katara

κατάρα is the compound of ἀρά with κατά, and in Hellenistic Greek it denotes both the imprecatory utterance and its effect. BDAG distinguishes the act of cursing, the state of being under a curse, and, by metonymy, the accursed object; LSJ and Louw-Nida recognize the same range. Büchsel's TDNT article on the ἀρά group traces the movement from the Greek notion of a curse whose force lies in the uttered word to the biblical notion of a curse effective because God enforces a covenant sanction, the background being the blessing and curse formulas of Deuteronomy 27 to 30, where the Greek Old Testament regularly renders קְלָלָה with κατάρα. Brichto and Kitz document the wider legal and cultic setting of such formulas. The exegetical weight falls on Galatians 3:10 to 13, where Paul quotes Deuteronomy 27:26 and 21:23: Betz, Longenecker and Moo read ἡ κατάρα τοῦ νόμου as the law's sentence on each transgressor, while Wright and Scott read it as the Deuteronomic curse of exile fallen on Israel corporately and absorbed by Christ. On the concrete use in Galatians 3:13b, commentators generally take κατάρα as abstract for concrete, that is, as the accursed one, rather than as a claim about Christ's character. Hebrews 6:8 applies κατάρας ἐγγύς to unproductive ground in an echo of Genesis 3:17 (Attridge), and 2 Peter 2:14 uses the Semitic genitive κατάρας τέκνα of accursed persons (Bauckham).