BALDNESS — specifically a bald patch made by SHAVING the head as a mourning rite. Deuteronomy 14:1 forbids it ('you shall not make any baldness between your eyes for the dead') and Leviticus 21:5 forbids it to priests — yet the prophets keep commanding it as the fitting response to catastrophe (Isaiah 22:12; Jeremiah 16:6; Amos 8:10; Ezekiel 7:18). ⚠ Micah 1:16 turns it on the land as a bereaved mother: 'make yourself BALD… make your baldness wide as the vulture's, for your children have gone into exile' — shave your whole head bare, like the griffon-vulture's naked scalp, because your people are being deported. ⭐ Deuteronomy 14:1 is now on these pages, and the search behind this entry sharpens it: qorchah stands in ten verses of the Hebrew Bible and in the Torah in exactly TWO — Leviticus 21:5, where it is forbidden to the PRIESTS with the reason 'they shall be holy to their God', and Deuteronomy 14:1, where it is forbidden to EVERYONE with the reason 'you are a holy people to Jehovah your God' in the very next verse. A clergy rule handed to the congregation, rationale attached. ⚠ Deuteronomy also pairs it with a different cutting-verb than Leviticus does — gadad, not sarat — and locates it 'between your eyes', the one spot in the body the same book has twice told Israel to bind God's words to. → first discussed at Micah 1:16