18-Shaving the Beard by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Sep 15, 1914

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 31, No. 36.

18—Shaving the Beard

By Editor

Rev. 13:17 reads, "And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name." Would the shaving off of the beard constitute a mark of the beast? F. L. B.

The instruction which God gives to His children regarding the cutting of the hair, etc., was that He would not have His people appear as idolaters. According to the idolatrous religions, there seem to have been those who indicated their kind of worship and the class to which they belonged by the trimming or cutting of the hair or beard. See Jer. 9:26; 25:23, A. R. V.; Eze. 44:20.

On the other hand, there were times when the Lord's children would cut their hair and shave. See Jer. 7:29; Amos 8:10; Num. 6:18; Acts 18:18; 21:24. From these texts it will be seen that it is not the mere cutting of the hair or the shaving of the head or the shaving of the beard that the Lord prohibited, but that in this they should not appear like the idolatrous worshippers around them. With the idolaters it was a mark of submission to a certain god or religion. The ordinary shaving of the beard in these days has nothing to do with religion or religious cults of any kind. Some men wear it one way and some another, regardless of religion; and in that case it could not be regarded as the mark of the beast. It is simply the taste, convenience, or necessity of the individual.