Tertullian, An Answer to the Jews 10

You are actually doubting how His passion turned out, denying that the cross's suffering was preached in Christ, and arguing further that God could not have handed His Son over to this kind of death, since He Himself declared: "Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree" (Deuteronomy 21:22-23). But the proof of the facts comes before the sense of that curse. Deuteronomy says: "If someone has committed a capital offense and is put to death, and you hang his body on a tree, you must not leave it there overnight; you must bury him that same day, because anyone hung on a tree is under God's curse, and you must not defile the land the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance" (Deuteronomy 21:22-23). Therefore God did not curse Christ in this passion; He drew a distinction, so that whoever had a death sentence for some sin and died hanging on a tree — that person was cursed by God, because he was hung on a tree due to the merits of his own sins. Christ, however, spoke no deceit from His mouth and displayed all justice and humility; as we recalled above, He was foretold not to be handed over to this death because of His own merits, but so that the things the prophets predicted would happen to Him through you would be fulfilled — just as the Spirit of Christ Himself was already singing in the Psalms: "They repay me evil for good" (Psalms 35:12); "I am forced to restore what I did not steal"; "They pierce my hands and feet"; "They put gall in my food and give me vinegar for my thirst" (Psalms 69:21); "They cast lots for my garment" — just as the other things you were going to commit against Him were foretold. He suffered all these things, yet not because of any evil act of His own, but so that the Scriptures from the prophets' mouths might be fulfilled. And indeed, the mystery of His passion had to be prefigured in the prophecies; the more incredible it was, the more it would become a scandal if preached plainly; the more magnificent, the more it had to be veiled, so that the difficulty of understanding it would drive people to seek God's grace. Thus, first of all, when Isaac was led as a sacrifice by his father and carried the wood himself, he was already signifying Christ's outcome: a victim yielded by the Father, bearing the wood of His own passion.