There are not many Bible verses about tattoos, but there are some references in the Bible, so we'll just start with looking at the word of God.
I want you to look at Leviticus 19:28.
Leviticus 19:28 says,
“Ye shall not make any cuttings in your flesh for the dead, nor print any marks upon you: I am the Lord.”
You need to understand the context of this. When we look in the Bible, in these sections of the Old Testament, God had taken a people out of Egypt. His people Israel were in bondage in Egypt, and not just in slavery to Egyptians, but also to it’s occult pagan ways or powers.
So after the 10 plagues, by the time it got to the end, the people in the nation were aware that the power of God was greater than the power of the gods that the Egyptians served.
Notice this: the final miracle, that got the people of God released, was the shedding of blood. In Exodus 12, everyone had to slay a lamb, they had to apply the blood of the lamb to their house, to their building, and only then would they be protected from a destroying angel.
So we find that Israel was delivered out of a land full of idolatry, witchcraft and spiritism. Occult powers were immensely strong in Egypt. If you read the story of Moses' confrontation with the wizards of Egypt, you find that some of the first miracles he did, they were able to duplicate. He threw a stick down on the ground that turned into a snake - they threw their sticks down, and they also turned into snakes. That is some occultic power! So the first three miracles that Moses did, the wizards of Egypt, operating in sorcery and occult powers, were able to duplicate them.
Perhaps what isn't known so much is that the Egyptians were worshippers of Baal, the sun god; and part of the Baal worship involved both men and women being tattooed, as a sign of ownership and allegiance to that god.
Now when this verse comes up here in Leviticus, God is about to bring His people into the Promised Land, Canaan.
So when you look into the Bible, about what they were doing in this land, there was strong and huge occultic involvement. The nations worshipped Baal. They worshipped Ashtoreth; so they worshipped the gods of the sun, they worshipped the gods of the storm and the winds and the weather, they worshipped the gods of Fertility, and they had tremendous perverse acts went with it - and they got themselves tattooed.
It was part of the allegiance to their gods that they had the tattoos. A tattoo's just a mark in ink, but actually it's what it opens your life to, is what's important.
So when God gives this command, He's talking in the context of making sure you don't get defiled by demonic powers. Notice what He says here:
Verse 4 - “Do not turn to idols, nor make yourself moulded gods, for I am the Lord your God”.
Verse 28 – “You shall not make any cuttings in your flesh. Don't mark, cut or destroy or blemish your flesh for the dead; nor any tattoo marks on you, for I am the Lord”.
You go down a little further, and then He begins to talk more in Exodus 20:1, He talks about then the practices in the land; so this scripture on tattooing is set in the context of occult involvement that went on in Egypt, and went on in Canaan.
God was quite strong, and very forceful, in His directions about being involved in the occult. He said: “do not be defiled by them”. Do not do any of these abominations. In other words, do not open your life to occult practices in any way - you will give room for demonic powers to enter your life.
So the reason that God set this principle in place was because He knew the connection between: tattooing, and the occult realm. He wanted to keep His people free from occult involvement, so that they could walk in the blessings and inherit their land.
So the only other places that there are references to this kind of thing - of the cutting of the flesh - are found in 1 Kings 18. Remember the story when Elijah had a confrontation with the prophets of Baal; and when he had a confrontation with them, he called on them to demonstrate the power, the supernatural power of their gods.
What they did was, they began to cut their flesh! They made themselves bleed; and he just mocked them and belittled them; and then demonstrated the true power of a covenant keeping God.
In the New Testament, there's a story of a man called the Gadarene, in Mark 5. When we looked at that man, he was heavily demonised. He had a legion of demons in him - that's thousands of demons. Here's the interesting thing it said: “when he came near Jesus, the demons began to manifest” - and the guy used to cut himself! So you notice the cutting, the marking of the flesh, in the Bible, is continually associated with the occult realm, and with bondage, or slavery, or servitude to that.
So in a number of places in the Bible, it talks about the issue of blood, and bloodshed. When God began a walk with Abraham, one of the things He required Abraham to do was to cut a covenant with Him.
A covenant is the most strong, or the most binding, agreement that could be made between two people; or between a person and God. God is a covenant-keeping God; so covenants in the Bible are important.
God instructed him how to make a covenant, and it involved these things: there was a sacrifice, there was a loss of an animal, an animal shed its life; so he killed the animal, and cut it in two, and the blood was sprinkled there.
Then the two people making a covenant would walk between the two parts of the animal, and various promises were made, or commitments were made; but a blood covenant, or a covenant - one of the things that characterise covenants in the Bible: always there was the shedding of blood.
So when you see any practice that involves the shedding of blood, you are looking at covenant formation. Anything that deliberately involves the shedding of blood, involves the forming of a covenant. A covenant is a binding agreement between two people, which gives legal rights and entitlements.
Now let me give you one other example, that's an interesting one, found in the area of marriage. Now the first time when a couple come together, and they make a marriage covenant - they come up the aisle. It's not something that people thought up - a wedding is a covenantal commitment to one another. It's not just living together. It's a covenantal commitment; so when two people become married, what they do is they meet together, and they make a covenant with one another.
They speak to one another declaring their relationship, declaring their commitment. They do it publicly, so people hear it, and see it, and then you sign the book. They sign the register, and they are married - except for one thing: if they do not have sexual intercourse, it's considered legally that they're not married - and the marriage can be annulled immediately.
The first time that a woman has sexual intercourse with a man, God has designed the woman, and created a woman, so that in the first act of intercourse, there is the breaking of the hymen, and the shedding of blood - shedding of blood. Shedding of blood in the first act of intercourse is evidence that a covenant has been formed.
So every time in the Bible that you see references to the shedding of blood, it is about a covenant - two people being bonded together. In fact it was so important in the Bible, in Deuteronomy 22:15, that if there was ever doubt that a woman had been a virgin before she was married, if a husband became cranky and got complaining about his wife, and said she wasn't a virgin - that she'd had other men - the parents would bring the bedclothes, from the first night they had sexual intercourse, with the blood marks on them, and they would call them the „Tokens of Virginity‟. They would present this as proof that she was a virgin on the night she was married.
So consistently through the Bible, the shedding of blood is connected to covenant formation; and a tattoo - so what happens in a tattoo? On a tattoo, you use a needle or some kind of cutting instrument. It can be a chisel, or it can be a needle that's moving very, very fast, and what it does is - it penetrates the flesh, blood is shed.
You'll see when a tattoo is being done, they're continually wiping away the blood that comes. The skin is being pierced. What is happening is now there is pain, there's sacrifice, and there is bloodshed. You can't escape it - that when blood is shed, there is some kind of covenant form.
Among the North American Indians, if you wanted to enter into a covenant with a person, you cut the hand, and you touch the blood, one against another, and you became blood brothers. Now this is a worldwide phenomenon. This is not just something that's really cool, and 'in' to do. This whole issue of tattoos goes back to as far as they can find data and information; and so I did a little bit of research on it, to find out some information about it. So if you want to find out the root of something, go and have a look at where it came from, and what it's been used like, and follow and track it's record.
(Note: The source link for this article is provided at the end of my next post):