(מקוללי אלוהים ואנשים" (מגילת המקדש סד, 12"

The phrase כי מקוללי אלוהים ואנשים תלוי על העץ (Temple Scroll 64:11–12) has frequently been taken to be a Hebrew parallel to the Septuagint and Pauline interpretation of קללת אלהים תלוי (Deut. 21:23), according to which the genitive is accusative, God cursing the hanged man. However, an examination of the context shows, rather, that the phrase is intended to justify the scroll's limitation of hanging to two crimes: treasonous informing against the Jewish people and flight from a capital judgement (="contempt of court"), crimes it finds defined, respectively, in Leviticus 19:16 and Exodus 22:27(28), where אלהים is taken to refer to judges. Thus, in this scroll, as in rabbinic literature, the genitive is taken to be nominative. מקוללי is to be understood as "the contemners of" (and not: "those accursed by"), and the extra waw is to be explained, like other Qumran waws, as reflecting a variant morphology or pronunciation.