26 Ye shall not eat any thing with the blood: neither shall ye use enchantment, nor observe times. 

27 Ye shall not round the corners of your heads, neither shalt thou mar the corners of thy beard. 

28 Ye shall not make any cuttings in your flesh for the dead, nor print any marks upon you: I am the Lord.

Today’s first verse is clearly referring to pagan rituals and magic. It follows that the next two verses are also related to those practices. It seems unlikely “rounding the corners of your head,” (cutting the hair in a particular pattern) is inherently evil, but that at the time was associated with an idolatrous practice that the Israelites must not align themselves with.

Verse 28 is also clearly referring to pagan practices, cutting one’s flesh for the dead is some sort of perverse ritual, and “print any marks” (tattoos) was presumably putting pagan symbols or words on oneself. However, these two are a distinctive subcategory, having to do with harming one’s body, in some cases permanently. We do not receive commandments prohibiting these practices generally, but we also have no positive examples of them elsewhere in the Bible. Other negative examples do exist, such as the priests of Baal cutting themselves during their competition with Elijah in 1 Kings 18:28. Many, myself included, take the idea of our bodies as a temple (1 Corinthians 6:19) as an imperative to treat our flesh with dignity and respect, precluding deliberate harm to it. in any case, what we are left with from today’s verses is a guiding principle, and the requirement to use our own conscience, good reasoning, and prayer to determine how we wish to honor the bodies God created for us.