Digest of Biblical Civil Law

Under the principle of case law, some judicial penalties are spelled out in the Bible, but not necessarily all. In some cases, only the moral prohibition is given, and we are left to discern for ourselves what an appropriate civil penalty would be, if any. On the other hand, in Deut. 25:1-3, we find the provision that the court may determine to punish a man with a public beating, though no more than forty stripes might be administered; yet, there is no crime mentioned in the law for which a beating is the prescribed penalty. Apparently the court had liberty of discretion to apply a beating in some cases, perhaps if a man were a second or third time offender in a case of theft, or if a man were found guilty of assaulting his wife (wife-beating), which would be a specification of the principle "eye for eye, wound for wound" (Exo. 21:23ff.).

- James Jordan, The Law of the Covenant 73 (1984), at http://www.garynorth.com/freebooks/:  HTML, DjVu.