Deuteronomy 14 · a question people ask
Does 14:1 mean God's people shouldn't grieve for their dead?
The verse names two acts: "You shall not cut yourselves, nor make any baldness between your eyes for the dead" (14:1). It doesn't forbid mourning, and the Bible tells of God's people mourning. Joseph "mourned for his father seven days" (Genesis 50:10). At the end of this book, "The children of Israel wept for Moses in the plains of Moab thirty days" (34:8). Later books speak of both acts for the dead. Jeremiah names them beside lamenting: "Men won’t lament for them, cut themselves, or make themselves bald for them" (Jeremiah 16:6). The prophets of Baal "cut themselves in their way with knives and lances until the blood gushed out on them" (1 Kings 18:28), with the same Hebrew verb as 14:1, though there it wasn't for the dead. The reason Moses gives is who Israel is: "You are the children of the LORD your God" (14:1), "a holy people to the LORD your God" (14:2).
The verses
“You are the children of the LORD your God. You shall not cut yourselves, nor make any baldness between your eyes for the dead. For you are a holy people to the LORD your God, and the LORD has chosen you to be a people for his own possession, above all peoples who are on the face of the earth.”
“They came to the threshing floor of Atad, which is beyond the Jordan, and there they lamented with a very great and severe lamentation. He mourned for his father seven days.”
“The children of Israel wept for Moses in the plains of Moab thirty days, until the days of weeping in the mourning for Moses were ended.”
“Both great and small will die in this land. They will not be buried. Men won’t lament for them, cut themselves, or make themselves bald for them.”