Philo: The Special Laws, III

XXVIII. (150) The law expressly enjoins that it shall not be lawful to take any ransom from murderers who ought to be put to death, for the purpose of lessening their punishment, or substituting banishment for death. For blood must be atoned for by blood, the blood of him who has been treacherously slain by that of him who has slain him. (151) Since men of wicked dispositions are never wearied of offending, but are always committing atrocious actions in the excess of their wickedness, and increasing their iniquities, and extending them beyond all bounds or limits.

For the lawgiver would, if it had been in his power, have condemned those men to ten thousand deaths. But since this was not possible, he prescribed another punishment for them, commanding those who had slain a man to be hanged upon a tree. (152) And after having established this ordinance he returned again to his natural humanity, treating with mercy even those who had behaved unmercifully towards others, and he pronounced, "Let not the sun set upon persons hanging on a Tree;"

but let them be buried under the earth and be concealed from sight before sunset. For it was necessary to raise up on high all those who were enemies to every part of the world, so as to show most evidently to the sun, and to the heaven, and to the air, and to the water, and to the earth, that they had been chastised; and after that it was proper to remove them into the region of the dead, and to bury them, in order to prevent their polluting the things upon the earth.