By the end of 1656, Spinoza was twenty-four years old. From the descriptions provided by Brother Tomas and Captain Maltranilla three years later, he seems to have been a good-looking young man, with an unmistakably Mediterranean appearance. According to the friar, Spinoza was “a small man, with a beautiful face, a pale complexion, black hair and black eyes.” The officer adds that he had “a well-formed body, thin, long black hair, a small moustache of the same color, a beautiful face.” The German philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, who visited Spinoza in 1676, described him as having “an olive-colored complexion, with something Spanish in his face.” Portraits from the period that are purportedly of Spinoza (including one by the famous chronicler of his artistic contemporaries, a kind of Dutch Vasari, Samuel Van Hoogstraten) show a long, thin, beardless face with a coloring that confirms these reports. Spinoza was never in robust health. He suffered from a respiratory ailment for most of his life – perhaps something akin to what was responsible for his mother's early death – and his thinness and pallor (Tomas describes him as blanco) were no doubt a reflection of this.

Spinoza was gone from the Vlooienburg district soon after his excommunication; he may even have left the neighborhood well before the cherem was pronounced against him. By the terms of the cherem, his family and friends were required to break off all relations with him.