It’s a question a lot of people type into search engines, especially around Easter. How many times did Jesus get whipped? You see numbers thrown around, some very specific, and it’s easy to get confused. The real answer, well, it’s not as simple as just one number. It’s a mix of history, religious law, and what the ancient texts actually tell us.
The whole story is a bit messy. You have what Jewish law said, and then you have what the Romans actually did. These were two completely different worlds, with different rules for punishment. So when people ask for a number they are usually mixing up these two things.
Let’s try to untangle this. The truth is, the Bible itself doesn’t give us a hard count. Not a single Gospel writer says “and then they hit him X number of times.” That detail just wasn’t their focus. They were telling a bigger story.
Jewish Law vs. Roman Brutality
There’s a big reason for the confusion. And it comes down to a simple misunderstanding. It’s about who was in charge of the whipping and what their rules were. Normally, people get these two things mixed up.
The Jewish law was very specific about this kind of thing. The rule, which comes from the Old Testament book of Deuteronomy, set a limit. You could not give a person more than 40 lashes. It was a law designed to prevent a punishment from becoming a straight-up execution.
To make sure they never accidentally broke this rule, the people in charge developed a tradition. They would only give 39 lashes. This way, even if they miscounted, they would never hit that 40-lash limit. This is where that popular “39” number comes from.
But here’s the thing. The Jewish authorities didn’t whip Jesus. It was the Romans. Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor, ordered the scourging. And the Romans, they had no such rules. They didn’t care about a 40-lash limit.
For a Roman soldier, the goal of a scourging was different. It wasn’t just about punishment. It was about torture, pure and simple. It was meant to weaken a prisoner so much that they couldn’t fight back on the way to their execution.
What the Bible Actually Mentions
If you go looking for a number in the New Testament, you won’t find one. The Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and John all say that Jesus was scourged or flogged. But they leave it at that.
For example, John 19:1 just says, “Then Pilate took Jesus and had him flogged.” It’s a very short statement. There’s no count, no long description of the event. The writers just state it as a fact of what happened.
The focus of the Gospel writers was on the meaning of the events. They were more concerned with the injustice of the trial and the purpose of Jesus’s suffering. The specific number of whip marks was not their main point.
It is this lack of a specific number that has led to so much speculation over the centuries. People want a concrete detail, something to hold onto. But the original texts just don’t give us one.
The Reality of a Roman Scourging
To really get what happened, you have to understand what a Roman scourging was. This wasn’t a simple whipping with a belt. It was a horrific form of torture that many men did not survive. It was meant to be as brutal as possible.
The soldiers would use a special kind of whip. This wasn’t just a single strip of leather. It was much worse, and it was made to tear a person apart.
The Tools of Torture
The whip used by the Romans was typically called a flagrum or flagellum. It was a short wooden handle with several long leather thongs attached.
But here’s the really awful part. Woven into these leather thongs were sharp, nasty things. Things like bits of bone, sharp pieces of metal, or heavy lead balls.
Every time the whip struck, it wasn’t just a stinging pain. These bits of metal and bone would dig into the skin. They would tear away flesh, exposing muscle and sometimes even bone. It was designed to cause the most damage imaginable.
The Goal Wasn’t Just Pain
The Romans did this for a reason. A person sentenced to crucifixion was going to die a slow, awful death. The scourging was part of that process. It would cause massive blood loss and send the body into shock.
A prisoner weakened this badly wouldn’t be able to resist the soldiers. They would be easier to manage on the walk to the execution site. The scourging was considered to be a part of the death sentence itself.
So when Pilate ordered Jesus to be scourged, he was ordering a brutal beating that could have killed him on its own. The number of lashes wasn’t limited. The soldiers would typically continue until the prisoner was near death, or until they got tired.
So, What’s the Final Count? The Search for a Number
So if the Bible doesn’t say and the Romans didn’t count, where does the idea of a specific number come from? Well, most of it comes from tradition and later interpretations.
The number 39, as we talked about, comes from people applying the Jewish law to a Roman event. It’s a mix-up, but it’s a very common one. People hear “39 lashes” and assume it applies here, but it doesn’t fit the historical situation.
Other traditions have suggested much higher numbers. Some Christian mystics and visionaries through history have claimed to have received visions of the Passion. For instance, St. Bridget of Sweden in the 1300s wrote that Jesus received over 5,000 wounds in total.
These numbers aren’t based on historical evidence. They are part of private revelations or traditions. They speak more to the spiritual understanding of the suffering involved than to a historical count.
The truth is, we will never know the exact number. It could have been 50, it could have been over 100. It depends entirely on the cruelty of the soldiers who were doing it. The point is that it was a terrible ordeal, far beyond a simple whipping. The actual number is less important than the severity of the act itself.
Frequently Asked Questions about Jesus’s Whipping
1. How many times did Jesus get whipped according to the Bible?
The Bible does not state a specific number of times. The Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and John all record that Jesus was flogged or scourged by the Romans, but they do not provide a count of the lashes.
2. Why do people say Jesus was whipped 39 times?
This number comes from a misunderstanding of Jewish law. Jewish law limited whippings to 40 lashes, and the custom was to give 39 to be safe. But Jesus was scourged by the Romans, who had no such limit and were known for their brutality.
3. What kind of whip was used on Jesus?
The Romans used a whip called a flagrum (or flagellum). It was a short handle with multiple leather strips that had sharp pieces of bone, metal, or lead balls tied into them. It was designed to tear flesh, not just cause surface pain.
4. Was Roman scourging different from a Jewish whipping?
Yes, very different. Jewish whipping was a controlled punishment with a legal limit on the number of strikes. Roman scourging was unlimited torture intended to severely weaken or even kill the victim before their final execution.
5. Could someone survive a Roman scourging?
Many did not. The massive blood loss, trauma, and shock from a full Roman scourging were often fatal on their own. Surviving it would leave a person horribly mutilated and close to death.
Key Takeaways
The Bible does not give a specific number for how many times Jesus was whipped.
The common number “39” comes from Jewish law, which did not apply to the Roman soldiers who scourged Jesus.
Roman scourging was an unlimited and brutal form of torture meant to cause extreme injury and weaken the prisoner.
The whip used, the flagrum, was a terrible weapon designed to rip and tear flesh.
The exact number of lashes is unknown and unknowable; the focus of the story is the intensity of the suffering, not the specific count.
