Bible Dictionary
Stocks
Stocks were wooden instruments used to restrain prisoners, usually by fastening the feet and sometimes the neck and arms. They were used as a form of imprisonment and punishment in biblical times.
Definition
Stocks were wooden instruments of restraint and punishment. One form confined the prisoner’s neck and arms as well as the legs, resembling a pillory; another confined the feet alone. The term could also refer to a fetter.
Biblical Usage
Jeremiah was confined in the form that restrained the body, while the proper stocks, which confined the feet, are mentioned in connection with imprisonment and punishment. The term in Proverbs is more accurately understood as a fetter.
Historical Background
Prisons could contain a special chamber for the bodily restraint called the house of the pillory. The construction consisted of two beams, one movable, with openings large enough for the prisoner’s ankles.
Scripture References
Related Figures
Historical Bible Dictionaries
Smith's Bible Dictionary
(An instrument of punishment, consisting of two beams, the upper one being movable, with two small openings between them, large enough for the ankles of the prisoner.—ED.) The term “stocks” is applied in the Authorized Version to two different articles one of which answers rather to our pillory, inasmuch as the body was placed in a bent position, by the confinement of the neck and arms as well as the legs while the other answers to our “stocks,” the feet alone being confined in it. The prophet Jeremiah was confined in the first sort, (Jeremiah 20:2) which appears to have been a common mode of punishment in his day, (Jeremiah 29:26) as the prisons contained a chamber for the special purpose, termed “the house of the pillory.” (2 Chronicles 16:10) (Authorized Version “prison-house”). The stocks, properly so called, are noticed in (Job 13:27; 33:11; Acts 16:24) The term used in (Proverbs 7:22) (Authorized Version “stocks”) more properly means a fetter.