He may beat him forty times but no more, so that he does not beat him with many more stripes than these and your brother is not degraded in your eyes.Both the punishment and the limitation are interesting to me. First, this appears to be more of a civil court, rather than criminal court. The previous verses talk about disputes between Isralites, not that some injury or theft has occurred. So why is the punishment beating? Am I misreading this, or was that considered fair play, given the differences in wealth or earnings? Or was this the equivalent of today's punitive damages, perhaps?
Second, what is the significance of forty strikes? I know that in Roman times forty lashes was considered a death sentence, but what does it mean here? Why is more than forty strikes considered degraded? And if the person has done wrong, why should he not be degraded for his transgressions? Does the term degraded mean something different than what I'm thinking of?
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