@stillstuckcruz:
So why is there no facial hair other than the top allowed? Obviously some would say for overall neatness but technically [unscriptural]. Other verses in Lev chapter 19 are used to make moral points.
I couldn't tell from your question if you were just interested in folks speculating as to the reason(s) God commanded His people to not cut their hair or beard (1 Timothy 1:3-7; Leviticus 19:27), but, without speculating as to what God's reasons may have been, what I can say and will say is that Jehovah wanted His people to stand out as being different by the people of surrounding nations, for they would eventually come to know God's holiness through the way His own people conducted themselves. So if a man would trim the hair on his head or clip the hair of his beard in a way that was peculiar to the uncircumcised nations, then God did not want them to behave like them. (Jeremiah 9:25, 26; 49:32) Consider the following passage from 2 Kings 17:7, 8, 12, 15, 17:
"And it came about because the sons of Israel had sinned against Jehovah their God, ... and they began to fear other gods; and they kept walking in the statutes of the nations whom Jehovah had driven out from before the sons of Israel, and in the statutes of the kings of Israel that they had made; ... And they continued to serve dungy idols, concerning which Jehovah had said to them: 'You must not do this thing'; ... and they continued rejecting his regulations and his covenant that he had concluded with their forefathers and his reminders with which he had warned them, and they went following vain idols and became vain themselves, even in imitation of the nations that were all around them, concerning whom Jehovah had commanded them not to do like them ... and they kept selling themselves to do what was bad in the eyes of Jehovah, to offend him."
Adam decided that he could join the rebellion in Eden and make up his own "statutes" where it seemed that God's commandment to Him to not eat from a particular tree seemed extremely off-putting to him, especially since He was certain that he could decide for himself, like a god, such matters, but of course he didn't realize that his willingness to obey God in what he may have viewed as being a little thing was being tested. It wasn't "a little thing" to disobey God.
If I cannot trust Junior to come to my home every Wednesday, and using my van to pick up my mother at 1:00 pm to take her to see her doctor at 1:30 pm and driving her back home by 2:30 pm after her appointment so that she is home when her physical therapist arrives at 3:00 pm, while leaving my van in its parking place, because he gets to her home later than 1:00 pm and makes her late for her doctor's appointment and makes the therapist have to wait until she finally arrives after 3:00 pm (a little thing), I would certainly not trust that Junior would pick up my clients from the airport in the company limousine on time and get them back to the airport on time to catch their flights on time from Monday thru Friday either.
Whatever God's reason(s), they were His commandments, His statutes, His regulations, and they had entered into a covenant with Him "not to do like them," but to obey Him as their God. This included God's command for them to not be cutting their hair or beard in a manner "like them," like the way in which the uncircumcised nations were cutting their hair or clipping their beards. What difference does it make what God's reasons were? Our own children may not know why we tell them not to do something and we expect then to obey us regardless of what they know or think they know, and we don't view it as just being "a little thing" if they should decide to disobey us, do we?
The point that can be made here is that it is never "a little thing" to disobey God.
@djeggnog
