Leviticus 21:5 - Ellicott's Commentary On The Whole Bible

Make baldness upon their head. — The natural expression of grief, however, which the priests were to manifest for the above-named departed relations, was not to show itself in the practices which disfigure their bodily appearance, and which obtained among other nations of antiquity in connection with funeral ceremonies. Thus, in the graphic description of the idolatrous priests mourning, we are told “the priests sit in their temples, having their clothes rent, and their heads and beards shaven, and nothing upon their heads.” (Bar. 6:31.) The three things here prohibited to the priests are also forbidden to the people at large under other circumstances. (See Leviticus 19:27-28; Deuteronomy 14:1.) The ordinary Israelites, however, indulged in the same practices. (See Jeremiah 16:6; Ezekiel 7:18; Amos 8:10.)