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Maybe you heard it in a sermon at Easter. Maybe you saw it in a film, or on a picture someone shared. Jesus got 39 lashes. People say it with so much certainty that it feels like it must be written somewhere in the Gospels.
It isn’t. Not in Matthew, not in Mark, not in Luke, not in John. The number 39 is real, and it is in the Bible. But it comes from somewhere else, and the reason behind it is one of the kindest laws in the Old Testament. Once you see it, you may never read “with his stripes we are healed” the same way again.
Did Jesus Get 39 Lashes? What the Gospels Actually Say
Here is every Gospel verse that describes the flogging of Jesus, word for word from the King James Version:
- Matthew 27:26: “Then released he Barabbas unto them: and when he had scourged Jesus, he delivered him to be crucified.”
- Mark 15:15: “And so Pilate, willing to content the people, released Barabbas unto them, and delivered Jesus, when he had scourged him, to be crucified.”
- John 19:1: “Then Pilate therefore took Jesus, and scourged him.”
That’s all. One word: scourged. No count. No description of the whip. No number of blows.
Luke doesn’t describe the flogging at all. He only records Pilate twice offering the crowd a lighter deal: “I will therefore chastise him, and release him” (Luke 23:16, and again in 23:22).
So the honest answer to “Did Jesus get 39 lashes?” is this: the Bible does not say how many. Anyone who gives you a number is giving you something the Gospel writers chose not to.
Notice who was holding the whip, too. It wasn’t a Jewish court. It was the Roman governor Pontius Pilate (a real man, confirmed by a stone found in 1961) and his soldiers, just after Pilate had set free Barabbas, the prisoner the crowd chose instead. That detail matters more than it looks. We’ll come back to it.
If you’d like to read the whole account for yourself (the trial, Barabbas, the scourging, the crown of thorns), the complete Book of Matthew is free as an immersive PDF and a 28-chapter audiobook. You can listen on a walk or on the bus, and chapter 27 is where this whole scene sits.
Where the 39 Lashes Number Really Comes From
The number comes from two places, and neither of them is about Jesus.
The first is Paul. Listing everything he suffered for the gospel, he writes: “Of the Jews five times received I forty stripes save one” (2 Corinthians 11:24). “Forty stripes save one” means forty minus one. That’s 39. Paul is the one the Bible says received 39 lashes. Five separate times.
The second is the law behind Paul’s number. In Deuteronomy 25, Moses sets out how a court could punish a guilty man with a beating. And it comes with a hard ceiling:
“And it shall be, if the wicked man be worthy to be beaten, that the judge shall cause him to lie down, and to be beaten before his face, according to his fault, by a certain number. Forty stripes he may give him, and not exceed: lest, if he should exceed, and beat him above these with many stripes, then thy brother should seem vile unto thee.”
Deuteronomy 25:2-3
Forty, and not one more. Later Jewish law stopped at 39.
You’ll often hear that stopping one short was a safety margin, so that if someone lost count the law still wouldn’t be broken. That may be part of the thinking, but it isn’t the reason the Mishnah gives. The Mishnah is the collection of Jewish law written down around AD 200. It works from the wording of the verse itself and sets the punishment at “forty lashes less one.”
The Mishnah also records rules the popular version leaves out. A person was assessed for how many lashes he could bear, always in groups of three, and never more than 39. And if doctors judged partway through that he could not survive the rest, the rest were cancelled. The whole system was built around a limit.
You may also have heard a sermon that links the 39 lashes to a claim that there are 39 root kinds of disease. That link is not in the Bible, and it depends on a number the Gospels never give.
The Law Called Him “Brother”
Read Deuteronomy 25:2-3 again slowly and watch one word change.
In verse 2 he is “the wicked man.” He is guilty. A judge has found him “worthy to be beaten.”
By the end of verse 3, he is “thy brother.”
Same man. Same crime. Same beating. The law changes his name in the middle of his punishment.
And the limit isn’t only there to protect his body. It’s there to protect how you see him afterwards: “lest… thy brother should seem vile unto thee.” God’s law put a ceiling on punishment so a guilty man would never become something less than human in his neighbours’ eyes.
The Jewish teachers noticed this too. The Mishnah draws a straight line from that verse: “Once he is flogged he is as your brother” (Mishnah Makkot 3:15). The punishment had an end. When it ended, he was family again.
Rome Kept No Such Count
Now go back to who held the whip at Jesus’s trial.
Roman soldiers were not bound by Deuteronomy. Nothing in the Gospels suggests anyone was counting. As far as the surviving evidence shows, Rome set no fixed number for flogging a man like Jesus, who was not a Roman citizen.
Rome did protect its own. When soldiers in Jerusalem tied Paul up to be scourged, one question stopped them cold: “Is it lawful for you to scourge a man that is a Roman, and uncondemned?” (Acts 22:25). Jesus had no such question to ask.
Here is a small detail most readers pass over. Deuteronomy’s limit exists so that a man is not beaten “with many stripes.” Years later, in the Roman colony of Philippi, Luke writes that the magistrates “laid many stripes upon” Paul and Silas (Acts 16:23). In the King James Version it is the very same phrase. Where the law of Moses said stop, Rome said more.
Then there is what came after the whip. In John’s account, the soldiers press a crown of thorns onto Jesus’s head, put a purple robe on him, and mock him: “Hail, King of the Jews!” Then Pilate brings him out to the crowd and says, “Behold the man!” (John 19:5).
John’s order of events suggests Pilate hoped the sight of a beaten man would be enough for the crowd. The whole scene was built to make Jesus look like nothing. To make him seem, in the Bible’s old word, vile.
That is the very thing Deuteronomy’s limit was written to prevent. And it was done to the one man in that courtyard who wasn’t guilty. Pilate said so himself, twice: “I find no fault in him” (John 19:4 and 19:6).
“With His Stripes”: One Wound, Not a Tally
Centuries before Pilate, Isaiah wrote the verse most Christians think of here:
“But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.”
Isaiah 53:5
Peter picks up the same idea: “by whose stripes ye were healed” (1 Peter 2:24).
Here’s something the English hides. In Isaiah’s Hebrew, the word for “stripes” (chabburah) is singular. In Peter’s Greek (molops), it is singular too. A more literal rendering is closer to “by his wound” or “by his welt.”
A singular word can stand for many wounds together, so this proves nothing about the number. But it’s worth noticing: the two passages that explain what the scourging meant never count. They don’t point to a total. They point to him.
The Punishment Nobody Limited
Here is where it all comes together.
The law of Moses said even a guilty man’s punishment must stop, so he could still be your brother. Jesus received a punishment no law stopped, from men who weren’t counting, designed to make him look worthless. And he wasn’t guilty.
Isaiah tells us why: “the chastisement of our peace was upon him.” The punishment that had our name on it landed on him. And what comes out the other side is the same word Deuteronomy uses. The book of Hebrews says Jesus “is not ashamed to call them brethren” (Hebrews 2:11).
If you carry shame, read this part slowly.
Maybe you’ve been living like the man in verse 2. “The wicked man.” Found guilty. Still counting the blows long after everyone else stopped. Some of us never set a limit on how long we punish ourselves. God’s law did. And Jesus did more than set a limit. He took the blows himself, and then he called you brother. Or sister. Family.
That isn’t a feeling you have to work up. It’s a name that has already been given. If you’ve ever wondered whether you’re even allowed to stop being hard on yourself, here’s what the Bible quietly assumes about you instead.
Actions to Take Today
- Read the scene for yourself (3 minutes). Open John 19:1-6. When you reach “Behold the man!”, stop and stay with it for one full minute before you read on.
- Change the name (5 minutes). Read Deuteronomy 25:2-3 and underline the two names: “the wicked man” and “thy brother.” Then write down one thing you’re still punishing yourself for. Next to it, write the name God’s law gives a person once the punishment is over: brother, or sister. Say it out loud once.
- Give the name back (5 to 10 minutes). Think of one person you’ve kept as “the wicked man” in your head, long after the thing they did. You don’t have to bring it up. Just send them one ordinary, kind message today, the kind you’d send family. (If that person hurt you in a way that isn’t safe to reopen, skip the message and pray for them by name instead.)
Journaling Prompts
- Where are you still counting stripes against yourself, past the point where anyone else would have stopped?
- Whose name have you quietly changed from “brother” or “sister” to “the wicked man”? What would it take to change it back?
- If the punishment for the worst thing you’ve done really is over, what would you do differently tomorrow morning?
A Prayer
God, I’ve been counting against myself for a long time, and I didn’t know I was allowed to stop. Thank you that even your law put an end to punishment, so a guilty man could still be called brother. Jesus, you took the blows nobody counted, and you still aren’t ashamed to call me family. Help me believe that today. And help me give that same name back to someone I’ve been holding at a distance. Amen.
What Do You Think?
Does the popular “39 lashes” number help people take the cross seriously, or does putting a number on it pull our attention away from what the Gospel writers actually wanted us to see? We’d love to hear what you think. Leave a comment below.
And if you want to sit with the whole story, from the manger to the empty tomb, the free Book of Matthew audiobook and PDF is right here:
Share This
I always thought Jesus got 39 lashes. The Gospels never give a number. The 39 comes from a law that capped punishment so a guilty man would still be called “brother.” That changes how I read “with his stripes we are healed.”
Deuteronomy 25 calls him “the wicked man” in one verse and “thy brother” in the next. Same man, same punishment. The law gave him his name back. I needed to read that today.
Rome wasn’t counting when they whipped Jesus. God’s law had a limit so no one would be treated as worthless, and the one man who got no limit is the one who is “not ashamed to call them brethren” (Hebrews 2:11).
Questions People Ask About the 39 Lashes
Did Jesus get 39 lashes?
The Bible does not say how many lashes Jesus received. Matthew 27:26, Mark 15:15 and John 19:1 all say only that Pilate had Jesus “scourged,” and the Gospel of Luke does not describe the scourging at all. The number 39 comes from Jewish law in Deuteronomy 25:3 and from Paul’s letter in 2 Corinthians 11:24, not from any account of the flogging of Jesus.
Where does the number 39 lashes come from in the Bible?
The number 39 lashes comes from Deuteronomy 25:3, which limited a court-ordered beating to forty stripes, and from 2 Corinthians 11:24, where the apostle Paul says he received “forty stripes save one” (forty minus one, or 39) from Jewish authorities five times. The Mishnah, the collection of Jewish law written down around AD 200, sets the penalty at “forty lashes less one.”
Why did Jewish law stop at 39 lashes instead of 40?
Deuteronomy 25:3 allowed up to forty stripes “and not exceed,” and later Jewish law set the actual number at 39. The Mishnah (Makkot 3:10) bases the figure on its reading of the verse’s wording, and it also required lashes to be assessed in groups of three and stopped if the person could not survive them. The popular explanation that stopping at 39 guarded against accidentally miscounting past forty is often repeated, but it is not the reason the Mishnah itself gives.
Why did Deuteronomy limit the number of lashes?
Deuteronomy 25:3 says the limit exists “lest, if he should exceed, and beat him above these with many stripes, then thy brother should seem vile unto thee.” The purpose of the cap was to protect the guilty person’s dignity, so the community would still see him as a brother after the punishment. The Mishnah (Makkot 3:15) draws the same conclusion: once a man has been flogged, he is as your brother.
What does “with his stripes we are healed” mean?
“With his stripes we are healed” comes from Isaiah 53:5 and is applied to Jesus in 1 Peter 2:24 (“by whose stripes ye were healed”). The word translated “stripes” is singular in both the Hebrew of Isaiah and the Greek of 1 Peter, meaning a wound or welt. Christians read the verse as saying Jesus took on a punishment on behalf of others, bringing them peace with God, and neither passage gives a number of blows.
