They shall not make baldness upon their head,.... For the dead, as Jarchi, Aben Ezra, and Ben Gersom; not shave their heads, or round the corners of them, or make baldness between their eyes on that account; as those things were forbid the Israelites, so the priests also; this and what follow being superstitious customs used among the Heathens in their mournings for the dead, particularly by the Chaldeans, as Aben Ezra observes; and so by the Grecians; when Hephestion, one of Alexander's captains, died, he shaved his soldiers and himself, imitating Achilles in Homer t; so the Egyptians, mourning for the loss of Osiris, annually shaved their heads u; and the priests of Isis, mourning for her lost son, are called by Minutius Felix w her bald priests; see Leviticus 19:27;
neither shall they shave off the corner of their beard: the five corners of it; Leviticus 19:27. This the Israelites in common might not do, and particularly their priests; though the Egyptian priests shaved both their heads and beards, as Herodotus x relates: and so they are represented in the Table of Isis y:
nor make any cuttings in their flesh; either with their nails, tearing their cheeks and breasts, or with an instrument cutting their flesh in any part of their bodies, as was the custom of Heathen nations; such were made by the Egyptians in their mournings z;
t Aelian. Var. Hist. l. 7. c. 8. u Julius Firmicus de Error. Proph. p. 2. w In Octavio, p. 22. Vid. Lactant. de fals. Relig. l. 1. c. 21. x Euterpe, sive, l. 2. c. 36. y Vid. Pignorii Mens. Isiac. liter. S. z Julius Firmicus, ut supra. (u)