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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comFausset Bible Dictionary: Stocks
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(1) Mahpeketh; ; , from hapak "rack"; our "pillory"; the word implies the body was bent, the arms and neck as well as the leg being confined. Prisons had usually a chamber for the purpose called "the house of the pillory" (, KJV "prison house"). The other Hebrew term,
(2), sad, is our "stocks" (; ; ), in which the feet alone are confined; the Roman nervous, which could be made at the jailer's will an instrument of torture by drawing asunder the feet;
(3) , rather "a fetter"; akasim, used for "the tinkling ornaments on women's feet" in -18. The harlot's tinkling foot ornaments excite the youth's passions, all the while he knows not that her foot ornaments will prove his feet fetters; "to love one's fetters, though of gold, is the part of a fool" (Seneca). He sports with and is proud of his fetters as if they were an ornament, or put on him in play.