'Beating' in the Bible

and they said to him, “Joseph is still alive, and indeed he is ruler over all the land of Egypt.” But Jacob was stunned and his heart almost stopped beating, because he did not believe them.

One day, after Moses had grown [into adulthood], it happened that he went to his countrymen and looked [with compassion] at their hard labors; and he saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his countrymen.

“If [two] men, a man and his countryman, are fighting and the wife of one approaches to rescue her husband from the man who is striking him, and she reaches out with her hand and grabs the aggressor’s genitals,

Now the Angel of the Lord came and sat under the terebinth tree at Ophrah, which belonged to Joash the Abiezrite, and his son Gideon was beating wheat in the wine press [instead of the threshing floor] to [hide it and] save it from the Midianites.

Further, the altar that was at Bethel, the high place which Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who made Israel sin, had made, even that altar and the high place he tore down. Then he demolished its stones, ground them to dust, and burned the Asherah.

A fool’s lips bring contention and strife,And his mouth invites a beating.

“Yet gleanings will be left in the land [of Israel] like the shaking of the olive tree,Two or three olives on the topmost branch,Four or five on the [outermost] branches of the fruitful tree,”Declares the Lord, the God of Israel.

For so it will be in the midst of the earth among the peoples,As the shaking of an olive tree,As the gleanings when the grape harvest is over [and only a little of the fruit remains].

It is decreed:Nineveh is stripped, and she is carried away,And her handmaids are moaning like the sound of doves,Beating on their breasts [in sorrow].

And a fierce windstorm began to blow, and waves were breaking over the boat, so that it was already being swamped.

And He got up and [sternly] rebuked the wind and said to the sea, “Hush, be still (muzzled)!” And the wind died down [as if it had grown weary] and there was [at once] a great calm [a perfect peacefulness].

Night and day he was constantly screaming and shrieking among the tombs and on the mountains, and cutting himself with [sharp] stones.

Then He got into the boat with them, and the wind ceased [as if exhausted by its own activity]; and they were completely overwhelmed,

but the one who did not know it and did things worthy of a beating, will receive only a few [lashes]. From everyone to whom much has been given, much will be required; and to whom they entrusted much, of him they will ask all the more.

All the crowds who had gathered for this spectacle, when they saw what had happened, began to return [to their homes], beating their breasts [as a sign of mourning or repentance].

So he immediately took soldiers and centurions and ran down among them. When the people saw the commander and the soldiers, they stopped beating Paul.

Therefore I do not run without a definite goal; I do not flail around like one beating the air [just shadow boxing].