they shave their head, nor their beard, nor make incisions in their flesh.) S. Jerome, however, tells us that the custom persisted. For he says in his Commentary on Jeremias, xvi. 6, which may be dated 415-420:[27] “Mos hic fuit apud ueteres, et usque hodie in quibusdam permanet Iudaeorum, ut in luctibus incidant lacertos, et caluitium faciant, quod Iob fecisse legimus.”[28] And yet these observances had been, as we saw, most sternly forbidden, nay, and that most emphatically and more than once. Thus in Deuteronomy they are sternly reprobated as smacking of the grossest superstition: “Non comedetis cum sanguine. Non augurabimini, nec obseruabitis somnia. Neque in rotundum attondebitis comam: nec radetis barbam. Et super mortuo non incidetis carnem uestram, neque figuras aliquas, aut stigmata facietis uobis. Ego Dominus.” (You shall not eat with blood. You shall not divine nor observe dreams. Nor shall you cut your hair round-wise: nor shave your beard. You shall not make any cuttings in your flesh, for the dead, neither shall you make in yourselves any figures or marks: I am the Lord.) “Filii estote Domini Dei uestri: non uos incidetis, nec facietis caluitium super mortuo. Quoniam populus sanctus es Domino Deo tuo: et te elegit ut sis ei in populum peculiarem de cunctis gentibus, quae sunt super terram.” (Be ye children of the Lord your God: you shall not cut yourselves, nor make any baldness for the dead; because thou art a holy people to the Lord thy God: and he chose thee to be his peculiar people of all nations that are upon the earth.)
Presumably these two customs were thus sternly prohibited as largely borrowed by the Jews from the Pagan people around them, who might indeed as having no hope make such extravagant and even indecent exhibition of their mourning for the departed, but which practices would at the least be highly unbecoming in the chosen people of Jehovah. Assuredly, even if they go no deeper, these observances are tainted with such savagery and seem so degrading that it is not surprising to find ordinances among other peoples, for instance the code of Solon at Athens, forbidding mourners to wound and scratch their faces and persons. The laws of the Ten Tables also which were largely based on this earlier legislation do not permit women to tear and disfigure their faces during the funeral rites. These two customs, shaving the head and
