(20) Their locks to grow long.--The law forbade the shaving of the head (Leviticus 21:5), but only condemned letting the hair grow long by implication, providing for it in the exceptional case of the vow of the Nazarite. The prohibition of Ezekiel 44:21 is given in Leviticus 10:9.

Verse 20. - The next rubric concerned the mode in which the priests should wear their hair. It should neither be shaved nor worn long, thus avoiding excess on either side (compare for the first, Leviticus 21:5; and for the second, Leviticus 10:6; Leviticus 21:10, Revised Version), but should merely be polled. The obligation to let the hair grow freely was imposed upon the Nazarite only during the period of his vow (Numbers 6:5). The verb "to poll," or "cut" (כָּסַם), occurs nowhere else. Smend thinks what is here denied to the priests collectively is in the priest-code denied solely to the high priest (Leviticus 21:10, Revised Version; compare, however, Leviticus 10:6, Revised Version), and discovers in this a sign of the later origin of Leviticus. Ezekiel's raising the priesthood as a body to the rank of the high priest, of whom in connection with this temple is no trace, rather proves Ezekiel to have been later than Leviticus.

44:1-31 This chapter contains ordinances relative to the true priests. The prince evidently means Christ, and the words in ver. 2, may remind us that no other can enter heaven, the true sanctuary, as Christ did; namely, by virtue of his own excellency, and his personal holiness, righteousness, and strength. He who is the Brightness of Jehovah's glory entered by his own holiness; but that way is shut to the whole human race, and we all must enter as sinners, by faith in his blood, and by the power of his grace.Neither shall they shave their heads,.... As the priests and worshippers of Isis and Serapis did, as Jerom on the text observes; and as the Romish priests now do, from whom the Lord's faithful ministers must be distinguished:

nor suffer their locks to grow long; as the Nazarites, that a distinction might be preserved between those who were and were not such; or rather, after the manner of women, their locks hanging down, and flowing about their shoulders, as a token of levity, wantonness, effeminacy, pride, and vanity; see 1 Corinthians 11:14,

they shall only poll their heads; observe a medium between both; neither shave their heads close, nor let their hair grow long, but keep it in an even moderate length; for which reason godly men of the last age among us were called "round heads".