seekeroftruth
Well-Known Member
Deuteronomy 25:1 When people have a dispute, they are to take it to court and the judges will decide the case, acquitting the innocent and condemning the guilty. 2 If the guilty person deserves to be beaten, the judge shall make them lie down and have them flogged in his presence with the number of lashes the crime deserves, 3 but the judge must not impose more than forty lashes. If the guilty party is flogged more than that, your fellow Israelite will be degraded in your eyes.
4 Do not muzzle an ox while it is treading out the grain.
4 Do not muzzle an ox while it is treading out the grain.
This is from the easy English site.
Justice was very important. The judge declared that the person was guilty. After that, they could whip him. They must not whip that man before the judge made his decision. The judge had to say what punishment the man should receive. All punishment must happen in front of the judge. They must not punish anyone more severely than he deserved. They respected the criminal’s value as a person. The maximum was 40 strokes. But they whipped someone only 39 times. They wanted to make sure that they did not count wrongly!
God had created everything. The Israelites must show love and they must be kind to everything. They used an ox to walk on their corn. That separated the grain from the stem. Sometimes the ox would stop to eat some grain. They must allow the ox to feed in that way. Paul uses that verse when he writes about Christian workers. They provide benefits for the Christians’ spirits. So the workers should receive physical benefits for their work. (See 1 Corinthians 9:9.)
God had created everything. The Israelites must show love and they must be kind to everything. They used an ox to walk on their corn. That separated the grain from the stem. Sometimes the ox would stop to eat some grain. They must allow the ox to feed in that way. Paul uses that verse when he writes about Christian workers. They provide benefits for the Christians’ spirits. So the workers should receive physical benefits for their work. (See 1 Corinthians 9:9.)
This is from the bibletrack.org site.
A beatin' has an upper limit of 40 whacks. I guess that's some consolation. Rabbis in the first century decreed 39 stripes instead of 40; they wanted to be certain there was a margin for error so as to not exceed the letter of the law in case of a miscount. The Apostle Paul was so beaten five times according to his own words in II Corinthians 11:24, "Of the Jews five times received I forty stripes save one." In the case of these Law-prescribed beatings, the judge was to oversee the beating as the beatee was to lie, face down, on the ground for the punishment.
This commentary is from blueletterbible.org.
"Among the Mohammedans there are very few law-suits, and the reason is given … because they that sue others without just cause are to be whipped publicly."
This law simply commanded the humane treatment of a working animal. In those days, grain would be broken away from his husk by having an ox walk on it repeatedly (usually around a circle). It would be cruel for force the ox to walk on all the grain, yet to muzzle him so he couldn't eat of it.
