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stauroo

stauroo {stow-ro'-o}
Greek: verb

Possible Definitions:
1) to stake, drive down stakes
2) to fortify with driven stakes, to palisade: a place
3) to crucify
3a) to crucify one
3b) metaph. to crucify the flesh, destroy its power utterly (the nature of the figure implying that the destruction is attended with intense pain) crucifixion was in use among the Egyptians, Gen. 40:19, the Carthaginians, the Persians, Est. 7:10, the Assyrians, Scythians, Indians, Germans, and from the earliest times among the Greeks and Romans. Whether this mode of execution was known among the ancient Jews is a matter of dispute. Probably the Jews borrowed it from the Romans. It was unanimously considered the most horrible form of death. Among the Romans the degradation was also a part of the infliction, and the punishment if applied to freemen was used only in the case of the vilest criminals. The one being crucified was stripped naked of all his clothes, and then followed the most awful moment of all. He was laid down upon the implement of torture. His arms were stretched along the cross beams, and at the centre of the open palms the point of a huge iron nail was placed, which, by the blow of a mallet, was driven home into the wood. Then through either foot separately, or possibly through both together, as they were placed one over the other, another huge nail tore its way through the quivering flesh. Whether the sufferer was also bound to the cross we do not know, but to prevent the hands and feet being torn away by the weight of the body, which could not rest upon anything but four great wounds", there was, about the centre of the cross, a wooden projection strong enough to support at least in part, a human body, which soon became a weight of human agony. Then the "accursed tree" with its living human burden was slowly heaved up and the end firmly fixed in a hole in the ground. The feet were but a little raised above the earth. The victim was in full reach of every hand that might choose to strike. A death by crucifixion seems to have included all that pain and death can have of the horrible and ghastly,—dizziness, cramp, thirst, starvation, sleeplessness, traumatic fever, tetanus, publicity of shame, long continuance of torment, horror of anticipation, mortification of untended wounds, all intensified just up to the point which they can be endured at all, but stopping just short of the point which would give the sufferer the relief of unconsciousness. The unnatural position made every movement painful; the lacerated veins and crushed tendons throbbed with incessant anguish; the wounds, inflamed by exposure, gradually gangrened; the arteries, especially of the head and the stomach, became swollen and oppressed with surcharged blood; and, while each variety of misery went on gradually increasing, there was added to them the intolerable pang of a burning raging thirst. Such was the death to which Christ was doomed. The crucified was watched, according to custom, by a party of four soldiers, John 19:23, with their centurion, Mat. 27:66, whose express office was to prevent the stealing of the body. This was necessary from the lingering character of the death, which sometimes did not occur even for three days, and was at last the result of gradual benumbing and starvation. But for this guard, the persons might have been taken down and recovered, as was actually done in the case of three friends of Josephus. Only one survived, in spite of the care. Fracture of the legs was especially adopted by the Jews to hasten death. John. 19:31. In most cases the body was suffered to rot on the cross by the action of the sun and rain, or to be devoured by birds and beasts. Burial was generally therefore forbidden; but in consequence of Dt. 21:22,23, an express natural exception was made in favour of the Jews. Mat. 27:58. This form of punishment was abolished by Constantine.

stauroo {stow-ro'-o}

Greek: verb

from 4716;

Translated as:

crucify (46 times)

Strong's Number 4717

TDNT - 7:572,1071