“If people have a dispute, seek its resolution in court, and the judges render a decision in favor of the righteous one and condemning the wicked one; then, if the wicked one deserves to be flogged, the judge is to have him lie down and be flogged in his presence. The number of strokes is to be proportionate to his offense; but the maximum number is forty. He is not to exceed this; if he goes over this limit and beats him more than this, your brother will be humiliated before your eyes.”-Deuteronomy 25:1-3
Following on the heels of yesterday’s post concerning the punishment of being flogged, we’re told the maximum number of strokes of the whip was to be limited to no more than 40.
The reason we’re given is so the accused won’t “be humiliated before your eyes”.
But why 40?
Why not 20 or 35 or maybe even 50?
We’re not told and there’s been all manner of conjecture about this,
One idea which seems to make sense is that 40 lashes was a considerably lesser amount than what was normally prescribed in the other pagan societies of the Middle East during this time.
For example, in many Mesopotamian cultures, the maximum number of lashes was restricted to up to 100.
Let’s not forget the reason we find many of the instructions in the Torah strange is because a lot of them have to do with the Lord taking issue with many Canaanite practices He wanted His people to stay away from.
A perfect case in point is the law forbidding the boiling of a kid in its mother’s milk.
The biggest takeaway here is that it is excessively cruel to whip a man more than 40 times.
Too many lashes of the whip is not only humiliating and degrading and may cause the man to breakdown, cry and beg for mercy, but from a physical standpoint it could cause death.
Either way, the result of such an extreme punishment is that not only would it bring great dishonor to the person on the receiving end of such cruelty, but the memory of the consequences would far outweigh any memory of the crime he committed leading to bitterness instead of repentance.
When the Lord punishes us, He wants us to see the wrong in what we did and repent.
An unreasonably harsh punishment does not achieve that end.
Leave a Reply