Question XI. When was the King of Ai taken down from the cross, and why?

I. That he remained on the cross until evening and sunset, the text says (v. 29). Truly indeed; but in the Hebrew and Greek, that [phrase] which is added about the sunset begins a new sentence, thus: “And when the sun set, Joshua commanded.” And this seems added, because the name “evening” [vespera] sometimes embraces almost the whole afternoon time, as [was] said above, when the Passover was treated of; and it is plain from 2 Sam. 11:2, where — [in the passage] where our [Vulgate] says David “rose from his couch after midday” — the Hebrew says, “at the time of its evening.” The 70: πρὸς ἑσπέραν [pros hesperan, “toward evening”]. II. He was taken down from the cross at sunset, because Joshua commanded [it]. But he commanded [it] because the Lord had commanded (Deut. 21:23). The cause is there added: because “cursed by God is he who hangs on a tree, and thou shalt by no means contaminate thy land, which the Lord thy God shall give thee in possession.” And some of the Rabbis indeed — as R. Isaac (in the book On the Bonds of Isaac) — say [that] there he who is hung is called “a curse” not “of God,” but “of the Judges,” because there elohim [means] “Judges,” as also elsewhere. But the rest say it is “a curse of God” — either because he cursed God by the impiety of some word or deed (and so the Chaldee Paraphrast and Ralbag), or because the cross is the most detestable of all punishments; and therefore it is enough [that] he was affected with it, nor is there need [that] he suffer a longer infamy in the eyes of all men. Add that “to be left unburied” was held [to be] also a very great punishment, and an argument of barbaric cruelty. And therefore a great disgrace and mark would have been branded on the land of the Israelites, if the Israelites had let [them] hang unburied longer — especially since, on account of the sun’s heat in those regions, the hung corpses would at once begin to dissolve, drip, and stink, by which things too the land seemed to be defiled. Masius brings other reasons too. But that [instance] about the descendants of Saul, left longer on the gibbet, was extraordinary, and divinely granted to the vows of the Gibeonites (2 Sam. 21).