This year we've walked with Abram up from Ur 'round the Fertile Crescent to Canaan; taken a questionable trip to Egypt and back; watched him part ways with his nephew; seen him raise an army to rescue that same nephew and his neighbors; accept a blessing from Melchizedek; show a faith in God worth reckoning as righteousness; enter a covenant with this trustworthy God; and then play fast and loose with his marriage, yet again, to try and make for himself the heir he was promised. The Bible stuffs all these things into an eleven-year window in the man's lengthy life. But this chapter opens thirteen years later, “when Abram was a son of ninety-nine years,” by which time his faith unto righteousness is further in the rear-view mirror than Ur was when last we saw him. Having been quiet all this time, now again, out of the blue, “the LORD appeared to Abram” (Genesis 17:1).
What does God have to say? “I am God Almighty; walk before me, and be blameless” (Genesis 17:1). Faced with the Almighty, Abram is obligated to be a subject of the King of Kings. To walk before him is a demand for “absolute loyalty” to “condition the entire range of human experience by the awareness of his presence and in response to his demands.”1 Earlier, it was enough for Abram to walk through the land God was promising him (Genesis 13:17); now, he'll have to walk not to a direction on a compass but to the face of the Creator, not in the sight of man but in the sight of God Almighty, processing and parading in the presence of the Perfect One.2
God also tells Abram to “be blameless” (Genesis 17:1). Usually, that word applies to sacrificial animals with zero physical defects to disqualify them from use (Exodus 29:1), for “you shall not offer anything that has a blemish” (Leviticus 22:20). But that represented what God's people were meant to be, “blameless before the LORD your God” (Deuteronomy 18:13).3 And this links Abram back to Noah, “blameless in his generation” as he “walked with God” (Genesis 6:9). No wonder Abram “fell on his face” before God before he could walk; being a new Noah is a tall order that'll take great grace (Genesis 17:3).4
And just like God made a covenant with the blameless-walking Noah (Genesis 6:18), so to Abram God “will give my covenant between me and you” (Genesis 17:2). But that's not quite new: over thirteen years ago, “the LORD cut a covenant with Abram” (Genesis 15:8), the Covenant Between the Pieces. That covenant was pretty unconditional on Abram's end; God assumed all the obligations himself. Now, for the first time, Abram – or Abraham, but more on that next week – is told to “keep my covenant” (Genesis 17:9). Here, “God summons him to be an active partner in the covenant,” with something to do.5 And not him alone, but “you and your seed after you throughout their generations” (Genesis 17:9). All down through, something's got to be done.
But what? Well, “this is my covenant which you shall keep between me and you and your seed after you: Every male among you shall be circumcised” (Genesis 17:10). This was “the covenant of circumcision” (Acts 7:8). I know circumcision is hardly a common subject for us here, and I take it I don't have to define it for anybody. The more interesting thing is, neither does God here. Abram doesn't run for a dictionary here, because this was not a new word or new idea in his world.6 In fact, the Bible itself notes that many other nations had practiced some form of circumcision, including the Egyptians (Jeremiah 9:25-26).7 We can't ask them outright what they meant by it, but in all these cultures, it was performed either at puberty, marking a boy entering male society on account of being capable of fathering a child, or shortly before marriage, marking a man entering the male role expected to bring about fathering a child.8 You can see what those have in common: masculinity and fertility.
Moses complains he's got “foreskinned lips” (Exodus 6:12), and Jeremiah objects to people's “foreskinned ear” (Jeremiah 6:10) – in both cases, body parts that don't function right because they get in their own way. And when Israel came into their land and found its fruit trees, for three years they were to regard its fruit as the tree's foreskin (Leviticus 19:23), which had to pass away to make room for 'real' fruit. A fruit tree required pruning, circumcising, in order to discipline it to further fruitfulness – and so, the idea went, did men.9 Many ancient peoples thought circumcision physically removed an impediment to virility and success in reproduction.10
But God took this circumcision that was culturally common and “transformed it in a fundamental way.”11 God doesn't tell Abraham that his people shall circumcise before marrying, or circumcise at puberty; the norm from this point forward is that “a son of eight days shall be circumcised among you” (Genesis 17:12). To Egyptians and Ethiopians and Canaanites, this suddenly makes no sense: what they did to initiate into manhood is now imposed, almost like a mockery, onto babies just over a week in the world!12
Abraham's family is initiated into this alternative masculinity, this strange custom. But they won't be alone in it. This command is laid down on “every male throughout your generations, whether born in your house or bought with silver from any son of a foreigner who is not of your seed – certainly circumcised must he be who is born in your house and he who is bought with your silver” (Genesis 17:12-13). The covenant is meant first for Abraham and his seed, but even those who aren't born to his seed are embraced by this command and marked the same way, just for coming under the power of the house of Abraham. “By circumcision,” many people from many backgrounds could be “aggregated to the body of the faithful,” the covenant community.13
And there's one more thing he's got to know. “So shall my covenant be in your flesh an everlasting covenant. Any foreskinned male who is not circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin, that soul shall be cut off from his people; he has broken my covenant” (Genesis 17:13-14). Failure to be cut is a covenant violation that merits being cut off.14 This is a thing God must take seriously, to penalize even a child as a covenant-breaker. Exactly what the Law means by cutting a soul off from its people is debated, but this is one of the only two sins of omission that carries that consequence in the Bible.15 The bigger point is that this new circumcision practice “is not optional but mandatory for everyone who belongs to the household of Abraham,” however they got there.16
Okay, but isn't this all pretty strange, this once-for-all ritual surgery on the body? What did it do, what does it mean, now that it's been “adapted and invested with new meaning” by God for Abraham and his people?17 That is the question that matters. In a way, it might be a form of sacrifice, a safer substitution for the child sacrifices of Israel's neighbors.18 After all, Israel could only offer an animal in sacrifice once it was at least eight days old (Leviticus 22:27), and while some sin-offerings required a female animal (Leviticus 4:32) and peace-offerings could be either male or female (Leviticus 3:1), a whole-burnt offering required “a male without blemish” (Leviticus 22:19). Circumcision, then, is a form of sacrifice and dedication, by which “a child and all his potential future generations are symbolically offered to the way of God.”19 It might also enable a man to be a living sacrifice, because it removed the one thing in Abraham's body needed to become 'unblemished.'20
More to the point, circumcision “shall be a sign of the covenant between me and you,” God tells him (Genesis 17:11). In Noah's covenant, the sign was God's bow placed in the clouds, so that “I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant” and not destroy the world (Genesis 9:12-17). Circumcision is like that rainbow, but made by human hands instead of set in place by God.21 If it's for God to see, then maybe, instead of 'naturally' boosting fertility like other cultures thought, it was like an implicit prayer, a sign crying out for God to step in and bless the marriages of his covenant people with fruitfulness.22 That'd be why God had Abraham put it on the body part where he did: so it becomes visible at the right time, like the rainbow, to display the promise of seed as uncountably great as the stars in the sky (Genesis 15:5).23 The result would be that the next generations would be all children of promise, children of blessing, an almost supernatural community elevated from nature.
On the other hand, circumcision might be a double-edged sword. Last time Abram heard of a covenant, he cut animals in half to establish a covenant curse: if the person obligated by the covenant fails, may he be ripped in two like this (Genesis 15:9-10, 17). Maybe this has a similar meaning: if the person so cut breaks the covenant, may he be cut off or cut up further.24 Whether so or not, circumcision might be a sign to the man who gets it.25 Then it was given by God as “a sign for the people dedicated to him..., a perpetual reminder... to prevent them from overstepping the mark.”26 It became “a sacrament by which they were to be reminded that they were the people of God,” and that they needed therefore to walk before God blamelessly.27
Paul adds that, for Abraham at least, he “received the sign of circumcision as a seal of the righteousness that he had by faith while he was still uncircumcised” (Romans 4:11) – that Genesis 17 builds on Genesis 15 by sealing it, symbolizing it outwardly. Where Abram's faith had been reckoned for righteousness, now it was signed and sealed on his body. But by sharing this sign with his sons and servants, Abraham invited them to share that faith and to acquire his righteousness. Circumcision functioned “in order that man might profess his belief in one God,” El Shaddai, the LORD,28 and to “ratify God's lordship over them” who were signed with his sign.29
Abraham was asked that his whole household, his covenant community, must “be circumcised in the flesh of your foreskins” (Genesis 17:11). By my count, this is the twentieth time the word 'flesh' crops up in the Bible, and most of what came before was in the story of the Flood when “all flesh had corrupted their way on the earth” so that God determined to “destroy all flesh” (Genesis 6:12-17). When Paul looks back, he sees 'flesh' as a decent way to sum up those aspects of our creatureliness that corrupt us, those aspects that seek to magnify themselves to compensate for our fleshy vulnerability, those things in us that lead to “every attempt to become more than human that makes humanity inhuman.”30 Hence Paul warns against “gratifying the desires of the flesh” or performing “the works of the flesh” (Galatians 5:16, 19). “Human beings can live as God intended only if flesh is put to death,” hence God's determination to oppose the principle of flesh in us.31
So that's where God reached Abraham: “In his own flesh he incised the ordinance” (Sirach 44:20). No wonder one ancient Jew said Abraham and his household were here called “to strip off the flesh.”32 To them it meant “to cut off superfluous and excessive desires,”33 “the excision of pleasure and all passions,”34 and was a symbol of “laying aside the likings of the flesh.”35 If Noah's covenant meant a truce with the flesh of the earth, Abraham's covenant means a craftier warfare against it than the flood. And so “the circumcision of Abraham begins a divine invasion of our flesh” by placing “a sign in the flesh that supersedes the law of the flesh.”36
Circumcision pronounces natural flesh to be impotent, powerless, and untrustworthy; so circumcision cuts off flesh, attacks flesh as a hostile power, rejects flesh as a principle for living.37 Unlike their neighbors, babies in Abraham's house aren't circumcised to assert their manly toughness or to enhance their sexual prowess or to amplify their blood-and-soil identity; they're overturning all the fleshly boasts and works of Egypt and Babylon and Greece, and calling every boy brought under Abraham's tent to from youth “renounce flesh with all its pomp.”38 It was practically a rebirth into a new way to be human, a way distanced from the power of flesh; it was an initiation into an Abrahamic army joining God's war against flesh.39 They committed by this sign to not “present their body parts as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness” (Romans 6:19), but instead to consecrate their body parts, starting with that one, “to God as instruments for righteousness” (Romans 6:13).
Naturally, Abraham enlisted promptly, without question or hesitation. Abraham “meekly submitted to pain..., anxious to carry out God's command,” whether or not he understood.40 “Abraham took Ishmael his son and all those born in his house or bought with his silver, every male among the men of Abraham's house, and he circumcised the flesh of their foreskins that very day, as God had said to him” (Genesis 17:23). This same law was later included in the covenant law given through Moses (Leviticus 12:3), but during the decades Israel was in the desert, they didn't put it into practice (Joshua 5:5-7), maybe because they could never know when their camp would have to move.41 But as soon as they reached the promised land, God bade Joshua “make flint knives and circumcise the sons of Israel a second time” (Joshua 5:2).
Eventually, there they met the Philistines, immigrants who didn't practice circumcision (1 Samuel 17:26) – though maybe, centuries later, even the Philistines finally started circumcising.42 And yet they continued to deal with uncircumcised “sons of foreigners” whom they eventually allowed into God's temple, profaning it and breaking their covenant (Ezekiel 44:7), hence why they were scattered among the uncircumcised Assyrians and Babylonians in exile. Now they had a growing sense of foreigners as “all of them foreskinned” (Ezekiel 32:26), and dreamed of a day when Jerusalem would be freed from “the foreskinned and the unclean” (Isaiah 52:1).
But exile ended, and that dream didn't come true. They fell under the dominion of Greeks, who not only didn't practice circumcision but mocked it as a disgusting mutilation born from superstition. Now more than ever, for the Jews circumcision became a marker of their ethnic identity, the very thing a Jew was made of. They came to see it as God's way of stopping the seed of Abraham “from mixing with others,”43 and Gentiles likewise judged it as meant to “distinguish them from other peoples.”44
But sometimes, under Greek rule, they didn't want to be so distinguished. Greek social life for men centered in venues with lots of nudity, and Jews both at home and abroad began to be embarrassed to be seen circumcised by Greek men; some therefore “disguised their circumcision” (1 Maccabees 1:15), “cut by physicians to bring forward their foreskins”45 and “remove the marks of his circumcision” (1 Corinthians 7:18). Some Jews were so alarmed that they judged this an “eternal error” for which there could be “no forgiveness or pardon,”46 an error which damned circumcision-removers eternally because such an act “voids the covenant of Father Abraham.”47
Meanwhile, their Greek overlords, upset at the separateness of their Jewish subjects, went so far as to try to stamp out Judaism by, among other things, banning circumcision. In one case, “two women who were arrested for having circumcised their children were publicly paraded about the city with their babies hanging at their breasts and then thrown down from the top of the city wall” (2 Maccabees 6:10), and “their families also, and those who had circumcised them, were killed” (1 Maccabees 1:61). More radically than Abraham might have guessed it, circumcision marked out faithful Jews as sacrificial victims for God in martyrdom.48 Out of this crisis were born apocalyptic nightmares of “a king of the kings of the earth who, having supreme authority, will crucify those who confess their circumcision.”49 But faithful Jews faced those fears and defiantly kept the covenant.
Amidst this crisis, they began to develop a new theology of circumcision, where circumcision had been “an eternal ordinance ordained and written in the heavenly tablets” because “the nature of all of the angels of the presence and all of the angels of sanctification was such from the day of their creation.” Hence, when God gave this commandment to Abraham, “he sanctified Israel so that they might be with him and his holy angels..., he sanctified them and gathered them from all the sons of man.”50 Circumcision somehow conformed Israelites to the angels in heaven, making them holy and angelic on earth, exalted over the rest of humanity. Circumcision became “a supernatural commandment..., a sanctifying commandment.”51 Downstream from that came the thought that, albeit with exceptions, every circumcised man might on that basis obtain eternal life, while the uncircumcised Gentiles were, as a rule, destined for the fires of hell.52 No wonder one ancient rabbi proclaimed that circumcision was so important that without it, God would never have bothered creating this world at all!53
When the crisis with the Greeks ended in the temporary establishment of an independent Jewish kingdom, the victors “forcibly circumcised any uncircumcised boys whom they found in the territory of Israel” (1 Maccabees 2:46). Fair enough, but some of these Jewish kings went on to conquer neighboring nations and “compelled the inhabitants, if they wished to remain in their country, to be circumcised and to live in accordance with the laws of the Jews.”54 Circumcision became “that very command which imposes on you the entire yoke of the Law.”55
What could get lost in all this was that Moses and the prophets warned that outward circumcision wasn't going to be quite enough. It was only a token enlisting a man in God's war on the flesh; but there was a deeper battle to fight. “All the house of Israel,” no less than the Gentiles they came to resent, “are foreskinned in heart” (Jeremiah 9:26; cf. Leviticus 26:41). To deal with that, they needed more than bodily “ritual observances carried out in carnal fashion.”56 In the desert, Moses told them that, having been chosen by God for Father Abraham's sake, “circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart, and no longer be stiff-necked” (Deuteronomy 10:6). “Circumcise yourselves to the LORD, remove the foreskin of your hearts, O men of Judah!” cried the prophet (Jeremiah 4:4). But alongside this demand came a promise: “the LORD your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your seed, so that you will love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, that you may live” (Deuteronomy 30:6). This inward circumcision would be a “divine work and gift.”57
And to make that happen, “when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son..., born under the Law to redeem those who were under the Law” (Galatians 4:4-5). Though he was “Lord and God of circumcision,”58 “Christ became a servant to the circumcised to show God's truthfulness, in order to confirm the promises given to the patriarchs” (Romans 15:8). And so the baby Jesus was circumcised “at the end of eight days” (Luke 2:21), “in order to show his approval of circumcision, which God had instituted of old.”59 By this time, the rabbis began to emphasize that circumcision was “a bloody institution,”60 saying that in it “the blood of the covenant... must be made to flow.”61 And this eighth-day moment, when Joseph carefully circumcised the Son of God, was the first shedding of “the precious blood of Christ” for us (1 Peter 1:19).
But when Paul later refers to “the circumcision of Christ” (Colossians 2:11), he seems to mean, not that day in the Messiah's infancy, but the day when Jesus was hanged on the cross.62 Having spent a Jewish life walking blamelessly before his Father's face, the True Circumciser was crucified by the kings of the earth (sadly with support from leaders of those circumcised in the flesh [Acts 2:23]); and yet, in and by this crisis and “through the eternal Spirit,” he “offered himself without blemish to God” (Hebrews 9:14) and so “condemned sin in the flesh” (Romans 8:3). Stripped entirely of his body of flesh and blood, there could be no more radical circumcision than that! But then this must be what Abraham's circumcision was always aimed toward: the command relayed to Abraham was “made in the figure and image of future truth.”63
Whether he knew it or not, Abraham circumcised himself as a declaration that the child of promise would only be born through this sign; and his descendants kept circumcising as a visible prophecy of their hope that the Messiah who would win the war on flesh was the Seed of Abraham, a child of circumcision.64 But what's more, it was a prophetic profession of faith that this Seed would then be crucified, thus circumcising the entire body of the flesh by his death. Abraham's household practiced circumcision as “a sign of Christ's future passion.”65 It was anciently done with stone knives because Christ is the Rock (Joshua 5:2; 1 Corinthians 10:4).66 It was done to each boy as “an affliction and a cross” with pain,67 because it was an advance participation in the cross of Christ. It was done on the eighth day after birth to prophesy that Jesus would rise from the dead on the eighth day of Holy Week.68 One of the earliest Christian writings therefore says that “Abraham... circumcised as he looked forward, in the Spirit, to Jesus.”69 No wonder Paul trumpets circumcision as a sign of faith (Romans 4:11-12) – because, for those who did it right, it was “a profession of faith in Christ.”70
Practiced that way, under the Law, circumcision “was beneficial and gave life.”71 Christians reasoned that if even infants needed to be enlisted in God's war on sinful flesh, then theirs must be sinful flesh; but at the same time, circumcision had to address that original sin in infant flesh, had to give life in lieu of Adam's death.72 And so “from the time that circumcision was instituted in the people of God, it had the power to signify the purification from the original and ancient sin even in little ones.”73 Circumcision, as an Old Testament sacrament, became “a remedy against original sin,”74 such that “original sin was remitted in circumcision”75 – but only because it pointed in faith toward the coming Christ and the power of his cross to conquer sinful flesh.
When that implicit hope became reality, his circumcised disciples pleaded with their circumcised neighbors to receive the real meaning of the circumcision they outwardly bore. Sadly, like the generation critiqued by the prophets, they'd been “uncircumcised in heart and ears” by betraying the Righteous One sent to save them (Acts 7:51-52). But some were convicted by these words, which circumcised their ears, so that “a great many of the priests became obedient to the faith” (Acts 6:7), as did a number of the Pharisees (Acts 15:5). So it isn't a surprise that in the early church there emerged a circumcision faction (Acts 11:2), who maintained that “unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved” (Acts 15:1).
Their logic is fairly easy to follow. To some rabbis, although Abraham was reckoned righteous already, he wasn't complete until he'd been circumcised;76 so how much less could Jews or Gentiles be complete without it, even if they shared Abraham's faith? If circumcision conformed Israel to the angels, then oughtn't the church offer such sanctity to converts who come in search of eternal life? Circumcision was mandated, not only for Abraham's seed, but for all those bought from among foreigners to serve his house (Genesis 17:12-13); so if Gentiles had been purchased by the Son of Abraham, shouldn't that commanded sign be imposed on them now? Circumcision was a prerequisite for eating the Passover (Exodus 12:48); so if Christ is the Passover Lamb (1 Corinthians 5:7), then how can anyone lawfully partake of Christ before being circumcised? After all, “so shall my covenant be in your flesh an everlasting covenant” (Genesis 17:13) – surely an eternal covenant hadn't changed? And then Gentile converts who fail to be circumcised are “cut off” from God's people as covenant-breakers from the start (Genesis 17:14). So reasoned the circumcision faction; such was, perhaps, their logic.
And it was this logic against which St. Paul – himself “circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel” (Philippians 3:5) – reacted so fiercely. Even while granting that for Jews circumcision has great value (Romans 3:1-2), he warned Christians that “a person is not justified by works of the Law,” including circumcision, “but through faith in Jesus Christ” (Galatians 2:15). Paul understood that the Judaizers were working out a deeply defective theology of circumcision, one which perverted the sign of enlistment in God's war against the flesh into merely another work of the flesh to boast about.77 “It is those who want to make a good showing in the flesh who would force you to be circumcised, and only in order that they may not be persecuted for the cross of Christ.... They desire to have you circumcised so that they may boast in your flesh” (Galatians 6:12-13). Paul warned vulnerable Gentile Christians that “if you accept circumcision” in the flesh, “Christ will be of no advantage to you,” since, in seeking to complete one's righteousness by one's own means, “you are severed from Christ, you who would be justified by the Law; you have fallen away from grace” (Galatians 5:2-4).
St. Paul exhorts Christians, Jew and Gentile alike, to “put no confidence in the flesh” (Philippians 3:3). Since God will “justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through faith” (Romans 3:30), a new community is created in which “there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised...., but Christ is all, and in all” (Colossians 3:11). And so “in Christ, neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has power, but faith working through love” (Galatians 5:6) to bring about “a new creation” (Galatians 6:15).
St. Paul goes on to explain that the covenant commandment still applies, now more thoroughly than ever before. “In him also you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands,” deeper than that given to Abraham, “by putting off the body of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ, having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God who raised him from the dead” (Colossians 2:11). This is what Abraham's circumcision had been aiming at; the Old Testament “sacrament of circumcision preceded baptism as a sign of it.”78 Hence, early Christians urged people to accept “a spiritual circumcision... by means of baptism,”79 and so to “be circumcised with the true circumcision,”80 “circumcised by the Holy Spirit through the laver of baptism, not in the foreskin of the body but in the heart.”81
That's how Paul can answer the Judaizers: Christians, Gentile as much as Jew, have been circumcised in the way that counts most, the way that has eternal relevance (Romans 2:29); and it happened when they were baptized into Christ. And this is because the spiritual heart-circumcision accomplished by God during baptism goes so much deeper and “bestows grace more copiously than does circumcision” cut into the flesh with human hands.82 “Whatever in the former case circumcision achieved by way of putting off the flesh, in this case baptism achieves by way of putting off sins,”83 “not simply enduring but laying aside sin's burden and finding pardon for the faults of all time.”84 And so this spiritual circumcision most mightily defeats the power of flesh and clears the way for us to walk before the Father in the Son by the Holy Spirit.85
Now “circumcision for the faithful servants of God has begun to be spiritual,”86 but it's more than a metaphor, it's more than a shift from visible to invisible, because in both its Jewish and Gentile members, “the body of the church must be stamped with the image of Christ,” of Christ circumcised on the cross and rising again on the week's eighth day.87 For “our circumcision circumcises us from idolatry and from every other sin” of the body and the soul, from the flesh and all its pomps and all its works.88 In receiving this spiritual circumcision, we've pursued Abraham's fight against the flesh to the point of having “crucified the flesh with its passions and desires” (Galatians 5:24), “in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit” (Romans 8:4), having been “circumcised from the world, serving God and having truth in the heart.”89 Such a circumcision enables the open-hearted love we're made for.
That's
why one of the oldest Christian hymns invites us to sing that “the
Most High circumcised me by his Holy Spirit, then he uncovered my
inward being toward him and filled me with his love; and his
circumcising became my salvation, and I ran in the Way in his peace,
in the Way of Truth.”90
That's what this is all about, because “you,
who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds,
[Christ] has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in
order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before
him, if indeed you continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not
shifting from the hope of the gospel that you heard”
(Colossians 1:21-23). The Most High has circumcised us after the
likeness of Christ's cross and resurrection; he's cut away the
principles of flesh that bound us to sin; he's uncovered a new me and
a new you; he's pruned us to bear the fruit of love. That
circumcision is our salvation, making us blameless in Christ, and
bidding us to walk before him in holiness and faith, to continue
running in the Way of Truth until at last we reach the Father's face.
Christ, to whom the circumcision of the household of Abraham always
pointed, has now won God's war against the flesh. “Thanks
be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ”
(1 Corinthians 15:57)! Amen.
1 Nahum M. Sarna, Genesis (Jewish Publication Society, 1989), 123.
2 R. R. Reno, Genesis (Brazos Press, 2010), 168.
3 Karl Deenick, Righteous by Promise: A Biblical Theology of Circumcision (InterVarsity Press, 2018), 27-28.
4 Leon R. Kass, The Beginning of Wisdom: Reading Genesis (Free Press, 2003), 311.
5 Nahum M. Sarna, Genesis (Jewish Publication Society, 1989), 123.
6 Nahum M. Sarna, Genesis (Jewish Publication Society, 1989), 385; David W. Cotter, Genesis (Liturgical Press, 2003), 109.
7 Victor P. Hamilton, The Book of Genesis, Chapters 1-17 (Eerdmans, 1990), 469; Shaul Bar, Daily Life of the Patriarchs: The Way It Was (Peter Lang, 2015), 65-66. For pre-Abrahamic documentation of circumcision in Egypt, see James B. Pritchard, Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament, 3rd ed. (Princeton University Press, 1969), 326, and Tomb of Ankhamhor, texts 86E and 302F in Writings from the Ancient World 16:159, 403.
8 Nahum M. Sarna, Genesis (Jewish Publication Society, 1989), 386.
9 Leonard B. Glick, Marked in Your Flesh: Circumcision from Ancient Judea to Modern America (Oxford University Press, 2005), 18-19.
10 Philo of Alexandria, On the Special Laws 1.7, in Loeb Classical Library 320:105.
11 David W. Cotter, Genesis (Liturgical Press, 2003), 109.
12 Peter J. Leithart, Delivered from the Elements of the World: Atonement, Justification, Mission (IVP Academic, 2016), 87.
13 Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae III, q.70, a.1, in The Works of St. Thomas Aquinas 20:143.
14 Brian Neil Peterson, Genesis: A Pentecostal Commentary (Brill, 2022), 158.
15 Victor P. Hamilton, The Book of Genesis, Chapters 1-17 (Eerdmans, 1990), 473.
16 Alex Varughese and Christina Bohn, Genesis 12-50: A Commentary in the Wesleyan Tradition (Beacon Hill Press, 2019), 96.
17 Bill T. Arnold, Genesis (Cambridge University Press, 2009), 171.
18 Jon D. Levenson, The Death and Resurrection of the Beloved Son: The Transformation of Child Sacrifice in Judaism and Christianity (Yale University Press, 1993), 51; Leonard B. Glick, Marked in Your Flesh: Circumcision from Ancient Judea to Modern America (Oxford University Press, 2005), 22-24.
19 Leon R. Kass, The Beginning of Wisdom: Reading Genesis (Free Press, 2003), 314.
20 Genesis Rabbah 46.1, 4, in Harry Freedman, ed., Midrash Rabbah (Soncino Press, 1983), 1:389, 391.
21 Zvi Grumet, Genesis: From Creation to Covenant (Maggid Press, 2017), 187.
22 Victor P. Hamilton, The Book of Genesis, Chapters 1-17 (Eerdmans, 1990), 470.
23 Bruce K. Waltke, Genesis: A Commentary (Zondervan Academic, 2001), 264.
24 Scott W. Hahn, Kinship by Covenant: A Canonical Approach to the Fulfillment of God's Saving Promises (Yale University Press, 2009), 115-116; Tremper Longman III, Genesis (Zondervan Academic, 2016), 220.
25 Alex Varughese and Christina Bohn, Genesis 12-50: A Commentary in the Wesleyan Tradition (Beacon Hill Press, 2019), 101; John Goldingay, Genesis (Baker Academic, 2020), 280.
26 John Chrysostom, Homilies on Genesis 39.13-14, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 82:383-384.
27 Martin Luther, Lectures on Genesis 17:1, in Luther's Works 3:85; Jonathan Grossman, Abraham: The Story of a Journey (Maggid Books, 2023), 129.
28 Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae I-II, q.102, a.5, ad 1, in The Works of St. Thomas Aquinas 16:341.
29 Victor P. Hamilton, The Book of Genesis, Chapters 1-17 (Eerdmans, 1990), 471.
30 Peter J. Leithart, Delivered from the Elements of the World: Atonement, Justification, Mission (IVP Academic, 2016), 81-82, 85.
31 Peter J. Leithart, Delivered from the Elements of the World: Atonement, Justification, Mission (IVP Academic, 2016), 85.
32 Theodotus, On the Jews, frg. 5, in Old Testament Pseudepigrapha 2:792.
33 Philo of Alexandria, Questions and Answers on Genesis 3.48, in Loeb Classical Library 320:245.
34 Philo of Alexandria, On the Migration of Abraham 16 §92, in Loeb Classical Library 261:185.
35 Augustine of Hippo, Sermon 196A.1, in The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century III/6:64.
36 R. R. Reno, Genesis (Brazos Press, 2010), 178-179.
37 Peter J. Leithart, Delivered from the Elements of the World: Atonement, Justification, Mission (IVP Academic, 2016), 88.
38 Peter J. Leithart, Delivered from the Elements of the World: Atonement, Justification, Mission (IVP Academic, 2016), 89.
39 Peter J. Leithart, Delivered from the Elements of the World: Atonement, Justification, Mission (IVP Academic, 2016), 90-92.
40 John Chrysostom, Homilies on Genesis 40.15, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 82:397.
41 Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae III, q.70, a.4, ad 3, in The Works of St. Thomas Aquinas 20:150.
42 Avraham Faust, “The Bible, Archaeology, and the Practice of Circumcision in Israelite and Philistine Societies,” Journal of Biblical Literature 134/2 (2015): 290.
43 Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews 1.192, in Loeb Classical Library 242:95.
44 Tacitus, Histories 5.5.2, in Loeb Classical Library 249:183.
45 Testament of Moses 8.3, in Old Testament Pseudepigrapha 1:931. See also, e.g., Martial, Epigrams 7.82, in Loeb Classical Library 94:479, for mention of a non-surgical option for disguising circumcision in the Roman world.
46 Jubilees 15:34, in Old Testament Pseudepigrapha 2:87.
47 m. Avot 3.11, in The Oxford Annotated Mishnah (Oxford University Press, 2022), 2:730.
48 Nina E. Livesey, Circumcision as a Malleable Symbol (Mohr Siebeck, 2010), 26.
49 Testament of Moses 8.1, in Old Testament Pseudepigrapha 1:931.
50 Jubilees 15:25-27, 31, in Old Testament Pseudepigrapha 2:87.
51 R. R. Reno, Genesis (Brazos Press, 2010), 175.
52 Midrash Tehillim 6.1, in William G. Braude, Midrash on Psalms (Yale University Press, 1959), 1:94. See also Genesis Rabbah 48.8, in Harry Freedman, ed., Midrash Rabbah (Soncino Press, 1983), 1:409-410, for a qualified version of this teaching, where Abraham sits by the gates of hell to circumcise Jewish infants who died before the eighth day and to sew their foreskins onto notorious Jewish sinners on their way to hell.
53 m. Nedarim 3.11, in The Oxford Annotated Midrash (Oxford University Press, 2022), 2:144.
54 Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews 13.318, in Loeb Classical Library 365:387.
55 John Chrysostom, Discourses Against Judaizing Christians 2.2.4, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 68:41.
56 Augustine of Hippo, Expositions of the Psalms 6.2, in The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century III/15:104.
57 James Chukwuma Okoye, Genesis 12-50: A Narrative-Theological Commentary (Cascade Books, 2020), 97.
58 Peter the Venerable, Against the Inveterate Obduracy of the Jews 4, in Fathers of the Church: Medieval Continuation 14:181.
59 Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae III, q.37, a.1, in The Works of St. Thomas Aquinas 19:389.
60 Brandon D. Crowe, The Path of Faith: A Biblical Theology of Covenant and Law (IVP Academic, 2021), 37.
61 Genesis Rabbah 46.12, in Harry Freedman, ed., Midrash Rabbah (Soncino Press, 1983), 1:397.
62 For this understanding of what that phrase in Colossians 2:11 meant, see, e.g., James D. G. Dunn, The Epistles to the Colossians and to Philemon (Eerdmans, 1996), 157-158; Charles H. Talbert, Ephesians and Colossians (Baker Academic, 2007), 214; Christopher A. Beetham, Echoes of Scripture in the Letter of Paul to the Colossians (Brill, 2008), 177.
63 Origen of Alexandria, Homilies on Genesis 3.4, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 71:94.
64 Bede, On Genesis 17:11-12, in Translated Texts for Historians 48:283; Petrus Alfonsi, Dialogues Against the Jews 12, in Fathers of the Church: Medieval Continuation 8:253; Martin Luther, Lectures on Genesis 17:1, in Luther's Works 3:91.
65 Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae III, q.62, a.6, ad 3, in The Works of St. Thomas Aquinas 20:33.
66 Augustine of Hippo, Sermon 169.3, in The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century III/5:223.
67 Martin Luther, Lectures on Genesis 17:3-6, in Luther's Works 3:101.
68 Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho 41.4, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 6:210; Cyprian of Carthage, Letter 64.4, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 51:218; Augustine of Hippo, Sermon 260.1, in The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century III/7:185; Cyril of Alexandria, Glaphyra on the Pentateuch 3.1.9, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 137:149; and many others.
69 Epistle of Barnabas 9.8, in Popular Patristics Series 41:72.
70 Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae III, q.70, a.2, in The Works of St. Thomas Aquinas 20:145.
71 Aphrahat, Demonstrations 11.2, in Moran 'Eth'o 24:4.
72 Augustine of Hippo, Against Julian 6.7 §20, in The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century I/24:490; Martin Luther, Lectures on Genesis 17:10-11, in Luther's Works 3:135.
73 Augustine of Hippo, On Marriage and Desire 2.11 §24, in The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century I/24:68.
74 Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae III, q.70, a.3, ad 1, in The Works of St. Thomas Aquinas 20:147.
75 Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae III, q.70, a.4, in The Works of St. Thomas Aquinas 20:148.
76 m. Nedarim 3.11, in The Oxford Annotated Mishnah (Oxford University Press, 2022), 2:144.
77 Peter J. Leithart, Delivered from the Elements of the World: Atonement, Justification, Mission (IVP Academic, 2016), 146-147.
78 Augustine of Hippo, Against Julian 6.7 §18, in The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century I/24:489.
79 Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho 43.2, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 6:212.
80 Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho 18.2, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 6:175.
81 Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical Lectures 5.6, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 61:143.
82 Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae III, q.70, a.4, in The Works of St. Thomas Aquinas 20:149; cf. Christopher A. Beetham, Echoes of Scripture in the Letter of Paul to the Colossians (Brill, 2008), 191.
83 John Chrysostom, Homilies on Genesis 39.19, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 82:388.
84 John Chrysostom, Homilies on Genesis 40.16, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 82:397.
85 Robert L. Cavin, New Existence and Righteous Living: Colossians and 1 Peter in Conversation with 4QInstructions and the Hodayot (De Gruyter, 2013), 157-158.
86 Cyprian of Carthage, Letter 4.4, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 51:13.
87 R. R. Reno, Genesis (Brazos Press, 2010), 178.
88 Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho 114.4, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 6:324.
89 Augustine of Hippo, Sermon 196A.1, in The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century III/6:64.
90 Odes of Solomon 11.2-3, in Old Testament Pseudepigrapha 2:744.
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