Well, here's an uncommon topic. But as a Christian who respects the Old Testament as God's word, I don't dismiss passages such as Leviticus 27:19 ("You shall not shave around the sides of your head, nor shall you disfigure the edges of your beard.") and say, "that's the Old Testament so doesn't apply."
Here is part of a study I did on the subject several years ago:
Clear passages related to shaving for the dead:
Leviticus 21:1-5:
"And the Lord said to Moses, “Speak to the priests, the sons of Aaron, and say to them: ‘None shall defile himself for the dead among his people, 2 except for his relatives who are nearest to him: his mother, his father, his son, his daughter, and his brother; 3 also his virgin sister who is near to him, who has had no husband, for her he may defile himself. 4 Otherwise he shall not defile himself, being a [a]chief man among his people, to profane himself.
5 ‘They shall not make any bald place on their heads, nor shall they shave the edges of their beards nor make any cuttings in their flesh."
First, is this command simply general or in context of mourning for the dead? In our culture, we don't do this for the dead, so it seems unrelated, but looking at other scriptures, it seems that it was a common practice when in mourning:
Amos 8:10
I will turn your feasts into mourning,And all your songs into lamentation;
I will bring sackcloth on every waist,
And baldness on every head;
I will make it like mourning for an only son,
And its end like a bitter day.
Ezekial 7:18:
They will also be girded with sackcloth;Horror will cover them;
Shame will be on every face,
Baldness on all their heads.
Jeremiah 16:5-6:
For thus says the Lord: “Do not enter the house of mourning, nor go to lament or bemoan them; for I have taken away My peace from this people,” says the Lord, “lovingkindness and mercies. Both the great and the small shall die in this land. They shall not be buried; neither shall men lament for them, cut themselves, nor make themselves bald for them.
Jeremiah 41:4-7:
And it happened, on the second day after he had killed Gedaliah, when as yet no one knew it, that certain men came from Shechem, from Shiloh, and from Samaria, eighty men with their beards shaved and their clothes torn, having cut themselves, with offerings and incense in their hand, to bring them to the house of the Lord. Now Ishmael the son of Nethaniah went out from Mizpah to meet them, weeping as he went along; and it happened as he met them that he said to them, “Come to Gedaliah the son of Ahikam!” So it was, when they came into the midst of the city, that Ishmael the son of Nethaniah killed them and cast them into the midst of a pit, he and the men who were with him.
So we can clearly see that back then, wearing sackcloth, tearing clothes, making bald spots or completely shaving head and/or beard, and cutting the flesh were things people did when in mourning. In addition to this, when I looked at several commentaries on the passage online, almost all of them, including Jamison, Faucet, and Brown, stated that the command to the priests is in relation to the preceding verses about mourning for the dead.
Deut 14:1:
“You are the children of the Lord your God; you shall not cut yourselves nor shave the front of your head for the dead.
Jamieson-Fausset-Brown on this passage:
It was a common practice of idolaters, both on ceremonious occasions of their worship (1Ki 18:28), and at funerals (compare Jer 16:6; 41:5), to make ghastly incisions on their faces and other parts of their persons with their finger nails or sharp instruments. The making a large bare space between the eyebrows was another heathen custom in honor of the dead (see on [128]Le 19:27, 28; [129]Le 21:5). Such indecorous and degrading usages, being extravagant and unnatural expressions of hopeless sorrow (1Th 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.
Before continuing, let's ask ourselves if the part of this law regarding not shaving of the head for the dead is moral in nature or more ceremonial in nature/to make a distinction between Israel and the gentiles.
I believe the following passage clearly shows it's not moral in nature, but rather ceremonial:
Job 1:20-22:
Then Job arose, tore his robe, and shaved his head; and he fell to the ground and worshiped. And he said:
“Naked I came from my mother’s womb,
And naked shall I return there.
The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away;
Blessed be the name of the Lord.”
In all this Job did not sin nor charge God with wrong.
If Job could shave his head for the dead (as a sign of grief, not with a spiritual or pagan significance) without sin, then it shows it was a ceremonial law, not a moral one. Does the fact that he lived before the law was given have significance? I don't think so. Could Job have lied, stolen, committed adultery, or done other sins before Moses? No. Could Adam and Eve, after the fall, have broken any of the laws God gave Moses that were not strictly prohibited in Genesis 1-3? I don't think so. I think God revealed to them His moral law somehow. They were not required to keep ceremonial aspects of the law that God hadn't revealed at that time, though.
Leviticus 19:27-28:
"You shall not shave around the sides of your head, nor shall you disfigure the edges of your beard. You shall not make any cuttings in your flesh for the dead, nor tattoo any marks on you: I am the LORD."
A question comes up: Are the prohibitions of shaving around the sides of your head and disfiguring the edges of your beard in relation to mourning for the dead, or are they general commands?
The fact that the list of items is so close to Lev 21:5 and the wording is very similar makes it appear that this is also in relation to mourning. Let's go deeper, though:
As a start, it's interesting to note the wording. Rather than simply saying, "you shall not shave your hair or beard", as I took it to mean for years, God said (in the KJV) "Ye shall not round the corners of your heads, neither shalt thou mar the corners of thy beard."
Looking at the usage of the Hebrew words with Strong's concordance and reading several commentaries, as for the first part about the heads, it literally seems to be prohibiting a bowl-type of haircut. As for the beard, mar is typically used in the sense of corrupt (e.g., before the flood, the earth was corrupted – and the root word for how Jesus was marred more than any man is similar). This seems to hint that there might be more to this passage than at first meets the eye.
I had studied further, but somehow lost the remainder of this and only had my overall outline. I'm not going to go into too much detail, but instead note the gist of what I had learned:
Commentaries and several blogs indicated that Leviticus 19:27 was prohibiting a very specific behavior that other cultures did in mourning for the dead, and not just the shaving of hair.
Examples of shaving.
In the OT people shaved for medical and ceremonial reasons, showing that the act of shaving is not sinful in an of itself.
The Nazarite vow was also an example where people shaved upon the fulfillment of the vow, I believe.
IIRC, Paul and/or some of his companions were keeping a vow and so had not shaved their heads.
Joseph shaved before going to Pharoah. Scripture comments that the word of God tested him during his hardships, and shows him to be a man of integrity.
From nature? David's men?
As for David's men being ashamed when their beards were half shaved, some people ask, why didn't they just shave the other half? Why wait until their beards had grown? Doesn't it make sense that if Israelites were not to shave for the dead (as we do not mourn as the Gentiles do, without hope) and so they did not shave for the dead, Hanun (who may have been used to having people shave for the dead) thought they were fake mourners and so shaved half their beards? Then when they went back to Israel, if they shaved, it may look like they had shaved for the dead. And there's certainly a gigantic difference between someone forcibly shaving another person and that person doing it himself.
How about the argument that God gave men beards so they should let them grow? Paul uses this argument about the length of men and women's hair. But it doesn't directly speak of beards, so I wouldn't want to add to scripture. That being said, it seems to me to be a reasonable idea as beards are manly, and for that reason I'm in favor of beards. Not as a scriptural command, but more so on a principle trying to look good. I personally thus far cannot grow a nice full beard, so instead keep a goatee and moustache. I'd encourage other men to consider growing beards, but don't look down on those who do not.
Have a different view? I'd love to hear it!
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