What Does the Bible Say About Tattoos?
Taboo tattoos
Torah Scroll. What is said about tattoos in the Bible? Leviticus, the third book of the Hebrew Bible, prohibits them without giving an explicit reason. Why does the Bible prohibit tattoos? Photo: “Open Torah and Pointer” by Lawrie Cate is licensed under CC-by-SA-2.0.
What does the Bible say about tattoos?
Leviticus 19:28 says, “You shall not make any gashes in your flesh for the dead or tattoo any marks upon you: I am the LORD.” Although this passage clearly prohibits tattoos, it does not give an explicit reason why. This begs the question: Why does the Bible prohibit tattoos?
In his Biblical Views column “Unholy Ink: What Does the Bible Say about Tattoos?” Mark W. Chavalas, Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, examines the taboo on tattoos in the Bible. Not only does he analyze traditional explanations for this prohibition, but he also investigates what tattoos signified to ancient Near Eastern peoples, including the ancient Israelites, which suggests the real reason why tattoos were taboo.
Leviticus 19 denounces idolatry and several pagan mourning practices. Some have thought that because of the proximity of the taboo on tattoos to the prohibition of other pagan mourning practices in Leviticus, tattooing must have been a pagan mourning practice. However, we find no evidence of this in ancient texts from the Levant, Mesopotamia or Egypt. As far as we can tell, tattooing was not an ancient mourning practice in these cultures.
This is not to give the impression that tattooing never appears in ancient Near Eastern texts; it does—just not as a mourning practice. In the ancient Near East, tattoos were used to mark slaves. Often the name of a slave’s owner would be tattooed or branded on his hand or forehead. If then the slave were to run away, he could be easily returned to his master. Thus, tattooing was seen as a sign of ownership.
Chavalas thinks that this might be behind the taboo on tattoos in the Bible:
“Tattooing, an insignia of ownership, was perhaps condemned in Leviticus because it reminded them [the Israelites] of their past. After all, they had just spent the last four centuries as slaves in Egypt, where tattooing was also used as a sign of slavery. No longer considered slaves, the Israelites now were prohibited to mark their bodies with permanent signs of servitude to former masters. This did not have to be explicitly articled to them; no one need ask prison inmates why they shed their orange jumpsuits when they are no longer incarcerated.”
Chavalas also notes that there might be a positive reference to tattoos in the Bible. Isaiah 44:5 reads:
This one will say, “I am the LORD’s,”
another will be called by the name of Jacob,
yet another will write on the hand, “The LORD’s,”
and adopt the name of Israel.
By writing God’s name on his hand, the Israelite in Isaiah 44:5 “was willingly proposing to become a servant of God.” At least in this case, it seems that tattooing was acceptable because the person was marking himself as belonging to the God of Israel.
To learn more about tattoos in the Bible, read Mark Chavalas’s full column “Unholy Ink: What Does the Bible Say about Tattoos?” in the November/December 2016 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review.
Subscribers: Read the full Biblical Views column “Unholy Ink: What Does the Bible Say about Tattoos?” by Mark Chavalas in the November/December 2016 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review.
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This Bible History Daily feature was originally published on October 31, 2016.
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“4 “On that day every prophet will be ashamed of his vision when he prophesies. He will not put on a hairy cloak in order to deceive, 5 but he will say, ‘I am no prophet, I am a worker of the soil, for a man sold me in my youth.’ 6 And if one asks him, ‘What are these wounds on your back?’ he will say, ‘The wounds I received in the house of my friends.’” – Zechariah 13
Thank you Heather, for your response. I totally agree. People like Norman who choose to add on to the bible when it suits them and chastise scholars who dare to actually ask questions are really missing the bigger picture. Most people like that don’t want to be bothered by new discoveries and insights. They just want to stay in their own little judgemental ignorant world.
It’s clear, at least to me, that it was because of false idol worship. They didn’t want them on people’s bodies.
It’s fairly obvious to me that tattooing was a practice of pagans for whatever reason, and the Israelites were forbidden to emulate them.
So it occurs to me that perhaps the adult male Israelites, having been slaves, were tattooed, and that this was a subtext for them all dying in the desert, so that no one with a slave tattoo would enter the promised land…
What do you think about allowing graffiti on the White House, the Capitol or any of those precious buildings? (Precious at men’s eyes…)
What do you think about putting graffiti on the temple of the Holy Spirit? (Precious at God’s eyes…)
1 Corinthians 6:19-20New International Version (NIV)
19 Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own;
This seems more of a customary law and not a moral law that Jesus said in Matthew 5:19-48. Jesus never said we are to keep the customary laws or right standing laws as he fulfilled it on the cross. The Jewish customs during their century does not apply in this century.
The prohibition on tattoos is related to the prohibition on desecrating the body. Two examples: 1. One cannot be buried in a Jewish cemetery if their body contains a tattoo; 2. A Jewish body is never embalmed nor cremated as these two acts also desecrate the body.
I would think that the core of the prohibitions against decorative scarification, tattooing, piercings, and cutting the hair, even makeup, is due to man insisting that he can do better than Hashem, as to how man appears to the eye.
In the Eyes of Hashem, each one of us was fashioned exactly as He chooses to make us. And he has made each one of us with the potential to be perfect, albeit in His eyes. No man can possibly improve upon the Hand of Hashem; it is arrogance and conceit, two grave errors, to think it even possible. .
We ostracize yet today. Ever visit someplace and view a tattooed person, especially a lady (girl?), and have the thought run across one’s mind: “Oh, there goes a person of a lower class than I am.”
This one will say, “I am the LORD’s,”
another will be called by the name of Jacob,
yet another will write on the hand, “The LORD’s,”
and adopt the name of Israel.
‘ By writing God’s name on his hand, the Israelite in Isaiah 44:5 “was willingly proposing to become a servant of God.” At least in this case, it seems that tattooing was acceptable because the person was marking himself as belonging to the God of Israel.’
I don’t buy this theory at all. It doesn’t make sense that the Bible would say to never mark up your skin in one passage and then completely contradict itself in another.
Therefore, the ‘writing’ is referring to something else other than a tattoo.
Here’s a complete different opinion on the subject of whether or not Christians can have a tattoo:
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