Bible Strands
Hebrews 11:36
Still others endured mocking and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment.
Berean Standard Bible
Follow its threads on the canvas →
Study note
Setting — An anonymous author writes to Jewish Christians under pressure to abandon their faith, inserting this verse into a cumulative list of testimonies (vv. 35–38) that moves from resurrection to torture to death.
The words — ἐμπαιγμῶν (empaigmōn, "mockings") is not a single insult but sustained, deliberate derision — the kind that wears a person down over time rather than killing them in one blow.
The thread — Jeremiah was beaten and put in the stocks (Jeremiah 20:2) and again beaten and jailed (Jeremiah 37:15); Joseph was thrown into a prison where the king's prisoners were confined (Genesis 39:20). The pattern of mockery, beating, and confinement recurs across both Testaments as the price of standing with God's people.
Why it lands — The verse does not promise that endurance leads to rescue; it only names what was received and survived. It asks the reader to look at their own list — the mocking, the beating, the confinement — and decide whether to call it faith or to call it failure.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Greek words
King James Version
And others had trial of cruel mockings and scourgings, yea, moreover of bonds and imprisonment:
Cross-references
- Jeremiah 20:2 he had Jeremiah the prophet beaten and put in the stocks at the Upper Gate of Benjamin, which was by the house of the LORD.
- Genesis 39:20 So Joseph’s master took him and had him thrown into the prison where the king’s prisoners were confined. While Joseph was there in the prison,
- Jeremiah 37:15 The officials were angry with Jeremiah, and they beat him and placed him in jail in the house of Jonathan the scribe, for it had been made into a prison.
- 2 Chronicles 30:10 And the couriers traveled from city to city through the land of Ephraim and Manasseh as far as Zebulun, but the people scorned and mocked them.
- 2 Chronicles 16:10 Asa was angry with the seer and became so enraged over this matter that he put the man in prison. And at the same time Asa oppressed some of the people.
- Jeremiah 20:7 You have deceived me, O LORD, and I was deceived. You have overcome me and prevailed. I am a laughingstock all day long; everyone mocks me.
- Jeremiah 32:2 At that time the army of the king of Babylon was besieging Jerusalem, and Jeremiah the prophet was imprisoned in the courtyard of the guard, which was in the palace of the king of Judah.
- Lamentations 3:52 Without cause my enemies hunted me like a bird.
- Matthew 23:34 Because of this, I am sending you prophets and wise men and teachers. Some of them you will kill and crucify, and others you will flog in your synagogues and persecute from town to town.
- Hebrews 10:34 You sympathized with those in prison and joyfully accepted the confiscation of your property, knowing that you yourselves had a better and permanent possession.