Torah, Deuteronomy 25:02 – 25:03: and it shall be, if the guilty one has incurred [the penalty of] lashes, that the judge shall make him lean over and flog him in front of him, commensurate with his crime, in number. He shall flog him with forty [lashes]; he shall not exceed, lest he give him a much more severe flogging than these [forty lashes], and your brother will be degraded before your eyes.

Question: It is written: “If the guilty one has incurred the penalty of lashes, that the judge shall make him lean over and flog him.” What does it mean “lean over”? Why are these small things described in such detail?

Answer: These are not small things. It is about a person’s descent to such a state where it is necessary to humiliate not him but his egoism and to humiliate it in such a way that he will see egoism in all its ugliness and will not be able to use it anymore. He will consider using it as a baseness for the “man in him.”

This is one’s work on oneself. Therefore, all judges and jurors are needed only to help a person understand himself. He himself must select a punishment in the form of blows that come from the quality of Bina, the numeric value of which equals forty—level “forty.” He must feel these blows on himself and how much he is opposite to the quality of bestowal.

the feeling of oppositeness to the qualities of Bina, understanding of how far he is from reaching its level and the realization of evil in himself are blows on egoism, and not on a person.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 11/2/16

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