Bible Dictionaries
Hair

　　By primitive and ancient peoples in general, the hair ( ii. xv. 1). St. Paul would accordingly offer at Jerusalem the hair that had grown during the month since the vow began at Cenchreae. The same belief in the peculiar vitality of the hair may underlie the proverbial reference to it; ‘there shall not a hair perish from the head of any of you’ (Acts 27:34; cf. 1 Samuel 14:45, 2 Samuel 14:11, 1 Kings 1:52, Matthew 10:30, Luke 21:18), though the number and minuteness of the separate hairs are also implied.

　　The elaborate arrangement and adornment of the hair are found in primitive as well as in advanced civilizations (e.g. see the illustrations of male Fijians in Lubbock’s Origin of Civilization5, 1902, pl. ii. p. 68). The art was highly developed amongst Greek and Roman women, as may be seen from coins, etc., belonging to this period (reproductions in Seyffert, Dict. of Classical Antiquities9, 1906, pp. 266, 267; J. E. Sandys, A Companion to Latin Studies, 1910, p. 198), Ovid, in his instructions to Roman ladies on the art of winning lovers, emphasizes the effect of an artistic and appropriate arrangement of the hair (de art. Am. iii. 136f.; cf. Bigg, St. Peter and St. Jude, 1901, p. 152). Judith ‘braided the hair of her head’ when she set out to fascinate Holofernes (Judith 10:3), and there are Talmudic references to the art (Buxtorf’s Lexicon, 1639, col. 389; Cheyne, Encyclopaedia Biblicaκόμη), Nature’s covering, he says, shows that the veil should be employed; to be unveiled is no better than to be shorn (vv. 5, 6). The same sexual difference is in view in the description of the Apocalyptic locusts: ‘they had hair as the hair of women’ (Revelation 9:8). In the Apocalyptic vision of Christ, His hair is said to be ‘while as white wool, as snow’ (Revelation 1:14), a detail of dignity borrowed from the OT picture of Jahweh, as ‘ancient of days’ (Daniel 7:9).

　　H. Wheeler Robinson.