Esther class 3 (ch. 2)

ESTHER 2:23
"Xerxes passed over the place where the dead lay and...gave orders to cut off (Leonidas') head and impale it. It is plain to me...that while Leonidas lived, king Xerxes was more incensed against him than against all others; otherwise he would never have dealt so outrageously with his dead body, for the Persians are beyond all men known in the habit of honoring valiant warriors."
(Herodotus, The Histories 7.238)
Disgraced, executed criminals get impaled or hung after death.
- Yosef correctly interprets that Pharaoh would impale his baker (Bereishis 40:19, 22, 41:13)
- Yehoshua impaled six kings in total on two separate occasions during his conquest of the land of Israel (Yehoshua 8:29; 10:26)
- When the Plishtim found King Shaul's slain body, they impaled it (Shmuel A 31:10)
- When a famine hit during King David's reign, God informs him that it came as punishment for King Shaul's attempt to exterminate the Giv'onim. When David sought council with the Giv'onim, they requested to impale seven of King Shaul's children, and David handed them over. (Shmuel B 21:1-9)
- In Esther, this practice is mentioned in at least four contexts: 1) Bigsan and Seresh are impaled for plotting against the king, 2) Haman plotted to have Mordechai killed and impaled, 3) Haman was impaled on the stake he prepared for Mordechai, and 4) Haman's ten sons were impaled as well.
- In Ezra (6:11), when Darius decreed that Bayis Sheni should be built, he wrote that anyone who alters his decree should be impaled on a beam removed from that person's house.

"...when Darius was master of the Babylonians, he destroyed their walls and tore away all their gates, neither of which Cyrus had done at the first taking of Babylon; moreover he impaled about three thousand men that were prominent among them..."
(Herodotus (484-425 BCE), The Histories 3.159)
There's a mitzvah to hang two kinds of executed criminals: those who curse God and those who commit idolatry (Devarim 21:22; Chinukh 535). There are also mitzvos, however, to not leave them up overnight (Devarim 21:23; Chinukh 536) and to bury them on the same day (ibid.; Chinukh 537). In fact, we learn about burial itself from the mitzvah to bury these criminals.
They would tie the corpse's hands and hang the body from a cross near sunset. They would then be taken down immediately and buried next to that cross, along with all the materials used for the execution. Sefer haChinukh writes that a purpose of this mitzvah is so this criminal can serve as a deterrent against future crime. This raises a fascinating moral and legal question about the purpose of legal punishment. Does capital punishment deter crime?
Mishnah Makos 1:11 has a radical four-way Machlokes on this question:
1) Anonymous - a Sanhedrin that killed one person in seven years is a murderous court
2) R' Elazar ben Azaryah - even on in seventy years
3) R' Tarfon/R' Akiva - we would never kill anyone
4) R' Shimon ben Gamliel - they increase murderers in Israel.
R' Chanina S'gan haKohanim in Avos 3:2 seems to agree with R' Shimon ben Gamliel: pray for the welfare of the government because, without them, people would swallow each other alive.
To these Tanna'im, this wasn't a merely theoretical question. They lived during the time of the Bar Kokhba rebellion and many of them were killed, quite brutally, by the Roman government.
In אלה אזכרה, said by some Jewish communities on Tish'ah b'Av, Yom Kippur, or Erev Rosh haShanah, R' Akiva and R' Shimon ben Gamliel are listed among the Ten Martyrs. One opinion in Eikhah Rabbah lists R' Tarfon among them as well, and, according to the Shulchan Arukh (Orach Chaim 580:2), R' Chanina S'gan haKohanim and R' Shimon ben Gamliel (who shared the opinion that you need a strong government for society to function) were martyred on the very same day.
This opinion clearly took the day in Jewish sources, and it's not surprising. Throughout their exiles, Jews were almost always better under a strong government.
"...if a criminal is not punished...none of those who design aggression will be deterred. No one is as weak-minded as those who deem that the abolition of punishments would be merciful...On the contrary, this would be cruelty...as well as the ruin of the order of the city..."
- Guide III:35
Plato (c. 428-348 BCE) and David Hume both say the same thing, that the function of punishment serves as a deterrent, but Kant disagrees.
"No one punishes a wrong-doer in consideration of the simple fact that he has done wrong, unless one is exercising the mindless vindictiveness of a beast. Reasonable punishment is not vengeance for a past wrong--for one cannot undo what has been done--but is undertaken with a view to the future, to deter both the wrong-doer and whoever sees him being punished from repeating the crime."
- Plato, Protagoras 324b
"When any man...renders himself...obnoxious to the public, the law punishes him in property and in person. In other words, the [ordinary] rules of justice are...temporarily suspended, and it becomes proper, for the benefit of society, to inflict on him suffering which, in other circumstances, would be considered an injustice or violation of his rights."
- David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals
"...Juridical punishment can never be administered merely as a means for promoting another Good...but must in all cases be imposed only because the individual...has committed a crime...one man ought never to be dealt with merely as a means...to the purpose of another..."
- Kant, Philosophy of Law
This is a fascinating moral question: what is the purpose of legal punishment, specifically capital punishment?
- to deter future crime
- to punish the criminal
- to atone for the crime
- to mollify the victim's family
- to remove the criminal from society
- to appease God
- to repair the cosmic damage wrought by the sin