As I have released a (currently) three part series on Biblical capital punishment, I now wish to start a series on Biblical corporal punishment (a physical punishment other than death) by flogging. While in the next part I will contrast this penalty with the current prison system, which in most of the world has largely replaced flogging, here I will simply compare the Jewish methods with the customs of various other nations throughout history.
Jewish Flogging
Mosaic Law does not make the procedure or administration of corporal punishment obscure, but instead it illuminates many specific facts about it.
--Deuteronomy 25:1-3--"If men have a dispute, they are to take it to court and the judges will decide the case, acquitting the innocent and condemning the guilty. If the guilty man deserves to be beaten, the judge shall make him lie down and have him flogged in his presence with the number of lashes his crime deserves, but he must not give him more than forty lashes. If he is flogged more than that, your brother will be degraded in your eyes."
--Exodus 21:20--"If a man beats his male or female slave with a rod and the slave dies as a direct result, he must be punished . . ."
Several explicit details are immediately found in these verses:
1. No one can be flogged without first being rightly convicted on the honest testimony of two or three witnesses and found guilty. Not only is this emphasized elsewhere (Deuteronomy 19:15), but the criminal must be brought "to court" for the judges to appropriately sentence him or her.
2. Lashes can only be administered on the back because the recipient will "lie down" on the ground, not on the face, the genitals, or other sensitive parts of the offender's anatomy.
3. The judge must be present at all times during the infliction of the punishment, as it must occur "in his presence". This measure alone would allow the judge to detect and stop any potential abuse or deviation from his sentence, whether a smaller or larger amount of lashes.
4. The number of lashes must correspond to the severity of the crime, as the offender can only receive the number that "his crime deserves".
5. Not a single stroke over forty is allowed under any circumstances period, because otherwise the recipient will be "degraded in your eyes". Cruelty and degradation are not the objective of punishment, nor does God ever allow them to be. Since all people are made in God's image (Genesis 1:26-27), most human rights extend to criminals. A common misconception teaches that use of a whip beyond forty lashes would kill the victim, but that is ridiculous. Forty sadistic lashes with a Roman cat o' nine tails might kill someone, but the Jewish methods would not. Also, since we have historical confirmation (I will assess this below) that Egypt, Rome, and Assyria routinely meted out sentences of up to hundreds of lashes, we know that exceeding forty strikes obviously does not have to kill someone--it will instead inflict astonishing degrees of pain.
6. The man or woman being flogged is still considered a part of the community, as even during the punishment the government agents must still view the offender or as their "brother" or sister. The goal is to fulfill justice and then reconcile the the man or woman back to society.
7. Jewish slaves could be punished corporally with a rod by their masters if they had committed a genuine offense, but if a master accidentally killed a slave through this, "he must be punished". Flogging was not employed as a method of administering the death penalty; that could be one of the cruelest and most agonizing types of deaths imaginable. Flogging is not paired with or used prior to execution but is an entirely separate punishment.
8. There is no forced nudity or any other kind of sexual or social humiliation as part of the penalty.
9. Corporal punishment is not to be inflicted solely on males, as societies have sometimes chosen. To limit certain types of physical punishment to one gender and exempt the other is blatantly sexist and unjust. Either both men and women can deserve flogging or neither gender can deserve flogging, but let's not tolerate the nonsense cultural construct which says that men can strike men and women can hit men but a woman can't be struck.
The verse in Deuteronomy that immediately follows at first seemed random to me but I eventually grasped the relevance of its proximity to the flogging laws.
--Deuteronomy 25:4--"Do not muzzle an ox while it is treading out the grain."
What does a command about an ox have to do with the preceding verses? Well, the emphasis in Deuteronomy 25:3 is on the condemnation of inhumane punishment. Since people have special ontological value and rights, they can never be abused or treated like animals. But Deuteronomy 25:4 serves as one of many Old Testament verses that show how even animals must be treated well too.
Roman Flogging
An illustration of Roman flogging from Scripture itself will help expose the perversity of it:
--Matthew 27:26-31--"But he* had Jesus flogged, and handed him over to be crucified. Then the governor's soldiers took Jesus into the Praetorium and gathered the whole company of soldiers around him. They stripped him and put a scarlet robe on him, and then twisted together a crown of thorns and set it on his head. They put a staff in his right hand and knelt in front of him and mocked him. 'Hail, king of the Jews!' they said. They spit on him, and took the staff and struck him on the head again and again. After they had mocked him, they took off the robe and put his own clothes on him. Then they led him away to crucify him."
*Pontius Pilate
Already distinct differences between this and Jewish corporal penalties can be recognized.
1. Pilate did not personally view the flogging to ensure a just sentence was carried out.
2. The Romans did not have a limitation on the number of lashes.
3. The Romans used a cat o' nine tails, crafted to injure and torture as much as possible. Sometimes the scourging would leave inner organs exposed, as an account by Eusebius acknowledged.
4. The soldiers harassed and sadistically tormented victims by stripping them naked, mocking them, assaulting them, and degrading them. In truth, they could do whatever they wanted to someone. They could abuse, rape, threaten, taunt, and humiliate them if they felt inclined.
5. Flogging was sometimes a prerequisite to sadistic methods of Roman execution like crucifixion.
Does this resemble the Jewish practice of flogging at all? Mosaic Law would never permit such an atrocity; its corporal and capital punishment laws ensure that no such evil would ever be even briefly considered. People need to study history and the gratuitous civil punishments of humanity before they voice a word of objection to Biblical law.
Assyrian Flogging
For miscellaneous crimes the Assyrians would sentence people to 50 strokes sometimes accompanied by additional punishment [2]:
"A21 If a man has struck <another> man’s daughter and caused her to miscarry, once he has been charged and convicted, he is to pay two talents and thirty minas of lead, receive fifty blows, and be sentenced to one month’s hard labor."
"A40 Married women, widows, and Assyrian women must not have their heads uncovered when they go out into the street . . . A harlot is not to be veiled; her head must be uncovered. Any man who sees a veiled harlot is to apprehend her, produce witnesses and bring her to the palace entrance. Although her jewelry may not be taken the one who apprehended her may take her clothing. She will be caned (fifty stripes), and have pitch poured on her head. If a man sees a veiled harlot and lets her go rather than bringing her to the palace entrance, will himself be caned (50 stripes). The one who turned him in may take his clothing. His ears will be pierced, threaded with a cord tied behind him, and he will be sentenced to a full month’s hard labor for the king.
Slave-girls are not to be veiled either. Any man who sees a veiled slave-girl is to apprehend her and bring her to the palace entrance. Her ears will be cut off, and the man who apprehended her may take her clothes. If a man sees a veiled slave-girl and lets her go rather than bringing her to the palace entrance, and he has been charged and convicted, he is to be caned (50 stripes). His ears will be pierced, threaded with a cord tied behind him, and he will be sentenced to a full month’s hard labor for the king."
Mosaic Law never allowed for a witness to confiscate the clothes of the convicted man or woman or for whipping to be a mere portion of a more complex punishment involving the loss of clothing and forced nudity, pouring of pitch on the head or face, mutilation of the ears, or forced labor.
Egyptian Flogging
According to apologist Paul Copan, author of Is God a Moral Monster?, ancient Egyptian custom was to impose a minimum sentence of 100-200 lashes [2]. If this was the most minor penalty, what horrors ranked as the worst?
English Flogging
According to a source (historian Charles Oman) quoted by Wikipedia, English corporal punishment ranged from 300 to 1200 lashes during the Napoleonic Wars [3].
Islamic Flogging
The Quran issues 100 strokes to those who engage in premarital sex in Surah 24:2, a number that equals 2.5 times the maximum amount permitted in Deuteronomy:
"The [unmarried] woman or [unmarried] man found guilty of sexual intercourse - lash each one of them with a hundred lashes, and do not be taken by pity for them in the religion of Allah , if you should believe in Allah and the Last Day. And let a group of the believers witness their punishment [4]."
Another horrifying example of Islamic "justice" is that of a man sentenced to 1,500 lashes [5]. Now, Muslims do not allow this severe of a flogging to be administered simultaneously; they divide the punishment into separate periods of time. Still, this is barbaric and gratuitous in every sense of the words. Interestingly, the Quran claims the Old Testament was revealed by Allah, yet the Old Testament itself contradicts Islam in many ways in regards to civil punishments and general theology.
People who compare Mosaic Law to Sharia Law usually have a poor understanding of both. Yes, some superficial similarities may exist, but these are fairly uncommon and don't overlap much.
Conclusion
All I intended to accomplish here was to prove that Biblically authorized flogging is both more just and more humanitarian than that of pagan societies; I have reserved proof that corporal punishment is more effective, humane, and just than the modern prison system for the second part. As any rational person can see, the Bible's corporal punishment laws do not actually support state-authorized abuse but instead strictly oppose it. These laws compare very favorably to the monstrous civil codes of nations who do not adhere to Mosaic Law.
[1]. http://jewishchristianlit.com/Texts/ANElaws/midAssyrLaws.html
[2]. See below:
A. "Besides punishments such as cutting off noses and ears, ancient Egyptian law permitted the beating of criminals (for, say, perjury or libel) with between one hundred and two hundred strokes.[59] In fact, a one-hundred-stroke beating was the 'mildest form of punishment.'[60]"
--http://www.epsociety.org/library/articles.asp?pid=45&ap=4
B. "The tribunal of judges said to the woman Iry-nofret: 'Take the oath of the Lord with the words: "Should witnesses be brought up against me that any property belonged to the woman Bak-Mut within the silver which I gave for this servant and I concealed it, I shall be (liable) to 100 blows, while I am deprived of her." ' "
--http://reshafim.org.il/ad/egypt/law_and_order/index.html
[3]. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flagellation
[4]. http://quran.com/24:2; I will be reading at least part of the Quran more thoroughly for a college class in the imminent semester and I hope to learn more about Quranic punishments. The Bible handles at least certain instances of premarital sex very differently than the Quran (see Exodus 22:16-17).
[5]. http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2008/11/how_many_lashes_can_one_man_take.html
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