It’s one of those questions that pops up a lot.
People who have been around church for a while, and even people who haven’t, they sort of have a number in their head.
You’ve probably heard it before. The answer seems so simple, so definite.
But the truth of the matter is, the common answer might not be the right one.
It’s a bit more complicated, and the story behind the numbers, or the lack of them, is actually pretty telling.
We’re going to look at what really went down.
The Famous “39 Lashes” Rule – Where’s That From?
The number that gets thrown around all the time is thirty-nine.
It sounds so specific, so official. Like it’s written down somewhere in big letters.
This idea comes from Jewish law. It’s right there in the Old Testament.
Specifically, Deuteronomy 25:3 says a person could be punished with up to forty stripes.
But, you know, they didn’t want to accidentally go over the limit. That would be breaking the law.
So, a tradition developed that is considered to be a safeguard.
They would stop at thirty-nine, just to be safe. It was called “forty save one.”
This makes a lot of sense. It was a rule designed to keep a punishment from becoming totally inhumane.
There was a limit, a line you couldn’t cross.
But here is the main problem with applying this to Jesus.
The Jewish authorities didn’t whip him.
Pontius Pilate, a Roman governor, was the one who ordered the flogging.
And the Romans, well, they played by a completely different set of rules.
Roman Scourging: A Whole Different Ball Game
When you talk about a Roman scourging, you need to forget the number thirty-nine.
It just didn’t apply. It wasn’t their law, and they didn’t care about it.
For the Romans, a scourging, or what they called a verberatio, was a brutal affair.
There was typically no limit to the number of lashes.
The soldiers in charge could basically do whatever they wanted. They could go on for as long as they felt like it.
The entire point was to inflict maximum pain and damage.
It was designed to weaken a prisoner to the point of collapse, sometimes even death.
It was a step before crucifixion, a way to make the final torture even worse.
They didn’t use a simple whip.
The tool they generally used was called a flagrum or a flagellum.
This was a terrible kind of whip. It had multiple leather strips.
And tied into these strips were sharp, nasty bits of stuff.
Things like broken pieces of bone, or lead balls, or jagged pieces of metal.
Every time the whip struck, it wouldn’t just sting. It would grab and tear.
The idea was to rip the flesh right off the person’s back.
So the number of lashes wasn’t the main concern.
The only real limit was the soldier getting tired or the commander telling him to stop.
The goal was to get the victim as close to death as possible without actually killing them.
What Do the Gospels Actually Say (or Not Say)?
This is where things get really interesting, because we have four accounts of Jesus’s life.
You would think one of them would give us a number, right?
But none of them do. They all mention the event, but they are very light on details.
It’s almost like the exact number wasn’t the point they were trying to make.
Matthew 27:26: “Then he released Barabbas to them. But he had Jesus flogged, and handed him over to be crucified.” That’s it. Flogged. Handed over.
Mark 15:15: “Wanting to satisfy the crowd, Pilate released Barabbas to them. He had Jesus flogged, and handed him over to be crucified.” Again, very direct and simple.
John 19:1: “Then Pilate took Jesus and had him scourged.” The shortest description of all.
Luke’s account is a little different, as Pilate seems to use the threat of a whipping as a way to get out of crucifying him. In Luke 23:22, he says, “I will therefore punish and release him.” But the crowd pushes for more.
The Silence of the Text
It is this lack of a number that is really important. The Gospel writers weren’t modern journalists. They weren’t trying to count every blow or record every single detail like a court reporter. Their purpose was something else entirely. They were writing a theological account, a story about who Jesus was and what his death meant. The fact that he was brutally beaten was part of the story, a fulfillment of prophecy.
The Focus of the Writers
For them, the “what” was more important than the “how many.” What happened was that an innocent man was subjected to one of the most brutal punishments of the ancient world. The horror of the event was assumed. Everyone reading it at the time knew what a Roman scourging was. They didn’t need a number to understand the pain and humiliation involved. The writers just needed to state the fact: it happened.
So, Can We Even Guess a Number?
This is where we leave the solid ground of the Bible and historical records and move into speculation.
Because the Bible is silent, we can’t say for sure.
Some later Christian traditions and visions, like those of Saint Bridget of Sweden or Anne Catherine Emmerich, talk about a huge number of blows, numbering in the hundreds or even thousands.
These are considered to be private revelations, not historical facts.
But they do speak to a belief that the suffering was immense, far beyond just 39 lashes.
From a historical standpoint, we can make a pretty good guess about the effect of the whipping.
It was so bad that Jesus couldn’t carry his own crossbeam.
This was something a condemned man was normally forced to do.
The soldiers had to grab a bystander, Simon of Cyrene, to carry it for him.
This tells you everything you need to know about his physical condition.
He was so weakened, so torn apart by the scourging, that he was physically unable to perform the task.
This points to a beating that was severe, prolonged, and done with pure Roman brutality.
The number could have been 60, 100, 150. We will never know.
What we do know is that it was not a neat and tidy 39.
It was a mess of pain and blood, dictated by the cruelty of the soldiers holding the whips.
The real answer to “how many times did Jesus get whipped?” is that the number doesn’t really matter.
The scourging was terrible, and that’s the point the Gospel writers wanted to get across.
—
Frequently Asked Questions about Jesus’s Whipping
1. So how many times did Jesus get whipped, once and for all?
The Bible never gives a specific number. The Roman soldiers who did it had no legal limit, so the exact count is unknown, but it was likely much higher than 39.
2. Why does everyone say it was 39 lashes?
That number comes from a Jewish law that limited whipping to a maximum of 40 strikes. To be safe, they traditionally stopped at 39. But Jesus was whipped by Romans, who did not follow Jewish law.
3. What was a Roman whip like?
It was called a flagrum and was made of multiple leather thongs with pieces of bone or metal embedded in them. It was designed to tear the skin and muscle with each strike.
4. Did the whipping almost kill Jesus?
Yes, that was the point. Roman scourging was meant to weaken a prisoner to the brink of death before crucifixion to make the whole ordeal even more agonizing. The fact he couldn’t carry his cross shows how severe it was.
5. Why don’t the Gospels give more details?
The authors were more focused on the theological meaning of Jesus’s suffering and death, not on providing a journalistic, blow-by-blow account. For their original audience, simply saying he was “scourged” by Romans was enough to convey the extreme horror.
—
Key Takeaways
The common idea of “39 lashes” is based on Jewish law, which did not apply to the Roman soldiers who whipped Jesus.
Roman scourging was a brutal punishment with no set limit on the number of strikes. The goal was to inflict massive injury short of death.
The New Testament Gospels state that Jesus was scourged but do not provide a number for how many times he was struck.
The severity of the whipping is shown by the fact that Jesus was too weak afterward to carry his own cross to the crucifixion site.
The exact number is historically unknowable, but the physical evidence suggests it was a far more violent event than “39 lashes” would suggest.
