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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comFausset Bible Dictionary: Punishments
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(See CROSS, etc.) Death was the punishment of striking or even reviling a parent (; ); blasphemy (; ; ); Sabbath-breaking (-36); witchcraft (); adultery (); rape (); incestuous and unnatural connection (; ; ); man stealing (); idolatry (). "Cutting off from the people" is ipso facto excommunication or outlawry, forfeiture of the privileges of the covenant people (). The hand of God executed the sentence in some cases (; ; ; ; ; ; ). Capital punishments were stoning (); burning (); the sword (); and strangulation, not in Scripture, but in rabbinical writings.
The command (-5) was that the Baal-peor sinners should be slain first, then impaled or nailed to crosses; the Hebrew there (hoqa) means dislocated, and is different from that in (thalitha toli), . The hanged were accounted accursed; so were buried at evening, as the hanging body defiled the land; so Christ (). The malefactor was to be removed by burial from off the face of the earth speedily, that the curse might be removed off the land (; ; ; ). Punishments not ordained by law: sawing asunder, and cutting with iron harrows(Isaiah, ; Ammon, in retaliation for their cruelties, ; ); pounding in a mortar (); precipitation (; ); stripes, 40 only allowed (), the Jews therefore gave only 39; the convict received the stripes from a three-thonged whip, stripped to the waist, in a bent position, tied to a pillar; if the executioner exceeded the number he was punished, a minute accuracy observed in .
The Abyssinians use the same number (Wolff, Travels, 2:276). Heaps of stones were flung upon the graves of executed criminals (-26; ); to this day stones are flung on Absalom's supposed tomb. Outside the city gates (; ). Punishment in kind (lex talionis) was a common principle (-25). Also compensation, restitution of the thing or its equivalent (-36). Slander of a wife's honour was punished by fine and stripes (-19).