stocks Summary and Overview

(An instrument of punishment, consisting of two beams, the upper one being movable, with two small openings between them, large enough for the ankles of the prisoner.--ED.) The term "stocks" is applied in the Authorized Version to two different articles one of which answers rather to our pillory, inasmuch as the body was placed in a bent position, by the confinement of the neck and arms as well as the legs while the other answers to our "stocks," the feet alone being confined in it. The prophet Jeremiah was confined in the first sort, #Jer 20:2| which appears to have been a common mode of punishment in his day, #Jer 29:26| as the prisons contained a chamber for the special purpose, termed "the house of the pillory." #2Ch 16:10| (Authorized Version "prison-house"). The stocks, properly so called, are noticed in #Job 13:27; 33:11; Ac 16:24| The term used in #Pr 7:22| (Authorized Version "stocks") more properly means a fetter.

STOCKS , the name of a machine or instrument by which the feet of prisoners are secured. Job 13:27; Ex 33:11. It is said that the jailer at Philippi, to whose custody Paul and Silas were: committed with a strict charge to keep them safely, not only put them in an inner prison or dungeon, but made their feet fast in the stocks. Acts 16:24. The upper half being removed, each leg is placed, just above the ankle, in the groove of the lower half, and then the upper part is so fastened down as to confine them inextricably. Ancient Stocks. The "stocks" used on Paul and Silas could be turned into an instrument of torture by widely separating the legs. The "stocks" used on Jeremiah, Jer 20:2, were, properly speaking, the pillory, because the neck and arms as well as the legs were confined, and so the body was bent. STO'ICS were a sect of heathen philosophers, much like the Pharisees, who took their rise from one Zeno, a Cyprian of Citium, the name coming from the stoa, or porch, in which he taught, in the third century b.c. While in some respects there is a similarity between their opinions and those of Christians, there is yet the broad difference that Stoic morality was based on pride; Christian, on humility. They generally taught that it is wisdom alone that renders men happy, that the ills of life are but fancied evils, and that a wise man ought not to be moved with either joy or grief; and in their practice they affected much patience, austerity, and insensibility. The Stoics were known for many ages, especially at Athens. where some of them encountered Paul. Acts 17:18. The most distinguished members of the school were Epictetus, who died about a.b. 115, and the emperor Marcus Aurelius, a.d. 121-180. Of all the ancient sects, the Stoics were most strict in their regard to moral virtue. They believed in the unity of the divine Being, the creation of the world by the Logos or Word, and a superintending providence administered in conformity with the will and purpose of God.

(1) Mahpeketh; Jeremiah 20:2; Jeremiah 29:23, from hapak "rack"; our "pillory"; the word implies the body was bent, the arms and neck as well as the leg being confined. Prisons had usually a chamber for the purpose called "the house of the pillory" (2 Chronicles 16:10, KJV "prison house"). The other Hebrew term, (2), sad, is our "stocks" (Job 13:27; Job 33:11; Acts 16:24), in which the feet alone are confined; the Roman nervous, which could be made at the jailer's will an instrument of torture by drawing asunder the feet; (3) Proverbs 7:22, rather "a fetter"; akasim, used for "the tinkling ornaments on women's feet" in Isaiah 3:16-18. The harlot's tinkling foot ornaments excite the youth's passions, all the while he knows not that her foot ornaments will prove his feet fetters; "to love one's fetters, though of gold, is the part of a fool" (Seneca). He sports with and is proud of his fetters as if they were an ornament, or put on him in play.