Bastinado

Bastinado—beating with a rod or stick—was a common form of corporal punishment in the ancient Near East and the Greco-Roman world. Mosaic law permitted flogging as a judicial penalty, limiting it to forty stripes (Deuteronomy 25:2–3). Proverbs frequently commends the rod for correcting the foolish (Proverbs 22:15; 26:3). The New Testament records Paul's three beatings with rods by Roman lictors (2 Corinthians 11:25; Acts 16:22–23), a punishment that was technically illegal to inflict on a Roman citizen.