Deuteronomy 14:1
Translations
King James Version (KJV)
You are the children of the LORD your God: you shall not cut yourselves, nor make any baldness between your eyes for the dead.
American King James Version (AKJV)
You are the children of the LORD your God: you shall not cut yourselves, nor make any baldness between your eyes for the dead.
American Standard Version (ASV)
Ye are the children of Jehovah your God: ye shall not cut yourselves, nor make any baldness between your eyes for the dead.
Basic English Translation (BBE)
You are the children of the Lord your God: you are not to make cuts on your bodies or take off the hair on your brows in honour of the dead;
Webster's Revision
Ye are the children of the LORD your God: ye shall not cut yourselves, nor make any baldness between your eyes for the dead.
World English Bible
You are the children of Yahweh your God: you shall not cut yourselves, nor make any baldness between your eyes for the dead.
English Revised Version (ERV)
Ye are the children of the LORD your God: ye shall not cut yourselves, nor make any baldness between your eyes for the dead.
Clarke's Deuteronomy 14:1 Bible Commentary
Ye are the children of the Lord - The very highest character that can be conferred on any created beings; ye shall not cut yourselves, i. e., their hair, for it was a custom among idolatrous nations to consecrate their hair to their deities, though they sometimes also made incisions in their flesh.
Barnes's Deuteronomy 14:1 Bible Commentary
Make any baldness between your eyes - i. e. by shaving the forepart of the head and the eyebrows. The practices named in this verse were common among the pagan, and seem to be forbidden, not only because such wild excesses of grief (compare 1 Kings 18:28) would be inconsistent in those who as children of a heavenly Father had prospects beyond this world, but also because these usages themselves arose out of idolatrous notions.
Wesley's Deuteronomy 14:1 Bible Commentary
14:1 Of the Lord - Whom therefore you must not disparage by unworthy or unbecoming practices. Ye shall not cut yourselves - Which were the practices of idolaters, both in the worship of their idols, in their funerals, and upon occasion of public calamities. Is not this like a parent's charge to his little children, playing with knives, "Do not cut yourselves!" This is, the intention of those commands, which obliges us to deny ourselves. The meaning is, Do yourselves no harm! And as this also is, the design of cross providences, to remove from us those things by which we are in danger of doing ourselves harm.