Jeremiah 16:6

Nor cut themselves— The cutting of their own flesh, as a mark of grief for their deceased friends and relations, though expressly forbidden to the Jews by the law, Leviticus 19:28. Deuteronomy 14:1 appears from hence to have been still in use among them as well as among their neighbours, on this and other occasions of great mourning and affliction. See ch. Jeremiah 41:5 and compare chap. Jeremiah 47:5 Jeremiah 48:37. The like practice attendant on funeral obsequies has been found among people lately discovered in the South Seas. "The New Zealanders have deep furrows marked on their foreheads. These were cut, in the frenzy of their grief, with a sharp shell, for the loss of their friends and relations. The Otaheitan women wound the crown of the head under the hair with a shark's tooth, to prove the sincerity of their grief: and the ancient Huns wounded their cheeks, on all occasions, where they wanted to testify their grief for the loss of a great man or a relation." Forster's Observations, p. 588. It is curious to remark, and to investigate the cause of such corresponding usages in nations so widely distant from each other.

Nor make themselves bald for them— Cutting off the hair was a still more general practice among mankind as a token of mourning. See Bishop Lowth's Note on Isaiah 15:2. Forster, in his Observations, p. 560 speaks of "the hair cut off, and thrown on the bier" at Otaheite. And at the Friendly Islands, it is expressly said, that "cutting off the hair is one of their mourning ceremonies." Narrative of Cook's and Clarke's Voyage, vol. 1: p. 112.—This also was forbidden by the Mosaic law, at the same time and on the same principles as the foregoing one. The hair is the natural ornament of the head, and the loss of it a considerable defect in the human figure. It was, therefore, not to be voluntarily assumed by those whose profession obliged them to "worship JEHOVAH in the beauty of holiness." At what time the observance of the law in these particulars began to be relaxed, does not appear; but I do not recollect any traces of such customs among God's chosen people, earlier than those which are alluded to in the prophetical books properly so called.