Upvote:1
Below are some bible commentaries from the early fathers that might be helpful:
Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangs on a tree: - Galatians 3:13
Every one who shall have hung on a tree.". I suppose, you endeavour to introduce a diversity of opinion, simply because you deny that the suffering of the cross was predicted of the Christ of the Creator, and because you contend, moreover, that it is not to be believed that the Creator would expose His Son to that kind of death on which He had Himself pronounced a curse. "Cursed "says He, "is every one who hangeth on a tree.". You cannot establish a diversity of authors because there happens to be one of things; for the diversity is itself proposed by one and the same author. Why, however, "Christ was made a curse for us". But yet it by no means follows, because the Creator said of old, "Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree". Nay, but you do blaspheme; because you allege not only that the Father died, but that He died the death of the cross. For "cursed are they which are hanged on a tree". nor indeed did the apostle utter blasphemy when he said the same thing as we. The Lord Himself was "cursed "in the eye of the law;. Why, in this very standing of yours there was a fleeing from persecution, in the release from persecution which you bought; but that you should ransom with money a man whom Christ has ransomed with His blood, how unworthy is it of God and His ways of acting, who spared not His own Son for you, that He might be made a curse for us, because cursed is he that hangeth on a tree,
- Tertullian of Carthage, A.D. 220
Then I replied, "Just as God commanded the sign to be made by the brazen serpent, and yet He is blameless; even so, though a curse lies in the law against persons who are crucified, yet no curse lies on the Christ of God, by whom all that have committed things worthy of a curse are saved.
- Justin Martyr, A.D. 165
Christ was made a curse for us. Christ, though blessed in Himself, was made a curse, so far as He took on Him the person of sinners, to expiate the curse due because of their sins. Just as if a man make himself responsible for another"s debt, he becomes and is called a debtor, so Christ was made a curse for us. The term, however, cannot be properly applied to Him, for though a debt may be transferred, sin cannot. It is only applied to Him improperly, in the sense that He took upon Him the punishment of sin. In 2 Corinthians 5:21, Christ is said to have been made sin for us, i.e, a victim for sin, according to the Jewish rite by which, through the imposition of hands, the whole body of sin was transferred to the victim. So here He is called a curse, because God transferred to Him the curses due to the whole human race, so that He bore for us the shameful Cross, to show the hideousness of sin as well as to give an example of every virtue. He hung on the Cross, says S. Augustine, "in order that Christian freedom, unlike Jewish slavery, might fear not only no death, but no kind of death" (contra Adimant. c21). So too Tertullian: "The Lord Himself was cursed in the law, and yet He alone was blessed. Therefore let us, His servants, follow our Lord, and patiently endure cursing, that we may be blessed." (de Patienciâ, c8). For it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree. This is from Deuteronomy 21:23. Aquila and Theodotion render the clause, The curse of God is hanged; Symmachus, He was hanged for blasphemy against God; Ebion, the half-Jewish, half-Christian heresiarch, as Jerome calls him, rendered it, He who hangs is an outrage on God; another, The insult against God is hanged. Jerome adds that his Hebrew teacher (Barhanina) told him that the Hebrew might be translated, God was ignominiously hanged. Hence S. Jerome infers, that as S. Paul does not mention the name of God, that name was not in the original, but afterwards inserted by some Jew, in derision of the Christians. But this is improbable, for all the Hebrew, Latin, and Greek texts, as well as the LXX. version, have the name of God in this text of Deuteronomy. It was, therefore, out of zeal for God that Paul omitted His name, and because of the Jews and the Galatians , already half-disposed to forsake Christ. He feared lest he might alienate them still further if he said that Christ had been cursed by God.
G- Cornelius a Lapide, A.D. 1637
Read more commentaries at https://catenabible.com/com/5735dff2ec4bd7c9723bb0c0
Upvote:3
Clement of Rome and Polycarp are the earliest church fathers and are known as the Apostolic Fathers. After them came Irenaeus, Ignatius and Justin Martyr, the Ante-Nicene Fathers (pre 325 A.D.) Clement’s first letter to the Corinthians (circa 96 A.D.) makes reference to several canonical books including Genesis, Romans, Galatians, Ephesians, 1 Corinthians and Philippians.
Although I could not find a specific reference to Galatians 3:13, in 1 Clement 32:4 there is possibly one of the earliest patristic references to the biblical doctrine of justification through faith alone:
1 Clem 32:4: And so we, having been called through His will in Christ Jesus, are not justified through ourselves or through our own wisdom or understanding or piety or works which we wrought in holiness of heart, but through faith, whereby the Almighty God justified all men that have been from the beginning; to whom be the glory for ever and ever. Amen. Source: http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/1clement-lightfoot.html
I hope this may be of some use to you.