Scourge

Deut. xxv. 1, 2, 3.SCOURGE, or Whip. This Punishment was very common among the Jews. Moses ordains, That if there be a Controversy between Men, and they come unto Judgment, that the Judges may judge them; then they shall justify the Righteous, and condemn the Wicked. And it shall be, if the wicked Man be worthy to be beaten, that the Judge shall cause him to lie down, and to be beaten before his Face, according to his Fault, by a certain Number. Forty Stripes he may give him, and not exceed; lest if he should exceed, and beat him above these with many Stripes, then thy Brother should seem vile unto thee. There were two ways of giving the Lash; one, with Thongs or Whips, made of Ropes-ends, or Straps of Leather; the other, with Rods, Twigs, or Branches of some Tree.

The Rabbins think, that ordinary Faults committed against the Law, and submitted to the Penalty of the Scourge, were punish’d, not with Blows with a Rod, but with a Whip. They reckon up as far as One hundred and sixty-eight Faults liable to this Penalty¹; and they hold, that all punishable Faults, to which the Law has not annex’d the Penalty of Death, are to be punish’d by the Scourge. The Offender was stript from his Shoulders to his Middle, and he was tied by his Arms to a pretty low Pillar, that he might lean forward, and the Executioner might the more easily come at his Back. There are some that maintain, that they never gave more or less than thirty-nine Strokes, but that in greater Faults they struck with greater Violence. But others think, that when the Fault and Circumstances required it, they might add to this Number of Blows. St. 2 Cor. x. 24.Paul informs us, that at five different times he received nine and thirty Blows from the Jews; which should insinuate, that this was a fix’d Number, and that they never went beyond it.

Acts xxii. 24, 25.The same Apostle clearly shews in the same Place, that the Correction with Rods, was different from that with a Whip; Ter virgis cæsus sum. And when he was seized by the Jews in the Temple, the Tribune of the Roman Soldiers ran and took him out of the Hands of the Jews; and desiring to know the Reason of the Tumult that happen’d upon this Occasion, he or-der’d him to be tied and stretch’d upon the Ground, to put him to the Question, and to have him beat with Rods; for so, commonly, the Romans put the Question. The Bastinado, that was sometime given upon the Back, and which at this Day, among the Eastern People, is given upon the Soles of the Feet raised aloft, while the Patient lies down upon his Belly; this Punishment is different from that of the Scourge or Whip.

The Rabbins teach us, that the Penalty of the Scourge was not at all ignominious among them, and that it could not be objected as a Disgrace to those that had suffer’d it. They pretend, that no Israelite, not so much as the King, or High-priest, was exempted from this Law, when he had committed any Fault that deserved this Punishment. But this must be understood of the Punishment of Whipping that that was inflicted in their Synagogues, and which was rather a legal and particular Penalty, than a publick and shameful Correction. Philo in Flacc. & de Specialibus legib.Philo, speaking of the Manner with which Flaccus treated the Jews of Alexandria, says, he made them suffer the Punishment of the Whip, which (says he) is not less insupportable Mat. xx. 19.to a Free-man, than Death it self. Our Saviour, speaking of the Pains and Ignominy of his Passion, commonly puts his Mark x. 34. Luk. xviii. 32.Scourging in the first Place.

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