Ye are the children of the LORD your God: ye shall not cut yourselves, nor make any baldness between your eyes for the dead.
Ye are the children of the Lord your God - children or sons. Israel, in a national capacity, were called so (Deuteronomy 32:19; Exodus 4:22; Hosea 11:1; Matthew 2:15), although not every person in the nation could on this account be a "son of God."
Ye shall not cut yourselves ... for the dead. Harmer ('Observations,' 105:) considers "the dead" to mean in this passage 'dead idols' (Zechariah 13:6). [But laameet (H4191) must be taken here as synonymous with lªnepesh (H5315), Leviticus 21:1, where it signifies 'the dead among the people.'] It was a common practice of idolaters, both on ceremonious occasions of their worship (1 Kings 18:28) and at funerals (cf. Jeremiah 16:6; Jeremiah 41:5), to make ghastly incisions on their faces and other parts of their persons with their finger-nails or sharp instruments. It was a Canaanite or Phoenician, not an Egyptian, custom to cut one's self in mourning.
The making of a large bare space between the eyebrows was another pagan custom in honour of the dead (see the notes at Leviticus 19:27-28; Leviticus 21:5). Both these practices had been expressly forbidden by the law. But it appears, from the repetition of the interdict, that they were still in use on occasions of great mourning and affliction for a deceased relative or friend (cf. Jeremiah 41:5; Jeremiah 47:5; Jeremiah 48:37).
That the spirit, especially with the letter of the law was violated is manifest from the added motive in 5:2. Such indecorous and degrading usages, being extravagant and unnatural expressions of hopeless sorrow (1 Thessalonians 4:13), were to be carefully avoided by the Israelites, as derogatory to the character and inconsistent with the position of those who were the people of God.