid's tree stood, one an etz of judgment, one an etz of redemption (Station Aleph). This is the rendering that keeps Gal 3:13 and Deut 21:23 audibly connected in the target text, the way ἐπὶ ξύλου (G1909 + G3586) keeps them connected in the source.
Both renderings are organic to the message, not cosmetic. They do not soften or evade the offense of a cursed, executed Messiah — Devarim 21:23 is louder in Hebrew than in English, since every Torah-literate hearer already knows kilelat Elohim taluy by heart. The Yiddishkeit register makes the scandal of Gal 3:13 harder to miss, not easier.
Yiddishkeit terms for stauroō (G4717) and kremannymi (G2910) that stay inside the Torah's own vocabulary
Caryl Chessman spent twelve years searching a law library for a stay that would delay his execution sentence by weeks or months. The record this exhibit has traced says something stranger: for the one who will look (Bamidbar 21:8-9), the execution sentence itself has already been carried out — on the Etz HaKelalah shel Ben Dovid, by the true Ben Dovid, in the place of the guilty — and the verdict handed down at Golgolta on Nisan 14, 33 C.E. was not a stay of execution. It was an acquittal, purchased by an execution already codified in Scripture and spelled out in the Torah. Now we turn to the glory of preaching the Besuras HaGeulah, the Good News of Redemption, and we use the US Navy and Marines of the WW2 Pacific Theatre fighting a good fight in a paradisical climate to illustrate the liberating spiritual warfare work of the true Paradise mevaserim preachers preaching the Paradise Etz Chayim as foreshadowing the Accursed Ben Dovid Tree, which opens "the way to the Etz Chayim" (Bereshit 3:24).
Wait, you say — before turning to an illustration built on the WW2 Pacific Theatre Marines as analogues of Paradise-minded (Colossians 3:2) mevaserim, answer this question first: in what way is the Etz Chayim a foreshadowing of the Accursed Ben Dovid Tree of Moshiach?
AnswerThis is a rich piece of typology, and the key is to see it as an inversion rather than a straightforward type→antitype progression.
In Gan Eden, the Etz Chayim stood freely available. Man's exclusion from it came only after the fall, when keruvim with a flaming cherev were stationed to guard the way to it (Bereshis 3:22–24). Access to eternal life was barred by a decree tied to sin and curse.
Devarim 21:22–23 establishes that one hanged "al eitz" (upon a tree/stake) is under Hashem's k'lalah — an arur, an accursed thing, whose body may not even remain overnight, because "kilelat Elohim taluy," a hanged man is a curse of G-d. Scripture applies this directly to the Shmuel Bais (2 Samuel) 18:9–15 Ben Dovid type-antitype Moshiach in Galatim 3:13 — He became arur for us, hanging "al ha'eitz," on the tree, so as to redeem us from the k'lalah of the Torah (Devarim 27:26). Kefa (1 Peter 2:24) and the Acts speeches (5:30; 10:39) reuse the same "eitz" language deliberately — the execution stake is called the tree.
Normally we'd expect the Eden tree (protological) to function as type and something later as antitype (fulfillment). Here, though, the relationship is a reversal-in-kind: the Etz Chayim was the tree life flowed from, guarded because of curse; Golgotha's eitz is the tree curse flowed onto, so that access could be reopened. The accursed tree doesn't merely prefigure the Etz Chayim — it undoes the very barrier, the k'lalah, that had cut mankind off from it. The instrument of curse becomes, paradoxically, the means by which the curse is absorbed and exhausted.
Here is where Rabbinic Judaism and the Judaism of the Bible part ways. Rabbinic Judaism's demand that Moshiach bring instant world peace overlooks the very Ben Dovid Tree where "musar shlomeinu alav" — chastisement that brought us peace was upon him (Yeshayahu 53:5). The Judaism preached by the Scriptures does not overlook this peace, which flows as eternal shalom from the Etz Chayim through the Ben Dovid Tree.
This is why Etz Chayim reappears explicitly in the Hisgalus (Revelation) — 2:7; 22:2, 14, 19 — as what the overcomers are granted: the right to eat from it, in the restored Gan. This is the antitype completing the circuit: Eden's Etz Chayim (access lost) → Golgotha's eitz (curse absorbed by Ben Dovid) → the New Yerushalayim's Etz Chayim (ירושלים של מעלה), access permanently restored, no longer guarded but freely given for healing.
So the typological logic runs: the tree that carried the curse is what makes possible the tree that grants the life — the arur eitz functions as the antitype resolving the guarded eitz of Eden, precisely by taking on itself what had barred the way to it.
Exhibit — Pacific Theater, 1943–1945
On coral islands ringed in the colors of Eden, the WW2 Navy and Marine Corps fought their way ashore — and Moshiach's mevaserim preachers, wearing not the same uniform but fighting a comparable battle, fight the good fight liberating islands everywhere with the Word of Life (I Yochanan 1:1).
Bereshit — The First Tree
Gan Eden was not a wasteland fenced off. It was the most beautiful place that had ever existed — and at its center stood the Etz Chayim, the Tree of Life, offered freely, until it wasn't.
After the first Adam reached for the wrong tree, Hashem did not merely warn the next generation away from Eden. He stationed the keruvim and a sword of fire turning every direction, "to guard the way to the Etz Chayim" (Bereshit 3:24). The way back to Paradise was not lost through happenstance. It was sealed, on purpose, by the One who built it.
Every generation since has lived east of that guarded gate — including, twenty centuries later, several hundred thousand young men who found themselves crossing the actual Pacific toward islands that looked, from the rail of a troop transport, exactly like the garden they'd only heard about in shul or in Sunday school.
Planted by Hashem in the middle of the garden. Life freely offered, then withdrawn from fallen hands and set behind a guard of fire, so that no one could reach it in the state Adam left it in. Our subject is Eternal Life.
Torah calls the man hung on a tree "kilelat Elokim" — cursed of G-d (Devarim 21:23). The Bris Chadasha applies this verse, without softening it, to Ben Dovid Himself: "cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree" (Galatim 3:13).
This is what the Paradise-minded mevaserim preachers preach: the guarded way to the Etz Chayim is not reopened by a nicer Mitzvah tree. It is reopened by an accursed one. There is a tree that in Ben Dovid's hands reopens Paradise forever.
Guadalcanal · Peleliu · Iwo Jima · Okinawa
The men who fought the WW2 Pacific campaign did not land on postcards. They landed on Melanesian and Micronesian islands that were, by every ordinary measure, paradise — coconut palms, coral lagoons, water the color the Song of Songs reaches for. This is the paradisical view they had in their landing crafts; but what did they find when they landed? They found jungle warfare, banzai charges, and the highest casualty rates the Marine Corps had ever recorded.
Navy chaplains held services on the decks of transports the night before a landing and in aid stations after it; Marines carried testaments issued by the armed forces into foxholes on Guadalcanal's Bloody Ridge and the volcanic ash of Iwo Jima. The setting was Eden's scenery. The Moshiach's hard-fought work being described from those chaplains' makeshift battlefield pulpits was the message given here. And the message is Eden's other business: what it costs to reopen a gate that was shut for a reason, and the Ben Dovid who already fought the battle and paid the price.
That is the shape of the message carried island to island — not merely comfort for men who might die by morning, but a specific claim: the curse that barred the way back to the Etz Chayim has already been absorbed, on a tree, by Ben Dovid. Preaching that claim on a beachhead is itself a act of spiritual warfare — liberating not territory but the people trapped behind the same gate Eden closed. This website and our AFI Applied Linguistics School and this youtube video is about mevaserim carrying this Scripture Bible Translation message in 7000 world languages island to island to the ends of the earth.
It was guarded on purpose, and reopened on purpose — by the one Etz that took the curse the first Etz left behind, so that everyone who is Ben Dovid's could, in the end, eat freely of the Etz Chayim.
Kilelat Elohim → Ben Dovid → Etz Chayim