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The Curse

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Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Jun 1, 1915

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 42, No. 22.

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The Curse

By J. H. Hartig

MAN may curse, but Prov. 26: 2 assures us that a causeless curse shall not come. How is it when God pronounces His curse? He says, according to Gen. 3: 17, “Cursed is the ground.” In Deut. 27: 26 we find that to break the law would entail a curse; and in Deut. 21: 23, that one hanged on the tree was accursed.
The Romans introduced crucifixion among the Jews, whose method of inflicting the death penalty was stoning, as was done to Stephen, and as was threatened against the Messiah. But it was not only His death that was required to set us free, but emphatically the death on the cross, that He might be accursed by hanging there and bearing the curse for us.
The Romans did not have this feeling of what a terrible thing it meant to be crucified, but the Jew did; and to make sure that the hated Messiah was not only killed, but accursed, they cried out, not, “Kill Him, kill Him,” but, “Crucify Him.”
It has been argued that Jesus died on the cross to fulfill prophecy. But there was even a more important reason than that: He was to take away the curse. Clad in humanity, no more terrible thing could have come into His soul than to be condemned to the accursed tree. J. H. HARTIG.