_No persons, under the antient Law, inflicted on themselves, with
their own hands, voluntary flagellations, or received them from the
hands of other persons._
Flagellation, there is no doubt, is a method of coercive punishment
very antiently used among Men. We find it mentioned in the Old
Testament, in the fifth chapter of _Exodus_: it is said in that
chapter, that the Ministers of Pharaoh, who required from the
Israelites a certain number of bricks every day, having found them
to have failed in supplying the usual number, ordered them to be
flogged; and that the latter complained of this harsh usage.
V. 14. “And the officers of the children of Israel, which Pharaoh’s
Task masters had set over them, were beaten[7], and demanded,
Wherefore have you not fulfilled your task in making brick, both
yesterday and to-day, as heretofore?”
15. “Then the Officers of the children of Israel came and cried unto
Pharaoh, saying, Wherefore dealest thou thus with thy servants?”
16. “There is no straw given unto thy servants, and they say to us,
Make brick: and behold we are beaten, but the fault is in thine own
people.”--Now, I think that no commentary is necessary to prove that
the flagellations mentioned here were not in any degree voluntary on
the part of those who underwent them.
We also find mention made in Leviticus of the punishment of
Flagellation: this is the punishment awarded, in the nineteenth
chapter, against those who should be guilty of the sin of
Fornication. “And whosoever lieth carnally with a woman that is a
bond-maid, betrothed to an husband, and not at all redeemed, nor
freedom given her, she shall be scourged; they shall not be put to
death, because she was not free.”
The Hebrew words in the text, which are commonly translated by
these, _shall be scourged_, are justly translated so, though in
the version of the LXX. they are only translated by the words,
_shall be punished_[8]; for the punishment used on those occasions
was inflicted, as the learned Vatable observes, with thongs of
ox-leather, that is to say, with scourges. To this I think it is
needless to add, that the Israelites did not voluntarily impose on
themselves the abovementioned scourgings, and that they never were
suffered by any of them but much against their will.
In the xxvth chapter of Deuteronomy, the number of lashes which
Offenders of any kind were to receive, was limited to forty. V. 2.
“And it shall be, if the wicked may be worthy to be beaten, that the
Judge shall cause him to lie down, and to be beaten before his face,
according to a certain number.”
3. “Forty stripes he may give him, and not exceed; but if he should
exceed, and beat him above these with many stripes, then thy brother
should seem vile unto thee.”
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].”