Curse (Hastings' Dictionary)

Under this title an account is given of the ideas connected primarily ■n-ith the Heb. words D-igiJ and u-m (herem), and vdth the Gr. word i.viB(IM (anathema), so far as it is representative of the latter. The Heb. words are variously rendered in AV : ' the accursed thing ' in Jos V- " '*"• ; ' every- thing devoted' in Nu 18" ; 'every dedicated' thing in Ezk 44^ ; ' and I will consecrate their apoU ' in Mic 4".

R V has in all these places ' devote ' or ' devote^ thing ' ; where the object is personal, it has usufflly ' utterly destroy ' (see Driver on Dt 2'* "•' or Sam. p. 100 f. ). A thing which is a-r. is irre- vocably withdrawn from common use. This may be done in two ways, or at least may have two kmds of result. In the one case, the dievoted thing be- comes God's ; it falls irredeemably to Him, or to His sanctuarr or His priests.

In this sense, as has been pointed out, to ' devote ' a thing is to make a peculiar kind of vow concerning it. The most instructive passage, in illustration of this sense, is Lv 27'*'- ' No devoted thing, that a man shall devote unto the Lord of all that he hath, whether of man or beast, or of the field of his possession, shall be sold or redeemed : every devoted thing is most holy nnto the Lord.

None devoted, which shall be devoted from among men, shall be ransomed ; he shall surely be put to death.' In the second and third of the passages quoted above (Nu 18", Ezk 44*'), it is said expressly that every devoted thing in Israel is the priest s : this might include the spoil of conquerecf nations, carried into tlie temple treasury, as perhaps in Mic 4", or property of any other description which a man irrevocably alienated.

But the last words in Lv 27" (he shall surely be put to death) point to the second, and much tlie commoner, use of the words Dinn and D-iri. To ' devote ' a thing means to put it tinder the ban, to make and to execute a vow of extermination, so far as that thing is concerned. It is this meaning that has occasioned the Eng. rendering for c-;n — the accursed thing. Whatever is devoted to utter destruction is regarded as under a curse.

Things which are so devoted are in a sense inviolable ; in the old, morally neutral sense of holiness, it may be said that a poculinr degree of holiness attaches to them. The thing called n-iri is at the same time fn.T7 D'pii) dnp (compare the seemingly opp. mean- ings of laeer in Latin, and the idea of taboo). It was common in ancient warfare to ' devote,' or put under the ban, the enemy and anything oreverything wliich belonged to him.

All wars were holy wars ; warriors were consecrated (Is 13') ; and the ban, which seemed natural in the circumstances, might be of greater or less extent. In Dt 2^, which speaks of the conquest of Silion's kingdom, we are told that Israel ' utterly destroyed (devoted) every Inhabited city, with the women and the little ones,' and the same terrible account is given in Dt 3* of Og ana Bashan. In Dt V this is even laid down as the law for the conduct of the sacred war against the Canaanites.

But it is only human beings that are here put under the ban : ' The cattle we took for a prey unto ourselvos, with the spoil of the cities which we had taken.' In some cases the ban was more stringent. In Dt 7" it is specially extended to the precious metal on the images of the Canaanites : this is an abomination to J " ; and 'thou shalt not bring an abomination into thy house, and become a devoted thing (c-;-) like it . . ' for it is a devoted thing.'

It was a ban, or curse, of this stringent type which Achan violated at the conquest of Jericho, and Hiel the BetheUte, long aftenvards, when he rebuilt the town. He who appropriates what is D"in, as Achan did, becomes himself (Dt 7**, Jos 6") d-iiI : the ban, or sentence of extermination, is extended to him, and he is ruth- lessly destroyed, with all the persons and property that attach to him.

It was a similar ban whicn Saul violated, or allowed the people to violate, in the war with Amaick ; and his action is represented as equally serious, though not followed on the instant by such tragical results. In point of fact, it was not practicable for the Israelites to ' devote' the Canaanites wliolesale (1 K 9^') ; and the pro- clamation of ruthless warfare, under the auspices of a god, was no peculiarity of theirs.

The same thing is affirmed of tlie Assyrians in 2 K 19", and of Mesha on the Moabite stone. It is more interesting to note that God Himself is sometimes the subject who proclaims this war, or pronounces this sentence of destruction. Thus in Is 34\'The Lord hath indignation against all the nations . . He hath devoted them (aiion), He hath given them up to the slaughter.' ' So in v.' Edom is -c-ixdj; the people whom I have devoted.

And in Mai 4* God threatens to come and lay the earth under a ban. It is usual to point to Ezr 10' as an instance marking the transition between the ancient and awful use of onn, and tliat post-biblical use in which it is equivalent to Excommunication. We are told here that all the substance of a man who did not answer a certain summons should be forfeited (mn;), and he himself separated (Vn;:) from the congregation.

Probably this is the first trace of Jewish ecclesiastical usages, of which hints are to be found in NT in such passages as Mt 18", Jn 9" 12^ 16^ Lk 6". Though such usages, no doubt, would influence the practice of the Christian Church, it is not likely that they have anything to do with that ' delivering ' of oflenders ' to Satan,' of which we read in 1 Co 5», 1 Ti l*.

The sug- gestion in both these cases, and especially in the first, which has been interpreted of a sentence of death, is rather of a severity resembling that of the ancient 'ban' ; but with tlie significant difTerence, that in both the purpose of this solemn exclusion from the Christian community is remedial. Both the incestuous person at Corinth, and Hymenieus and Alexander in A^, are to profit eventually by their discipline.

The true succession to u-n is represented in NT by those passagesin which iviOeiia (Anathema) is found. This is the usual LXX rendering of the word. Thus in Dt 7^" referred to above, theGr. is iviBcfia (<rrj Cxnref Kal toOto : thou shsilt be ' accursed ' like the accursed thing which thou takest. Cf. Jos O'"-, Zee 14". CUKSE CUSH 535 Evi'ii till.' I'lace-name Hormah (Nu 21') is rendered dyi$<iia ; a variant is 4io\iOptu<Tit. In NT the word is used only by St. Luke and St.

Paul (liev 22^ quotes Zee 14", but with the form KariOefia). In Ac 23"- "• " we read of men who ' dfaS^fmn iueOttia- TicaiKv iavTovi' — bound themselves with impre- cations on their own lieads — neither to eat nor to drink till they liad killed Paul. The same verb is used in Mk 14" with i^/'wai to describe Peter's profane denial of Christ : he wished he niiyht be cursed or damned if he knew the man. But the serious passages are in St. Paul.

In 1 Co 12^ we have, No man speaking in the spirit of God says, Jesus is ifiOcfia. This may mean that no man speaking in the spirit of God can do what Paul once tried to get Christians to do — blaspheme Christ, i.e. speak profanely of Him, without delining more precisely how (Ac 2G"). Or it may mean that no one speaking in the spirit of God can speak of Christ as an object of hatred to God, as Jews with the cross in their minds niiglit do. For illustrations of the passage, see Edwards, ad loc.

{Cum. on 1 Cor.), and Harnack's note on Didnihe, xvi. 5 (ii-w' avToi) tou Ka.Tad(tmToi). In lio 9' St. Paul says he could wish himself to be av6.6efm from Christ for his brethren's sake. This is e.xactly the o-n of OT : he could wish to perish that they might be saved — 'a spark from the fire of Christ's sub- stitutionary love.' It is only the other side of this pa.ssion which is seen in the other passages where the word is used: 1 Co 16", Gal l"-.

'If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be av&Otna ' : the apostle assents to God's will that no part in bliss, but only utter perdition, can be his who does not love the Saviour.

So again, when he says, and saj's deliberately and repeatedly, of the man or the angel who preaches another cospel than he has preached, ' let him be ifdef/xa,' tie expresses in the strongest possible style his assurance that the gospel he preaches is the one way of salvation, that to preach another is to make the grate of God vain, to stultify the death of Christ and to delude men, and that for such sins there can be notliing but a final irremediable judgment, to which he assents.

The vehemence IS like that with which Christ says, that better than a man should make one of His little ones stumble would it be for that man to have a millstone han},'cd about his neck, and beca-st into tlie depths of tli6 sea. In both cases the passion of indignation is the passion of .sympathy with the love of God, and with the weak, to whom an irreparable injury is being done. The word 'curse' is also nsed in the English Bible as the tr. of ni>^p and (tardpa.

The interest of this centres in the passage Gal 3""", and in the ref. there to Dt 2r-''. The non-observance of the law, St. Paul teaches, puts men (some limit it to the Jews) under a curse ; from this curse Christ redeems them by becoming Himself a curse (xordpa) on their behalf. The proof that Christ did become a curse is given in the form of a reference to the Crucifixion: it is written, 'cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree' (Dt 21'*). The lleb.

is O'nSi; n'j^p, the LXX ftKarrtpaix^fot livi StoB ; and it has been often remarked that St. Paul does not introduce ' by God ' into his quotation. Some seem to think that he shrank from doing it, as if it would have been equivalent to saying aviOffw, 'Iriaovt. Hilt he does not shrink from saying that God made Christ to be sin for us (2 Co 5-'), which, in its identitiialion of Christ with, or it« substi- tution of Christ for, tiie sinner^ is exactly the same as His becoming a curse in Gal 3".

The ImfKirtant thing is not that St. Paul omits the vri 9«oD, but that, as Cremcr remarks, he avoids the personal KtKdTTjpaiiivot of the LXX, and employs the abstract icard/xi. In His death on the cross He was identified under God's dispensation with the doom of sin ; He became curse for us ; and it is on this our redemption depends. See Cuoss. LrrsEATCu. — Besides the comm. on the various paAsaflM quoted, see Merx in Schenkel, Bibel-Lex. l.v. ' ISaun ' ; Ewaid, Ant. o/Jsr. pp. "6-70 (EriK.

tr.) ; Sumnd, A.T. HetigiomgaichicJite, 5 334; W, u. Smith, Its, o. 431 f. : Weber, DU Lehren da Talmud, 137-139; Schurcr, UJP il il. BOS., 167. J. Denney.