Now, it is evident from the above passage, that the Israelites were very far from approving any cruel flagellations, like those which Monks in our days inflict on themselves with whip-cords filled with knots, or sometimes armed with nails or needles; since they were even forbidden to suffer their Brother to be too cruelly lashed in their presence. Nor was it the incisions made on the bodies of innocent persons before the altar of Moloch, or at the funerals of the dead, which God meant here to prevent; He even prescribed tenderness to the sufferings of a convicted offender, though he deserved the stripes that were inflicted on him. Therefore, if the law of God forbad any cruel excess in the chastising of persons who were guilty of crimes, much more did it disapprove that Men should unmercifully lash and flay themselves with rods and whip-cords. Indeed, the modern practice of lashing and whipping one’s self to the effusion of blood, is by no means intitled to our admiration. How could it be possible that an unhappy Friar, who lives in certain modern Monasteries, should not have his skin torn from head to foot, since it is a constant practice among them to discipline themselves three or four times every week, during the whole time that the Miserere, the De Profundis[9], and the Salve Regina, are singing, with a melodious, though slow, voice; and that too so heavily, and in such earnest, that the rattling of the blows resounds on all sides?
Several persons, however, still insist that religious flagellations were in use among the ancient Jews, and draw, it must be confessed, strong arguments from the words of David, in Psal. lxxiii. 14: “For all the day long have I been plagued, and chastened every morning[10].” But if we consider attentively these expressions of the Prophet, we shall find that they do not by any means signify that he lashed himself with a scourge every day, and all the day long. Those stripes of which he speaks are to be understood only in a figurative sense, and they only mean those misfortunes and tribulations which are frequently the lot of the righteous in this world: and indeed we see that David exclaims elsewhere, ‘For I am ready to halt, and my sorrow is continually before me.’
Besides, we are to observe that St. Austin, a Writer of the highest authority, paraphrases the above-mentioned passage of Ps. lxxiii. in the following manner: “I am never free from afflictions from God; I discharge my duty, and yet I am beaten, &c.” Indeed the above is only the rational meaning of the passage in question; and we cannot with any degree of probability infer from it (as certain persons do) that the practice of scourging one’s self voluntarily, and lashing one’s hide with rods and whip-cords, was in use among the ancient Hebrews, and that such a whimsical notion ever entered their heads. It is true that Philo the Jew, and Eusebius of Cæsarea, relate, that the Esseans, or Therapeutæ (whether they were a particular sect of the Jews, or are to be ranked among the first Christians, is not clear) were celebrated on account of the macerations which they practised; but then we are intirely ignorant of the methods which they used in order to mortify themselves, and we are no where told that they employed for that purpose either disciplines or whips.
Yet, this cannot be disallowed, that after the two Rabbins, Mayr, and Asse the Son, had compiled the Babylonian Talmud[11] that is to say, about the 476th year from the birth of our Lord, new practices began to prevail among the Jews. Fascinated, I do not know by what kind of superstition, they began to use, contrary to their former customs, a sort of voluntary discipline; though, we are to observe, they never inflicted such discipline on themselves with their own hands. We are informed of the above fact, in the Treatise intitled Malkos, in the 3d Chapter of which it is said, that the Jews, after they had finished their prayers and confessed their sins (which were exercises they derived from their ancestors) used to lash one another with scourges.
John Buxtorf the Father, a Protestant Author, in his Book of the Judaic Synagogue, printed at Basil in the year 1661, describes the above practice of the Jews at some length, and says, That there are constantly two Men in every Jewish school, who withdraw from the rest of the Company, and retire into a particular place of the room where they are met; that the one lays himself flat on the ground with his head turned to the North, and his feet to the South (or his head to the South, and his feet to the North); and that the other, who remains standing, gives him thirty-nine blows upon his back with a strap, or thong of ox-leather. In the meanwhile, the Man who is lashed, recites three times over the thirty-eighth verse of Psal. lxxviii. This verse, in the Hebrew language, contains just thirteen words; at every word the Patient recites, he receives a lash from the other Man; which, when he has recited the whole verse three times over, makes up the prescribed number of thirty-nine; and at every time he says the last word, he strikes his own breast with his fist[12]. This operation being concluded, the Agent in his turn becomes the Patient, and places himself in the same situation as the other had done, who then uses him in the same brotherly manner in which the former had used him, and they thus mutually chastise each other for their sins, and rub one another, Buxtorf observes, like Asses.
Perhaps the Reader will be surprised that the Rabbins have limited the number of the stripes inflicted in the manner above-described, to thirty-nine, since the Law of Moses had extended their number to forty; but to this the Rabbins answer, that it is owing to the peculiar manner in which the punishment of stripes was inflicted in antient times. The ancient Jews, they say, used a scourge made of three thongs; one of which was very long, and went round the body of the person who was scourged, and the two others were a good deal shorter. Thirteen blows with this three-thonged scourge were given to the Patient; which, according to the Rabbins’ manner of explaining the law, made thirty-nine stripes in all: now, if one stroke more had been given him, he would have received forty-two, which would have been contrary to the law of Moses, which says, “Forty stripes he may give him, and not exceed[13].”
FOOTNOTES:
[7] The words of the Vulgate in this place, are, flagellati sunt, which signify, were lashed with rods or whips: and in v. 16, flagellis cædimur, which has the same meaning.
[8] The Hebrew words in the text are: בקרת תהיה the Greek words for these, in the LXX. are, ἐπισκοπὴ ἔσται αὐτοῖς.—As I do not understand Hebrew, I shall not try to make any remark on the above Hebrew words, but trust for that to the sagaciousness of the reader; however, with respect to the Greek words that follow them, I think I should be greatly wanting in my duty to the Public, in my capacity of Commentator, if I did not communicate to them an observation with which those words supply me, which is, that there is a material error in the passage above recited, in our common translation of the Bible; for the Reader may see that the punishment of scourging, in case of fornication, is confined, in that passage, to the Woman solely; whereas the word αὐτοῖς, which is a plural word, shews that both the Man and Woman were to be punished alike; and instead of she shall, as our Bible is worded in that passage, it ought to be, they shall be scourged. This remark on the above singular alteration of the true sense of the Bible, to the prejudice of Women (supposing it is not an error of the press) naturally leads me to take notice here of the unjust disposition of Men towards Women in general, in all that relates to the mutual intercourse of the Sexes: a disposition that has induced them in modern times to impose humiliating penalties on such Women as are guilty of sins which the Men themselves commit with the utmost freedom, and thus to establish a mortifying difference, in that respect, between the two sexes, instead of that amiable equality which obtained between them under the Jewish law, according to which the Man and Woman who had committed together the sin of Fornication, were lashed with equal numbers of stripes.
[9] The Miserere is the 51st Psalm; and the De Profundis is the 130th, which is none of the shortest.