Hair

Hair runs across UPDV scripture as a small but persistent index of identity, vow, mourning, glory, shame, and craft. It is counted by Yahweh, weighed by a king, used to wipe a Lord's feet, woven into the curtains of the tabernacle, and shorn or left to grow as a sign. The verses gather into several distinct movements that the page below tracks in turn.

Counted and Cared For

In the Lukan saying about sparrows, the hairs of the head become a figure for the precision of divine attention: "But the very hairs of your⁺ head are all numbered. Don't be afraid: you⁺ are of more value than many sparrows" (Lu 12:7). The plural-you marks this as said to disciples as a group; the assurance is that an attribute as ordinary and uncountable as a head of hair is in fact numbered.

A Woman's Hair as Glory

Pauline reasoning ties the length of a woman's hair to its function as covering and as glory. "But if a woman has long hair, it is a glory to her: for her hair is given to her for a covering" (1Co 11:15). The same chapter pairs hair with the veil: "every woman praying or prophesying with her head unveiled dishonors her head; for it is one and the same thing as if she were shaven" (1Co 11:5), and the consequence follows: "if a woman is not veiled, let her also be shorn: but if it is a shame to a woman to be shorn or shaven, let her be veiled" (1Co 11:6). The argument rests on the parallel between veiling and uncut hair.

A woman's hair appears again as the instrument of devotion in two scenes around the feet of Jesus. The unnamed weeping woman "began to wet his feet with her tears, and wiped them with the hair of her head, and kissed his feet, and anointed them with the ointment" (Lu 7:38). John identifies Mary by the same gesture: "And it was that Mary who anointed the Lord with ointment, and wiped his feet with her hair, whose brother Lazarus was sick" (Jn 11:2).

The apocalyptic locusts of Revelation borrow the figure of long women's hair as a recognizable feature: "And they had hair as the hair of women, and their teeth were as [the teeth] of lions" (Re 9:8).

Counsel about adornment treats elaborate hairstyles as a contrast to inward character rather than as the locus of beauty. "In like manner also, that women adorn themselves in modest apparel, with shamefastness and sobriety; not with braided hair, and gold or pearls or costly raiment" (1Ti 2:9); and again, "Whose [adorning] let it not be the outward adorning of braiding the hair, and of wearing jewels of gold, or of putting on apparel" (1Pe 3:3).

A Man's Hair, and Absalom's Weight

The reasoning that a woman's long hair is glory carries the corollary about men: "Does not even nature itself teach you⁺, that, if a man has long hair, it is a shame to him?" (1Co 11:14).

Long hair on a man can also mark royal vanity. Absalom's annual cutting is given a precise weight: "And when he cut the hair of his head (now it was at every year's end that he cut it; because it was heavy on him, therefore he cut it); he weighed the hair of his head at two hundred shekels, after the king's weight" (2Sa 14:26).

Hair and Fear

A single line in Job uses the bristling of hair as the body's response to a numinous encounter: "Then a spirit passed before my face; The hair of my flesh stood up" (Job 4:15).

The Beard

The beard, like the hair of the head, sits at the boundary of holiness and humiliation. The priestly code forbids marring it: "You⁺ will not round the corners of your⁺ heads, neither will you mar the corners of your beard" (Le 19:27); and concerning priests, "They will not make baldness on their head, neither will they shave off the corner of their beard, nor make any cuttings in their flesh" (Le 21:5).

Cleansing rites do require shaving: "And it will be on the seventh day, that he will shave all his hair off his head and his beard and his eyebrows, even all his hair he will shave off: and he will wash his clothes, and he will bathe his flesh in water, and he will be clean" (Le 14:9).

A beard registers a person's state. David feigns madness with spittle running down it: "he changed his behavior before them, and feigned himself insane in their hands, and scrabbled on the doors of the gate, and let his spittle fall down on his beard" (1Sa 21:13). Mephibaal mourns David's exile by leaving his beard untrimmed: "he had neither dressed his feet, nor trimmed his beard, nor washed his clothes, from the day the king departed until the day he came home in peace to Jerusalem" (2Sa 19:24). Ezra tears at the hair of his head and beard at the news of the people's faithlessness: "I rent my garment and my robe, and plucked off the hair of my head and of my beard, and sat down confounded" (Ezr 9:3).

The beard receives the priestly anointing oil as the sign of unity: "It is like the precious oil on the head, That ran down on the beard, Even Aaron's beard; That came down on the skirt of his garments" (Ps 133:2). And the violation of a beard is itself an injury — Hanun "took David's slaves, and shaved off the one half of their beards, and cut off their garments in the middle, even to their buttocks, and sent them away" (2Sa 10:4).

Baldness

The Levitical code distinguishes natural baldness from leprosy: "And if a man's hair falls off his head, he is bald; [yet] he is clean" (Le 13:40). But baldness deliberately self-inflicted as a mourning rite is forbidden: "You⁺ are the sons of Yahweh your⁺ God: you⁺ will not cut yourselves, nor make any baldness between your⁺ eyes for the dead" (De 14:1).

Outside the covenant community the gesture is everywhere as grief. "Moab wails over Nebo, and over Medeba; on all their heads is baldness, every beard is cut off" (Is 15:2). Tyre's mourners "will make themselves bald for you, and gird them with sackcloth, and they will weep for you in bitterness of soul with bitter mourning" (Eze 27:31). Baldness also reverses the ornament of the proud daughters of Zion: "instead of well set hair, baldness; and instead of a robe, a girding of sackcloth; branding instead of beauty" (Is 3:24).

The young men of Bethel mock Elisha with a taunt aimed at his head: "there came forth young lads out of the city, and mocked him, and said to him, Go up, you baldhead; go up, you baldhead" (2Ki 2:23).

Razor and Shaving

The razor is both a literal implement and a figure for cutting speech. Of the deceitful tongue: "Your tongue devises much wickedness, Like a sharp razor, working deceitfully" (Ps 52:2). And in prophetic threat the foreign king is the razor: "In that day the Lord will shave with a razor that is hired in the parts beyond the River, [even] with the king of Assyria, the head and the hair of the feet; and it will also consume the beard" (Is 7:20).

Shaving marks transitions. Joseph is shaved before being brought to Pharaoh: "and he shaved himself, and changed his raiment, and came in to Pharaoh" (Ge 41:14). Job, suddenly bereaved, "arose, and rent his robe, and shaved his head, and fell down on the ground, and worshiped" (Job 1:20). The Levites are consecrated by passing a razor over all their flesh: "let them cause a razor to pass over all their flesh, and let them wash their clothes, and cleanse themselves" (Nu 8:7). And the lesion in the leprosy code is contained by selective shaving: "then he will be shaven, but the lesion he will not shave" (Le 13:33).

Priestly hair is to be neither cropped close nor allowed to flow loose: "Neither will they shave their heads, nor allow their locks to grow long; they will only cut off the hair of their heads" (Eze 44:20).

Vow and Razor: The Nazarite

The Nazarite vow inverts the priestly mean by holding the razor back entirely for the duration of separation: "All the days of his vow of separation no razor will come upon his head: until the days be fulfilled, in which he separates himself to Yahweh, he will be holy; he will let the locks of the hair of his head grow long" (Nu 6:5). Sudden death-defilement during the vow forces the head to be shaved and the period to be restarted: "if any man dies very suddenly beside him, and he defiles the head of his separation; then he will shave his head in the day of his cleansing, on the seventh day he will shave it" (Nu 6:9).

Hair as Sign-Act

Ezekiel performs his prophecy with his own hair as the material of the sign. He is told: "take yourself a sharp sword; [as] a barber's razor you will take it to yourself, and will cause it to pass on your head and on your beard: then take yourself balances to weigh, and divide the hair" (Eze 5:1). The fate of the divided thirds is then enacted: "A third part you will burn in the fire in the midst of the city, when the days of the siege are fulfilled; and you will take a third part, and strike with the sword round about it; and a third part you will scatter to the wind, and I will draw out a sword after them" (Eze 5:2). The prophet's shaved head becomes a map of Jerusalem's siege.

Goats' Hair in the Tabernacle

Hair is also raw material. Goats' hair is named alongside dyed yarns and fine linen in the contributions for the sanctuary: "and blue, and purple, and scarlet, and fine linen, and goats' [hair]" (Ex 25:4); the same list recurs at Ex 35:6. The curtains for the tent above the tabernacle are made of it specifically: "And you will make curtains of goats' [hair] for a tent over the tabernacle: eleven curtains you will make them" (Ex 26:7); and the construction is carried out: "And he made curtains of goats' [hair] for a tent over the tabernacle: eleven curtains he made them" (Ex 36:14). After the Midianite war the cleansing rules extend to "every garment, and all that is made of skin, and all work of goats' [hair], and all things made of wood" (Nu 31:20).