to hang: to fasten something so that it dangles from a support, whether an object on a peg or a person's body on a tree or gallows
At its core this verb describes one simple physical act: fixing something to a support so that it hangs down freely. What is hung ranges widely. It can be an ordinary object, a harp on a willow, a shield on a wall, a peg or a cluster of vessels, or it can be a human being, most often a corpse fastened to a tree or a pole for all to see.
The uses hold together because the picture is always the same, something suspended from above. The reason the word feels heavier in most of its appearances is simply what tends to get hung: the bodies of the executed. In ancient Israel and among its neighbors, a criminal was usually put to death first (by stoning or the sword) and only then hung up, so that the display was a public warning and a mark of shame rather than the means of death itself. The one clearly figurative use stretches the same image to the whole world, picturing God suspending the earth over empty space.
Because English "hang" so strongly suggests death by hanging from the neck, readers easily import an idea the Hebrew usually does not carry. The word points to the hanging, not to a particular way of killing.
Nuances
Whether "hang him on a tree" in Deuteronomy 21:22 describes the manner of execution (hanging a living offender) or the exposure of a corpse already put to death by another means.
- majorityThe offender is executed first by another means and the body is then hung up as public exposure and disgrace, removed the same day.; J. H. Tigay, Deuteronomy (JPS Torah Commentary, 1996), on 21:22-23
- minorityThe hanging is itself the means of death, applied to a living offender, as the Qumran Temple Scroll (11Q19) appears to read it and as later reception connects it to crucifixion.; M. Wilcox, 'Upon the Tree: Deut 21:22-23 in the New Testament', JBL 96 (1977): 85-99