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New Century Version
Leviticus 19:27
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You shall not cut the hair on the sides of your heads, neither shall you clip off the edge of your beard.
Ye shall not round the corners of your heads, neither shalt thou mar the corners of thy beard.
You shall not round off the corner hair of your head, and you shall not trim the corner of your beard.
You must not round off the corners of the hair on your head or ruin the corners of your beard.
'You shall not trim and round off the side-growth of [the hair on] your heads, nor mar the edges of your beard.
'You shall not round off the hairline of your heads, nor trim the edges of your beard.
Ye shall not cut rounde the corners of your heades, neither shalt thou marre the tuftes of thy beard.
You shall not round off the side-growth of your heads nor harm the edges of your beard.
I forbid you to shave any part of your head or beard or to cut and tattoo yourself as a way of worshiping the dead.
Don't round your hair at the temples or mar the edges of your beard.
—Ye shall not shave the corners of your head round, neither shalt thou mutilate the corners of thy beard.
"You must not round off the hair that grows on the side of your face. You must not cut your beard that grows on the side of your face.
You shall not round off the hair on your temples or mar the edges of your beard.
You shall not let the hair of your heads grow, neither shall you trim the corners of your beard.
Do not cut the hair on the sides of your head or trim your beard
You are not to cut off the hair at the sides of your head or mar the edge of your beard.
You shall not round the edge of your head, nor mar the edge of your beard.
Ye shal shaue no crownes vpo youre heade, nether shalt thou clyppe thy beerde cleane off.
Ye shall not round the corners of your heads, neither shalt thou mar the corners of thy beard.
The ends of the hair round your face and on your chin may not be cut off.
Ye shall not rounde the corners of your heades, neither shalt thou marre the tuftes of thy bearde.
Ye shall not round the corners of your heads, neither shalt thou mar the corners of thy beard.
Ye shall not round the corners of your heads, neither shalt thou marre the corners of thy beard.
Ye shall not make a round cutting of the hair of your head, nor disfigure your beard.
Ye shall not round the corners of your heads, neither shalt thou mar the corners of thy beard.
You must not cut off the hair at the sides of your head or clip off the edges of your beard.
nether ye schulen clippe the heer in round, nether ye schulen schaue the beerd;
`Ye do not round the corner of your head, nor destroy the corner of thy beard.
You shall not round the corners of your heads, neither shall you mar the corners of your beard.
Ye shall not round the corners of your heads, neither shalt thou mar the corners of thy beard.
You shall not cut the hair on the sides of your heads, neither shall you clip off the edge of your beard.
You shall not shave around the sides of your head, nor shall you disfigure the edges of your beard.
"Do not trim off the hair on your temples or trim your beards.
Do not cut the hair on the side of your head or face.
You shall not round off the hair on your temples or mar the edges of your beard.
Ye shall not shave in a circle around your head, - nor shalt thou disfigure the fringe of thy beard.
Nor shall you cut your hair roundwise: nor shave your beard.
You shall not round off the hair on your temples or mar the edges of your beard.
"Don't cut the hair on the sides of your head or trim your beard.
'You shall not round off the side-growth of your heads nor harm the edges of your beard.
Contextual Overview
Bible Verse Review
from Treasury of Scripure Knowledge
Leviticus 21:5, Isaiah 15:2, Jeremiah 16:6, Jeremiah 48:37, Ezekiel 7:18, Ezekiel 44:20
Reciprocal: Deuteronomy 14:1 - ye shall not 2 Samuel 10:4 - and shaved 1 Chronicles 19:4 - shaved them Jeremiah 41:5 - their beards
Cross-References
But run there fast, because I cannot destroy Sodom until you are safely in that town." (That town is named Zoar, because it is little.)
That night the two girls got their father drunk, and the older daughter went and had sexual relations with him. But Lot did not know when she lay down or when she got up.
Lord , every morning you hear my voice. Every morning, I tell you what I need, and I wait for your answer.
I will stand like a guard to watch and place myself at the tower. I will wait to see what he will say to me; I will wait to learn how God will answer my complaint.
So we must be more careful to follow what we were taught. Then we will not stray away from the truth.
Gill's Notes on the Bible
Ye shall not round the corners of your heads,.... The extremities of the hairs of the head, round about, on the forehead, temples, and behind the ears; this is done, as Jarchi says, when any one makes his temples, behind his ears, and his forehead alike, so that the circumference of his head is found to be round all about, as if they had been cut as with a bowl; and so the Arabians cut their hair, as Herodotus b reports, :-;
neither shall thou mar the corners of thy beard; by shaving them entirely; Jarchi and other Jewish writers say, there are five of them, two on the right, as Gersom reckons them, one on the upper jaw, the other on the nether, and two over against them on the left, and one in the place where the nether jaw joins the right to the left, the chin; the same observes, that it was the manner of idolaters to do the above things; and Maimonides c is of opinion that the reason of the prohibition is, because the idolatrous priests used this custom; but this law does not respect priests only, but the people of Israel in general; wherefore rather it was occasioned by the Gentiles in common cutting their hair, in honour of their gods, as the Arabians did, as Herodotus in the above place relates, in imitation of Bacchus, and to the honour of him; and so with others, it was usual for young men to consecrate their hair to idols; but inasmuch as such practices were used on account of the dead, as Aben Ezra observes, it seems probable enough that these things are forbidden to be done on their account, since it follows,
b Thalia, sive, l. 3. c. 8. c Moreh Nevochim, par. 3. c. 37. Hilchot Obede Cochabim, c. 12. sect. 1.
Barnes' Notes on the Bible
Certain pagan customs, several of them connected with magic, are here grouped together. The prohibition to eat anything with the blood may indeed refer to the eating of meat which had not been properly bled in slaughtering (Leviticus 7:26; Leviticus 17:10, etc.): but it is not improbable that there may be a special reference to some sort of magical or idolatrous rites. Compare Ezekiel 33:25.
Leviticus 19:26
Observe times - It is not clear whether the original word refers to the fancied distinction between lucky and unlucky days, to some mode of drawing omens from the clouds, or to the exercise of “the evil eye.”
Leviticus 19:27
Round the corners of your heads - This may allude to such a custom as that of the Arabs described by Herodotus. They used to show honor to their deity Orotal by cutting the hair away from the temples in a circular form. Compare the margin reference.
Mar the corners of thy beard - It has been conjectured that this also relates to a custom which existed among the Arabs, but we are not informed that it had any idolatrous or magical association. As the same, or very similar customs, are mentioned in Leviticus 21:5, and in Deuteronomy 14:1, as well as here, it would appear that they may have been signs of mourning.
Leviticus 19:28
Cuttings in your flesh for the dead - Compare the margin reference. Among the excitable races of the East this custom appears to have been very common.
Print any marks - Tattooing was probably practiced in ancient Egypt, as it is now by the lower classes of the modern Egyptians, and was connected with superstitious notions. Any voluntary disfigurement of the person was in itself an outrage upon God’s workmanship, and might well form the subject of a law.
Clarke's Notes on the Bible
Verse Leviticus 19:27. Ye shall not round the corners your heads — This and the following verse evidently refer to customs which must have existed among the Egyptians when the Israelites sojourned in Egypt; and what they were it is now difficult, even with any probability, to conjecture. Herodotus observes that the Arabs shave or cut their hair round, in honour of Bacchus, who, they say, had his hair cut in this way, lib. iii., cap. 8. He says also that the Macians, a people of Libya, cut their hair round, so as to leave a tuft on the top of the head, lib. iv., cap. 175. In this manner the Chinese cut their hair to the present day. This might have been in honour of some idol, and therefore forbidden to the Israelites.
The hair was much used in divination among the ancients, and for purposes of religious superstition among the Greeks; and particularly about the time of the giving of this law, as this is supposed to have been the era of the Trojan war. We learn from Homer that it was customary for parents to dedicate the hair of their children to some god; which, when they came to manhood, they cut off and consecrated to the deity. Achilles, at the funeral of Patroclus, cut off his golden locks which his father had dedicated to the river god Sperchius, and threw them into the flood: -
Στας απανευθε πυρης ξονθην απεκειρατο χαιτην,
Την ῥα Σπερχειῳ ποταμῳ τρεφε τηλεθοωσαν·
Οχθησας δ' αρα ειπεν, ιδων επι οινοπα ποντον·
Σπερχει', αλλως σοι γε πατηρ ηρησατο Πηλευς. κ. τ. λ.
Iliad, 1. xxiii., ver. 142, c.
But great Achilles stands apart in prayer,
And from his head divides the yellow hair,
Those curling locks which from his youth he vowed,
And sacred threw to Sperchius' honoured flood.
Then sighing, to the deep his looks he cast,
And rolled his eyes around the watery waste.
Sperchius! whose waves, in mazy errors lost,
Delightful roll along my native coast!
To whom we vainly vowed, at our return,
These locks to fall, and hecatombs to burn
So vowed my father, but he vowed in vain,
No more Achilles sees his native plain
In that vain hope these hairs no longer grow;
Patrocius bears them to the shades below.
POPE.
From Virgil we learn that the topmost lock of hair was dedicated to the infernal gods; see his account of the death of Dido: -
"Nondum illi flavum Proserpina vertice crinem
Abstulerat, Stygioque caput damnaverat orco--
-----------------------Hunc ego Diti
Sacrum jussa fero; teque isto corpore solvo.
Sic ait, et dextra crinem secat."
AEneid, lib. iv., ver. 698.
The sisters had not cut the topmost hair,
Which Proserpine and they can only know.
Nor made her sacred to the shades below-
This offering to the infernal gods I bear;
Thus while she spoke, she cut the fatal hair.
DRYDEN.
If the hair was rounded, and dedicated for purposes of this kind, it will at once account for the prohibition in this verse.
The corners of thy beard. — Probably meaning the hair of the cheek that connects the hair of the head with the beard. This was no doubt cut in some peculiar manner, for the superstitious purposes mentioned above. Several of our own countrymen wear this said hair in a curious form; for what purposes they know best: we cannot say precisely that it is the ancient Egyptian custom revived. From the images and paintings which remain of the ancient Egyptians, we find that they were accustomed to shave the whole hair off their face, except merely that upon the chin, which last they cut off only in times of mourning.
