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Deuteronomy places a limit on the flogging used as punishment in Hammurabi's laws. Protecting the offender from excessive humiliation makes dignity a restraint on the court, even when the person has been found guilty and deserves punishment.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Code of Hammurabi 1:212
Babylonian Legal Text
Ancient Near East
199 If he puts out the eye of a man's slave or breaks the bone of a man's slave, he shall pay half the slave's value. 200 If a man knocks out the teeth of his equal, his teeth shall be knocked out. A tooth for a tooth. 201 If he knocks out the teeth of a freed man, he shall pay one-third of a gold mina. 202 If anyone strikes the body of a man of higher rank, he shall receive sixty blows with an ox-whip in public. 203 If a free-born man strikes the body of another free-born man of equal rank, he shall pay one gold mina. 204 If a freed man strikes the body of another freed man, he shall pay ten shekels of silver.
Deuteronomy 25:3
Hebrew Bible
2 Then, if the guilty person is sentenced to a beating, the judge shall force him to lie down and be beaten in his presence with the number of blows his wicked behavior deserves. 3 The judge may sentence him to 40 blows, but no more. If he is struck with more than these, you might view your fellow Israelite with contempt. 4 You must not muzzle your ox when it is treading grain. 5 If brothers live together and one of them dies without having a son, the dead man’s wife must not remarry someone outside the family. Instead, her late husband’s brother must go to her, marry her, and perform the duty of a brother-in-law.
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Notes and References
“... 25:2-3. limitation on number of lashes. Ancient Near Eastern law (*Middle Assyrian laws and *Hammurabi) stipulate that both men and women be flogged for various crimes. The number of lashes ranges from twenty to sixty. In Deuteronomy, however, forty lashes serves as the upper limit. This limit may be based on either the symbolic value of forty or the degree of mutilation and personal humiliation permissible for an Israelite to bear without being permanently excluded from social and religious activities. ...”
Walton, John H.
The IVP Bible Background Commentary: Old Testament
(p. 199) InterVarsity Press, 2000
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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