“If ... the guilty man deserves to be beaten, the judge shall cause him
to lie down and be beaten in his presence with a number of stripes in
proportion to his offense. Forty stripes may be given him, but not more, lest,
if one should go on to beat him with more stripes than these, your brother be degraded in your sight.”
Flogging is a barbaric practice, or at least so goes the
conventional wisdom. It has been officially abolished for almost a century in most Western countries. Yet, as the above-quoted
passage shows, public flogging was at very least passively sanctioned under the
Law of Moses, a fact that may cause the occasional squawk of disbelieving protest
from well-meaning liberal Christians.
Do they have a point? Let’s consider.
