church of Christ at 26th and Connecticut
Joplin, Missouri

Phone
417-781-2326

1819 E 26th
Jopin, MO  64804

   Worship Schedule

Sunday
    Bible Class              9 am
    Morning Worship    10 am
    Evening Worship      6 pm

Wednesday
     Devotional & Class   7 pm

Upcoming Activities

Impalement

This isn’t a pleasant topic, but for a fuller understanding of Scripture, we do need to know about impalement.  “Impalement is a term that refers to situations in which objects are driven through the body, causing deep stabbing wounds. It can refer either to accidental events or to deliberate wounding used as a method of torture or execution” (wikipedia.org).

Darius’ Decree

Many Bible translations (NASB, NIV, etc.) speak of impalement in Ezra 6:11.  In this passage, the Persian king Darius makes an edict that the temple be rebuilt in Jerusalem, and says, “And I issued a decree that any man who violates this edict, a timber shall be drawn from his house and he shall be impaled on it and his house shall be made a refuse heap on account of this” (NASB). 

The TNIV

In some Bible translations (NASB, NIV, etc.), Ezra 6:11 is the only verse to use the word “impale.”  But when the NIV was revised to make the TNIV (Today’s New International Version), the word “impale” appeared in 12 other verses:

• We read of Pharoah lifting off the head of his chief baker and impaling his body on a pole (Genesis 40:19, 22; 41:13).  [The NIV said that his head was lifted off and he was hanged on a tree.]
• We read that Joshua “impaled the body of the king of Ai on a pole and left it there until evening” (Joshua 8:29).  [The NIV said he was hanged on a tree.]
• We read that when the Persian king Xerxes discovered that two of his officials were plotting to assassinate him, “the two officials were impaled on poles” (Esther 2:23).  [The NIV said they were hanged on a gallows.]
• We read about Haman setting up a pole on which to impale Mordecai (Esther 5:14).  [The NIV said he built a gallows on which to hang Mordecai.]
• We read about Haman being impaled on that very same pole instead of Mordecai (Esther 7:9-10; 8:7).  [The NIV said he was hanged on the gallows.]
• We read about the bodies of Haman’s ten sons being “impaled on poles” the day after they were killed (Esther 9:13, 14, 25).  [The NIV said they were hanged on gallows.]

Most of these verses come from Esther, and speak of impalements commanded by Esther’s husband, Xerxes, the king of Persia.  According to the TNIV Study Bible, impalement on poles was:

The Persian form of exectution, as is confirmed in pictures and statutes from the ancient Near East and in the comments of the Greek historian Herodotus.  According to Herodotus, Darius I impaled 3,000 Babylonians when he took Babylon, an act that Darius himself records in his Behistun (Bisitun) inscription.  In Isaraelite and Canaanite practice, hanging was an exhibition of the corpse and not the means of exectuation itself (Dt 21:22-23; Jos 8:29; 10:26; 1 Sa 31:8-10; 2 Sa 4:12).  The sons of Haman were killed by the sword, and then their corpses were displayed on poles (9:5-14).  The execution of the pharoah’s chief baker in the Joseph narrative was similar (Ge 40:19).

[It’ll be interesting to see if the new NIV (due for release in 2011) will say “impaled” like the TNIV, or “hanged” like the old NIV.]

Was Judas Iscariot impaled?

Matthew tells us that Judas “hanged himself” (Matthew 27:5 NASB).  But Peter said that, “falling headlong, [Judas] burst open in the middle and all his intestines gushed out” (Acts 1:18 NASB), or, as Hugo McCord put it, “[Judas] fell headfirst, burst open in the middle, and all his entrails were poured out.”  It might seem as though Peter’s account conflicts with Matthew’s.  But, as Wayne Jackson noted:

The language necessitates no conflict.  Either he hanged himself from a very high place—with perhaps the rope breaking; or else, no one removed his body for a while, it eventually fell under its own weight, and the decomposing corpse burst open.