2 Corinthians 11:24

Of the Jews five times received I forty stripes save one.

If those false apostles, as appears likely, were part of the old hierarchical crowd in Jerusalem, it must have required divine power for Paul to speak of them as mildly as he does. A Jewish beating with stripes was a cruel, brutal and inhuman punishment. It was founded on Deuteronomy 25:3 which fixed forty stripes as the number inflicted. The barbarous instrument was a three-ply scourge of knotted leather thongs, with the knots so arranged as to give the maximum pain and injury to the victim. The 39 blows were delivered 13 on the chest, 13 on the right shoulder, and 13 on the left shoulder. Neither the New Testament nor any other history mentions any of these five cruelties inflicted upon Paul, showing how little is actually known of all that he suffered for the cause of Christ.