not make baldness This custom is also called {rounding the corners of the head}

Leviticus 19:27 You shall not round the corners of your heads, neither shall you mar the corners of your beard.

and seems to have been performed in honour of some idol

Leviticus 10:6 And Moses said to Aaron, and to Eleazar and to Ithamar, his sons, Uncover not your heads, neither rend your clothes; lest you die...

Leviticus 19:27,28 You shall not round the corners of your heads, neither shall you mar the corners of your beard...

Deuteronomy 14:1 You are the children of the LORD your God: you shall not cut yourselves, nor make any baldness between your eyes for the dead.

Isaiah 15:2 He is gone up to Bajith, and to Dibon, the high places, to weep: Moab shall howl over Nebo, and over Medeba...

Isaiah 22:12 And in that day did the Lord GOD of hosts call to weeping, and to mourning, and to baldness, and to girding with sackcloth:

Jeremiah 16:6 Both the great and the small shall die in this land: they shall not be buried, neither shall men lament for them, nor cut themselves...

Jeremiah 48:37 For every head shall be bald, and every beard clipped: on all the hands shall be cuttings, and on the loins sackcloth.

Ezekiel 44:20 Neither shall they shave their heads, nor suffer their locks to grow long; they shall only poll their heads.

Amos 8:10 And I will turn your feasts into mourning, and all your songs into lamentation; and I will bring up sackcloth on all loins...

Micah 1:16 Make you bald, and poll you for your delicate children; enlarge your baldness as the eagle; for they are gone into captivity from you.

the corner The Hebrew {peakth zakon}, may denote the whiskers; as the Syriac {phatho} signifies. These are by the Arabs, according to Niebuhr, still cut entirely off, or worn quite short; and hence they are called by Jeremiah, [], those with cropped whiskers. Perhaps some superstition, of which we are ignorant, was connected with this; but whether or not, it was the object of Moses to keep the Israelites distinct from other nations.