Deuteronomy 14:1-2
The Lord's people must let their identity as His holy and treasured children govern even the way they grieve death and inhabit their bodies before Him.
1 You are the children of Yahweh your God. You shall not cut yourselves, nor make any baldness between your eyes for the dead.
2 For you are a holy people to Yahweh your God, and Yahweh has chosen you to be a people for his own possession, above all peoples who are on the face of the earth.
The LORD's people must let their identity as His holy and treasured children govern even the way they grieve death and inhabit their bodies before Him.
Moses grounds Israel's bodily and mourning practices in covenant identity: they are children of the LORD their God, a holy people, chosen from all peoples as His treasured possession. Therefore Israel must not imitate pagan death rituals that disfigure the body or express grief in ways inconsistent with belonging to the living LORD.
Moses addresses Israel on the plains of Moab before entry into Canaan. The surrounding nations practiced mourning rites that could include self-laceration and shaving associated with the dead. Israel, however, has been redeemed by the LORD, chosen from among the peoples, and set apart as His holy possession; therefore even grief must be distinguished from pagan ritual identity.
Sons of the LORD: Clean Food, Holy People, and the Tithe That Teaches Covenant Economics
Because Israel is a holy people — sons of the LORD their God — the way they eat, mourn, and distribute their material increase must embody and rehearse that identity: the food distinctions mark the boundary between Israel and the nations, the tithe rehearses before the LORD that all increase belongs to him and produces the joy of communal abundance at the chosen place, and the third-year tithe extends that abundance to those with no share — the Levite, the sojourner, the fatherless, and the widow.