A
This is the verse I'm reading:
This is what Jamieson, Fassett and Brown's Commentary says:
I get making their heads bald or putting patterns in their hair and/or beard wasn't allowed. I get "cutting of flesh" is talking about tattoos or ritualistic scars. I'm missing "What superstitious marks of sorrow? Why sorrow and how sorrow? And what violent excesses in which the heathen indulged at the death of their friends? Like gang feuds? Doesn't seem the place for that in this verse. Or did the heathens do something weird (probably) when their friends died, like what we would call today self mutilation or cutting?"
These commentators keep talking like I'm supposed to know what the non-saved were doing back then, but, unless they out and out tell me, I've got no idea what the weirdo tradition of that day was to understand what they're talking about. Or maybe I'm just thick this morning, and any other day it would make sense to me.
Anyone up on this? Because they have me curious, but I have no idea how to find out what they're talking about.
Lev 21:5 They [the priest of the tabernacle] shall not make baldness upon their head, neither shall they shave off the corner of their beard, nor make any cuttings in their flesh.
They shall not make baldness upon their heads ... nor ... cuttings in their flesh — The superstitious marks of sorrow, as well as the violent excesses in which the heathen indulged at the death of their friends, were forbidden by a general law to the Hebrew people (Lev_19:28). But the priests were to be laid under a special injunction, not only that they might exhibit examples of piety in the moderation of their grief, but also by the restraint of their passions, be the better qualified to administer the consolations of religion to others, and show, by their faith in a blessed resurrection, the reasons for sorrowing not as those who have no hope.
I get making their heads bald or putting patterns in their hair and/or beard wasn't allowed. I get "cutting of flesh" is talking about tattoos or ritualistic scars. I'm missing "What superstitious marks of sorrow? Why sorrow and how sorrow? And what violent excesses in which the heathen indulged at the death of their friends? Like gang feuds? Doesn't seem the place for that in this verse. Or did the heathens do something weird (probably) when their friends died, like what we would call today self mutilation or cutting?"
These commentators keep talking like I'm supposed to know what the non-saved were doing back then, but, unless they out and out tell me, I've got no idea what the weirdo tradition of that day was to understand what they're talking about. Or maybe I'm just thick this morning, and any other day it would make sense to me.
Anyone up on this? Because they have me curious, but I have no idea how to find out what they're talking about.