CUTHA (A Koved, B om., AV Coutha), 1 Ea S". — His sons were among the temple servants who returned from Babylon with Zerubbabel. There is no corresponding name in the lists of Ezra and Neh. The name may be taken from the Babylonian town Cuthah or Cuth (2 K 17"- *').
H St J Thackeray
CUTTINGS IN THE FLESH.— i. In the legisla- tion of Dt (IJ) and in the corpus known as the 'Law of Holiness' (H), the Hebrews are for- bidden to 'cut themselves' (n-iinn tiV Dt 14') or to ' make any cutting' (lit. an incision o-jy Lv 19", noi? Lv 21°, LXX iirroidt) in their flesh 'for the dead.' The prohibition in question is aimed at one of the most widely-spread tokens of grief at the loss of relatives or friends. To scratch and beat one's self to the eflusion of blood, nay, to gash and hack one's self of set purpose, may be said to be an all but universal custom among un- civilized and semi-civilized races at the present day. It must suffice to refer to such well-known works as Waltz's Anthropologie der Naturvolker [passim), and H. Spencer's Principles of Sociology, 3rd ed. vol. i. pp. 16311., 277, 292, etc. (see also authorities named at the close of this art.). The prevalence of the custom is equally attested for nearly all the nations of antiquity, the Egyptians being the most notable exception (Herod, ok. ii. 61, 85 ; Wilkinson, Anc. Egyp. [1854] vol. ii. p. 374). Thus Herodotus tells us that the Scythians of his time on the death of their king ' cut oil" their ears, shear their hair, and make incisions all over(irfpird/t- coiTai) their arms' (iv. 71). Xenophon gives a similar account of the Armenians and Assyrians {Cyrop. iii. 1. 13). The legislation of Solon, aco. to Plutarch, forbade the women of Athens to beat themselves to the elliision of blood (d/iwx4» norro- tUvuv . . . i<t>e!\fy, Sol. 21), and the same is affirmed of the laws of the Twelve Tables (' mulieres genas ne radunto' — quoted by Cicero, de Leg. ii. 23). Among the ancient Arabs, further, the practice forbidden at Athens and Rome was associated, as it was among the Heb. (see below), with the cuttinjj otr of Wie htdx (Kitdb ol-AghAni, xiv. 101, 28 — this and other reU'. in Wellh. Skizzen, iii. 160 f.). Thus the poet Lebid 'says to his daughters, When I die, do not scratch your faces or shave oft your hair,' xxi. 4 [ed. Huber and Brockelmann].* The earliest reference to this custom of making cuttings in the flesh among the Hebrews is in what appears to be the orig. reading in Hos 7" (see RVm), where several MSS (see De Rossi, Var. Leett. Vet. Test, in lor.) have n"n:n', which was also the reading of the (Jreek translators (itamWM- vorrai). It was widely prevalent in tlie time of Jeremiah, not only among his countni'men of the South (16*) and those of tlie central highlands
* Quoted by Driver, Comm. on Deut. 14^, p. 166, from a MS note of the lat« Professor W. R. Smith.
588 CUTXmGS IN THE FLESH
CUTTINGS IN THE FLESH
(41'), but also among the neighbouring Philistines (47'), and Moabites ' upon all the hands shall be cuttings' n'n-jj 48". The passages cited, taken along with the abundant evidence for the usually associ- ated practice of shaving the head (Am 8'", Is 3" 15^22", Mic 1", Jer 48", Ezk 7"), clearly prove that the customs in question were universally practised by the Hebrews in pre-exilic times. And further, the remarkable phraseology of Is 22" ' J" called to weeping and to mourning and to baldness' (with which cf. Mic 1"), seems to show that the prohibi- tion of D was unknown in the age of Hezekiah. The attitude of this code to both the above-men- tioned practices is very decide ' Ye shall not cut yourselves, nor make any baniness between your eyes for the dead ' (Dt 14'). H, incorporated in the priestly legislation of P, re-states the pro- hibition in more technical language, both for the people generally (Lv 19^) and d fortiori for the priests in particular (21').
ii. When we inquire as to the raison d'Hre of these prohibitions we find considerable difference of opinion. We may, however, at once set aside as entirely inadequate the view that their purpose was to restrain that exuberance of emotion which the Hebrews shared with other Oriental peoples ; in other words, to prohibit certain extravagant mani- festations of grief as such. To say, for example, that ' the practices here (Dt 14') named seem to be forbidden . . . because such excessee of grief would be inconsistent in those who as children of a heavenly Father had prospects beyond this world ' {Speaker's Comm. on Dt 14'), is quite unscientific, inasmuch as considerations are here introduced altogether foreign to this stage of revelation. Nor yet ia it sufficient to regard these prohibitions — for we must remember that artificial baldness and tattooing the skin (see below) stand in the same category with the more drastic cuttings in the flesh — as primarily directed against the disfigure- ment of the human body which is God's handi- work. It cannot be denied that both the explana- tions just adduced have a certain amount of force and truth, but they do not seem to reach the original significance of the prohibitions in question.