In slaveholding societies across the Americas, religion shaped daily life and plantation authority. Slaveholders attended church and often claimed their power over enslaved Africans was ordained by God. Within this environment, the Bible was used not only as a religious text but also to justify discipline. Slaveholders and pro slavery ministers sometimes pointed to scripture when defending corporal punishment such as whipping. One passage in the Book of Deuteronomy states that a person may receive up to forty lashes but no more, a rule that later influenced the tradition of thirty nine lashes.
Whipping was one of the most common punishments used against enslaved Africans in the Atlantic slave system. Across plantations in the United States and the Caribbean, enslaved Africans were routinely flogged for a wide range of alleged offenses, including working slowly, attempting escape, speaking back to overseers, not greeting their master, or violating plantation rules.
While the brutality of slavery often exceeded any moral or legal limits, the practice of whipping was sometimes connected to a specific biblical rule. In certain contexts, slaveholders and colonial authorities used a punishment count that echoed a well known verse from the Bible: the limit of forty lashes.
This biblical law appears in the Book of Deuteronomy. Deuteronomy 25:3 states that a person being flogged may receive up to forty lashes but no more, warning that excessive punishment would degrade the individual. The passage reads in part that the offender may be beaten with forty stripes, but the number must not be exceeded.
Although this rule was originally intended to restrain cruelty, its influence eventually extended into European legal traditions. Over time, a modified version of the punishment appeared in Christian societies as thirty nine lashes, commonly called “forty lashes minus one.”
The Origin of the Thirty Nine Lash Tradition
The practice of reducing the punishment to thirty nine lashes developed within Jewish legal tradition. Because the biblical law allowed up to forty lashes but not more, religious authorities reduced the number to thirty nine to ensure that the limit would never accidentally be exceeded.
This tradition is mentioned in the New Testament. Paul the Apostle wrote in the Second Epistle to the Corinthians that he had received “forty lashes minus one” several times. The phrase became widely known in Christian societies.
By the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the number thirty nine lashes had become a familiar disciplinary standard in various European institutions, including courts, prisons, and naval punishment systems.
How the Number Appeared in Slave Societies
In some slaveholding regions influenced by British law, the number thirty nine lashes appeared in official punishments administered to enslaved Africans. Colonial laws sometimes limited the number of lashes that could be given by a plantation owner or overseer without the supervision of a magistrate.
One example comes from the Jamaican slave laws of the nineteenth century. Regulations in Jamaica limited the number of lashes that could be administered to enslaved Africans by plantation authorities without legal oversight to thirty nine. If a slaveholder wanted to impose a harsher punishment, the case had to be brought before a magistrate.
Missionary reports from the Caribbean confirm that punishments of exactly thirty nine lashes were sometimes carried out under these rules. These punishments were usually performed publicly, with the enslaved person tied to a whipping post while an overseer counted each stroke.
Although the law technically imposed a limit, it did little to prevent the brutality of slavery. Enslaved Africans could still be whipped repeatedly on different days, effectively bypassing the restriction.
Court Sentences of Thirty Nine Lashes
The number thirty nine lashes also appeared in court punishments imposed on enslaved Africans accused of crimes. Records from courts in the American South frequently describe sentences ordering an enslaved defendant to receive “thirty nine lashes on the bare back.”
These punishments were typically imposed for offenses such as theft, resisting a white person, or attempting to escape. Because enslaved Africans were legally considered property rather than full citizens, they were often subjected to corporal punishment rather than imprisonment.
Court ordered floggings were usually carried out by local officials or jailers. The individual would be tied to a whipping post or ladder while the lashes were administered one by one. The number thirty nine reflected the long standing tradition derived from the biblical limit of forty.
The Reality of the Whipping
Even when punishments were limited to thirty nine lashes, the experience was extremely brutal. Whips used on plantations were typically made of leather and designed to cut deeply into the skin.
One of the most feared instruments was the cat o’ nine tails, a whip made of a handle with nine separate cords attached to it. Each cord could be knotted or tipped with metal or barbs, which made every strike more destructive as it landed on the victim’s back.
Victims were often tied to a whipping post or stretched over a ladder so the back was fully exposed. With every stroke, the whip could tear open the skin and cause heavy bleeding. After dozens of lashes, witnesses often described the victim’s back as shredded or stripped of skin.
In some cases, salt or other substances were rubbed into the wounds after the whipping, increasing the pain and preventing infection in a way that also prolonged suffering.
Because the lashes were delivered one after another with full force, the injuries frequently left permanent scars. Many formerly enslaved Africans, including Gordon, known as Whipped Peter, carried thick raised scars known as whip marks or keloids for the rest of their lives. In some cases victims collapsed from pain or blood loss during the punishment, and severe floggings sometimes resulted in infection or death.
The number thirty nine therefore did not mean that the punishment was mild. Even when the biblical limit influenced the count, the punishment itself remained severe and traumatic.
In many plantations, the biblical limit was ignored altogether. If a slaveholder believed an enslaved person deserved harsher punishment, the whipping simply continued beyond the traditional count.
Formerly enslaved writers such as Frederick Douglass described witnessing punishments that far exceeded any biblical limit. Douglass recalled brutal floggings carried out by overseers who whipped enslaved people until their backs were covered with blood.
These accounts reveal that while biblical language sometimes shaped the structure of punishments, the realities of slavery often ignored the restraint that the scripture originally intended.
The history of thirty nine lashes shows how biblical language could be used to justify systems of control. A rule that originally existed to limit cruelty eventually became connected to one of the most feared punishments in slave societies.
While scripture spoke of restraint, plantation reality often ignored those limits. Whether the whipping stopped at thirty nine lashes or continued far beyond it, the lash remained one of the most powerful tools used to enforce slavery.
Sources:
https://encyclopediavirginia.org/primary-documents/chapter-15-thirty-and-nine-an-excerpt-from-the-negro-in-virginia-1940/
https://docsouth.unc.edu/fpn/hughes/hughes.html
https://users.wfu.edu/zulick/340/slavecodes.html
