Deuteronomy 14:1 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Ye are the children of the Lord your God Ye are not only the creatures, and the offspring, but the peculiar people, the worshippers, the servants, and those of you that are truly pious, the adopted children of Jehovah, the one living and true God, who is your God in covenant; and therefore you should not dishonour him, your heavenly Father, nor disparage yourselves, by unworthy or unbecoming practices, such as here follow; and whom you must not disobey. Ye shall not cut yourselves This was the practice of idolaters, both in the worship of their idols and in their funerals, as also upon occasion of public calamities. For the dead Through excessive sorrow for your dead friends, as if you had no hope of their happiness after death, 1 Thessalonians 4:13. See on Leviticus 19:28. These furious expressions of mourning for the dead subsist at this day in some of the eastern countries: see on Genesis 50:10. But nothing surely can be more unbecoming the sons of God and heirs of immortality than thus to sorrow like those who expect no life after this. Nor make any baldness between your eyes On the fore part of your heads, (Leviticus 21:5,) just over the space that is between your eyes.