We shouldn’t be surprised now that were closing in on the end of our massekhet that we are learning about the flogging itself. The last several mishnayot teach about the number of lashes, the procedure of flogging, and does the flogging expunge this sin so that the person is not culpable of the karet punishment.
Beginning on TB Makkot 22a and continuing on Makkot
22b the Mishna teaches the number of a person may receive. The sages’ goal was
to punish the transgressor, but not to kill him.
“MISHNA: With how many lashes does
one flog a person sentenced to receive lashes? One flogs him with forty
lashes less one, as it is stated: “And he shall strike him before him,
in accordance with his wickedness, by number. Forty he shall strike him,
he shall not add” (Deuteronomy 25:2–3). The mishna joins the end of the first
verse and the beginning of the second, forming the phrase: “By number, forty,”
which is interpreted as: A sum adjacent to forty. Rabbi Yehuda says: He is
flogged with a full forty lashes. And where is he flogged the
extra lash? As the mishna proceeds to explain, the thirty-nine lashes are
divided into three and administered in three places on the body of the person
being flogged; according to Rabbi Yehuda there is one lash that remains. That
lash is administered between his shoulders.
“One
assesses the number of lashes that the one being punished is capable of
withstanding only with a number of lashes fit to be divided into
three equal groups. If the assessment was that he can survive twenty
lashes, he is flogged with eighteen. Likewise, if doctors assessed
concerning him that he is able to receive forty lashes and
survive, and he is then flogged some of those forty lashes, and
then they assessed him again and concluded that he cannot receive
forty lashes and survive, he is exempt from the additional lashes.
If the doctors initially assessed concerning him that he is able to
receive only eighteen lashes, and once he was flogged
eighteen times they assessed that he is able to receive forty, he is exempt
from receiving additional lashes.” (Sefaria.org
translation)
Commenting
on the power of the rabbis to reduce the number of lashes a person may receive
Rava said: “How foolish are the rest of the people who stand before a
Torah scroll that passes before them, and yet they do not stand
before a great man, when a Sage passes before them; as in a Torah
scroll, forty is written and the Sages came and subtracted one,
establishing the number of lashes as thirty-nine. Apparently, the authority of
the Sages is so great that they are able to amend an explicit Torah verse.”
(Sefaria.org translation)
When I was a
rabbinical student at JTS I and my fellow classmates would stand when Dr. Saul
Lieberman and Dr. Moshe Zucker would enter the classroom out of respect for
their great width and depth of Torah knowledge. I don’t remember ever Dr.
Lieberman eating in the cafeteria, but when Dr. Zucker walked by my table we
would stand for him there too. I don’t know why none of us stood for the
younger faculty members in the Talmud department. Reflecting back they too
deserved to be respected. Perhaps their youthfulness worked in their
disadvantage.
Although we
may not stand when a “regular person” enters a room, each human being created
in God’s own image deserves to be respected. “Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi said: ‘An
entourage of angels always walks in front of people with messengers calling
out. And what do they say? ‘Make way for the image of the Holy One!’”
(Deuteronomy Rabba Re’eh 4) If God sends angels and messengers to accompany
each human being out of respect, how much more so should we respect our fellow
human beings! Check out Aretha Franklin song “Respect” by following this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A134hShx_gw
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