The Gemara on Amud Beis uses a common rabbinic term for one who is liable for whipping when violating a biblical injunction, with witnesses and a warning: סוֹפֵג אֶת הָאַרְבָּעִים , which literally means “absorbs the 40 whiplashes”. I am curious about this interesting term to “absorb” the lashes.
Etymologically, the word, סופג absorb is a verb form of the noun ספוג which is a sponge. Actually you can see the word sponge itself is easily related to the word sfog in Hebrew. It is not uncommon for Semitic words to travel into Greek and then into English. For example, “wine” is clearly phonetically related to “yayin”, and eye from the word “Ayin”. However, in this case, Sefog is not a Hebrew word at all; it does not appear anywhere in Tanach. It is a Greek word sepongos ( σπόγγος ) that became Judaised, such as the word Sanhedrin, more likely pronounced as Synhedrion, or androginus, more properly pronounced as Andro-Gynus (Man = Andro, Gynus = Woman).
Let us begin with absorbing, pun intended, the magnitude of this punishment. Being flogged with a calfskin whip is extremely painful to the point of shock and debilitation. (You can study the description in chapter three of Mishna Makkos for more details, or do a quick internet search on flogging.) Though it sounds cruel, and in fact was cruel, it is important to keep things in perspective. In ancient Hebrew society, prison was rarely used as a form of social control and punishment. However, as modern society has evolved its standards, it declared whipping to be a cruel and unusual punishment. With the best of humane intentions, corporal judicial punishment was replaced over the last two centuries with imprisonment. The problem is that imprisonment is hardly not cruel nor safe, and on top of that, a person loses years of his life. Any rational person would choose the searing, intense, scarring pain of lashes over even one year of imprisonment, let alone years of imprisonment, often accompanied by brutality from inmates and guards. When you consider that there are approximately 2 million people in US prisons and jails, and the incredible toll on human suffering and livelihood to the prisoners and their family members, it makes you wonder if flogging wouldn’t be more humane.
The research shows that imprisonment as a punishment or as rehabilitation is utterly ineffective in reducing crime. In fact, there is no connection between severity of the punishment and length of incarceration with any positive result or reduction in recidivism. Basically, it just feels good to “get tough on crime” by pretending that we are throwing people In jail, and punishing them appropriately. In fact, because of the slow workings of the criminal justice and court system, imprisonment is uncertain and psychologically distant in time and emotion from the actual moment of crime, and therefore a poor mechanism of operant conditioning. ( see https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6701209/ ) If we wanted to deter crime in a psychologically informed manner, we would have to use a system of swift justice and immediate painful punishments, which of course is be almost impossible to implement with due process. This is just one of those paradoxes of modern life where we consider ourselves more sophisticated and advanced than our so-called primitive and brutal ancestors, and yet somehow we really aren’t at all better. Yet, we cannot turn back the clock.
Getting back to this interesting terminology, we find the Torah using a direct language, “אַרְבָּעִ֥ים יַכֶּ֖נּוּ” “smite him 40 times” (Devarim 24:3.) The rabbis changed the phrase from hit to absorb. There is another situation where the rabbis changed the language from a Biblical one to their own terminology, and that is with regard to marriage. The Talmud (Kiddushin 2b) notes that Biblical language calls marriage an “acquisition (קיחה)”, while the rabbinic term for marriage is “sacred” קידושין. It would seem the rabbis deliberately changed the terminology in order to impress a different sentiment. They wanted marriage to be treated less as a business transaction and more as a sacrament (see Mizrachi Bereishis 38:21).
So that brings us to our phrase, to absorb lashes. What did the rabbis want to impress upon us by using this phrase? It would seem they wanted the focus to switch from the administration to the reception. Meaning to say, though it was Beis Din’s duty to pursue justice and enforce the laws that were considered enforceable within a fallible human framework, the true emphasis was on the person absorbing the message and the punishment. A person getting flogged could become more angry, resentful and rebellious. But the challenge is to absorb and understand what is happening, and why, even when it’s painful. And, this is not only true with physical lashes, but with any difficulties we encounter in life. We must ask, what can we learn and absorb from it?
Translations Courtesy of Sefaria, except when, sometimes, I disagree with the translation 
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