Matthew 18:34

The acquittal is revoked—a point not to be pressed in the interpretation. The truth taught is the impossibility of the unforgiving being forgiven, but the chief lesson is the example of the divine spirit of forgiveness in the act of the king. This example the pardoned slave should have followed.

τοῖς βασανισταῖς. ‘To the keepers of the prison,’ the gaolers, part of whose duty it was to torture (βασανίζειν) the prisoners. Thus in the Greek version of Jeremiah 20:2, by Symmachus, βασανιστήριον is ‘a prison’ (A.V. ‘stocks’). Fischer, de vitiis Lex. N.T., p. 458.