Leviticus 19:27

Ye shall not round the corners of your heads,.... The extremities of the hairs of the head, round about, on the forehead, temples, and behind the ears; this is done, as Jarchi says, when any one

Ye shall not round the corners of your heads, neither shalt thou mar the corners of thy beard.

The corners of your heads; i.e. your temples: Ye shall not cut off the hair of your heads round about your temples. This the Gentiles did, either for the worship of the devils or idols, to whom young men used to consecrate their hair, being cut off from their heads, as Homer, Plutarch, and many others write; or in funerals or immoderate mournings, as appears from . And the like is to be thought concerning the beard or the hair in the corner, i.e. corners of the beard. The reason then of this prohibition is, because God would not have his people agree with idolaters, neither in their idolatries, nor in their excessive sorrowing, no, nor so much as in the appearances and outward significations or expressions thereof.

Leviticus 19:27 Ye shall not round the corners of your heads, neither shalt thou mar the corners of thy beard.Ver. 27. Ye shall not round.] Because the Arabians their neighbours did so, and they should not be conformed to idolaters. Oleaster, a Popish interpreter, understandeth such a shaving here, as their priest use to bear. But shaving is so bald a ceremony, that some priests in France are ashamed of the mark, and few of them have it that can handsomely avoid it. Herod., in Thal.

(27) Round the corners of your heads.—That is, they are not to shave off the hair around the temples and behind the ears, so as to leave the head bald except a dish-like tuft upon the crown, thus imparting to their heads the form of a hemisphere. This was done by the Arabs, and other worshippers of the god Orotal. Hence the Arabs are ironically called “those with the corner of their hair polled,” as it is rightly rendered in the Margin (Jeremiah 9:26; Jeremiah 25:23; Jeremiah 49:32). Mar the corners of thy beard.—The beard was regarded by the Hebrews and other eastern nations as the greatest ornament of a man, and was as dear to them as life itself. It was the object of salutation (2 Samuel 20:9), and the mutilation of it was looked upon as the greatest disgrace and most degrading punishment (2 Samuel 10:4; Isaiah 7:20; Ezra 5:1-5, &c.). It was only in seasons of sorrow that the Hebrews neglected their beards; and sometimes, to show how deeply they were afflicted, they covered them up, or even cut them off, or tore them out (2 Samuel 19:24; Isaiah 15:2; Jeremiah 41:5, &c.). Because it was so precious a treasure, it was customary among some of the ancients to present to their gods the firstlings of their beards. The prohibition before us alludes to this practice.

Verse 27. Ye shall not round the corners your heads] This and the following verse evidently refer to customs which must have existed among the Egyptians when the Israelites sojourned in Egypt; and what they were it is now difficult, even with any probability, to conjecture. Herodotus observes that the Arabs shave or cut their hair round, in honour of Bacchus, who, they say, had his hair cut in this way, lib. iii., cap. 8. He says also that the Macians, a people of Libya, cut their hair round, so as to leave a tuft on the top of the head, lib. iv., cap. 175. In this manner the Chinese cut their hair to the present day. This might have been in honour of some idol, and therefore forbidden to the Israelites. The hair was much used in divination among the ancients, and for purposes of religious superstition among the Greeks; and particularly about the time of the giving of this law, as this is supposed to have been the era of the Trojan war. We learn from Homer that it was customary for parents to dedicate the hair of their children to some god; which, when they came to manhood, they cut off and consecrated to the deity. Achilles, at the funeral of Patroclus, cut off his golden locks which his father had dedicated to the river god Sperchius, and threw them into the flood: - Σταςαπανευθεπυρηςξονθηναπεκειρατοχαιτην, ΤηνῥαΣπερχειῳποταμῳτρεφετηλεθοωσαν· Οχθησαςδ' αραειπεν, ιδωνεπιοινοπαποντον· Σπερχει', αλλωςσοιγεπατηρηρησατοΠηλευς. κ. τ. λ. Iliad, 1. xxiii., ver. 142, c. But great Achilles stands apart in prayer, And from his head divides the yellow hair, Those curling locks which from his youth he vowed, And sacred threw to Sperchius' honoured flood. Then sighing, to the deep his looks he cast, And rolled his eyes around the watery waste. Sperchius! whose waves, in mazy errors lost, Delightful roll along my native coast! To whom we vainly vowed, at our return, These locks to fall, and hecatombs to burn So vowed my father, but he vowed in vain, No more Achilles sees his native plain In that vain hope these hairs no longer grow; Patrocius bears them to the shades below. POPE. From Virgil we learn that the topmost lock of hair was dedicated to the infernal gods; see his account of the death of Dido: - "Nondum illi flavum Proserpina vertice crinem Abstulerat, Stygioque caput damnaverat orco-- -----------------------Hunc ego Diti Sacrum jussa fero; teque isto corpore solvo. Sic ait, et dextra crinem secat." AEneid, lib. iv., ver. 698. The sisters had not cut the topmost hair, Which Proserpine and they can only know. Nor made her sacred to the shades below- This offering to the infernal gods I bear; Thus while she spoke, she cut the fatal hair. DRYDEN. If the hair was rounded, and dedicated for purposes of this kind, it will at once account for the prohibition in this verse. The corners of thy beard.] Probably meaning the hair of the cheek that connects the hair of the head with the beard.

27. round the corners of your heads] i.e. cut off the hair from the temples. Cp. Jeremiah 9:26; Jeremiah 25:23; Jeremiah 49:32. According to Herod. (iii. 8) it had a religious significance with certain Arab tribes. The belief that the hair was specially fitted to mark union with the Divine being, seems to have arisen from its continuous growth so long as life continues. See Rob.-Sm. Rel. of the Sem.2. 323 ff., 481 ff. 28 cuttings in your flesh for the dead] Another practice common among half-civilized races. It represented the custom of human sacrifices (see e.g. Herod. 4:71) as a propitiation to the spirit of the departed. Cp. Jeremiah 41:5, and perhaps (C.B.) Hosea 7:14. A. R. S. Kennedy, on the other hand (HDB. i. 172), considers that the original idea was to make an enduring covenant with the dead. He quotes Rob.-Sm. Rel. Sem.2 p. 305. For the prohibitions in this and Leviticus 19:27, cp. Leviticus 21:5; Deuteronomy 14:1.

27. Not round the corners of your heads — That is, cut the hair in a circle from temple to temple, as Herodotus relates that some Arabs did in honour of their god.