You shall not shave around the sides of your heads, neither shall you disfigure the corners of your beard.
Read Chapter 19
George Leo Haydock
AD 1849
Cut your hair This, and other such like things, of themselves indifferent, were forbidden by God, that they might not imitate the Egyptians or other infidels, who practised these things out of superstition, in honour of their false deities. (Challoner)
The pagans consecrated locks of hair, and their beard, when it was first cut, to Apollo, the river gods, the hours, Esculapius Some, at Rome, hung the hair on a tree. (Tirinus)
The Arabians and Macæ left only a tuft of hair at the top of their head, in imitation of Bacchus. (Herodotus iii. 8.; iv. 175.) This tuft is called sisoe by the Septuagint who seem to have alluded o the Hebrew term tsitsith. See Ezechiel viii. 3. The ancient scholiast says, this was left in honour of Saturn. It resembled a crown. The same custom was observed by the Syrians, (Lucian) Idumeans (Jeremias ix. 25.)
Beard. Hebrew, "the angle, or extremity of your beard. "These regulations would seem beneath the attention of a lawgiver. But they were made in opposition to some profane customs of the surrounding nations. The Jews still observe this direction, and leave the beard from the ear to the chin, (where they let it grow pretty long) and also two mustaches, or whiskers, on the top lip. The Egyptian mummies have only the beard on the chin. The eyebrows and other hair of the gods and inhabitants of Egypt, were entirely cut off. In mourning the chin was also shaved. God forbids his people to imitate them. (Calmet)
But heretics need not hence infer, that the tonsure of priests and monks is reprehensible. (Radulph.)
Superstition and affected delicacy in curling, are to be avoided. (Tirinus)
