The Abraham Story Part 13: Covenant of Circumcision

Covenant #2 With Avraham: Sign of Circumcision

God blesses the one who you think he would curse, which is the oppressed immigrant. Let's flip it over. We see how God re-creates Hagar. What's in store for Avram and Sarai? And this is what we call Genesis 17. It's the climax of this walk through the melody of themes.

This is the longest and most complicated speech so far in the book of Genesis. Before diving into its details, it’s helpful to get an overview of its main content and literary organization

At its most basic, the chapter is designed in a simple three-step progression

Genesis 17:1-16 A - God's Speech to Avraham: Covenant, Promise of Seed , Summons to Circumcise Every Male

Genesis 17:17-22 B - God and Avraham Dialogue about the Promise of Seed

Genesis 17:23-27 A' - Avraham Circumcises Every Male in His House

The book is mostly one long speech of God with little skeleton narrative bits showing in there. 

Genesis 17:1–27 CSB

1 When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the Lord appeared to him, saying, “I am God Almighty. Live in my presence and be blameless. 2 I will set up my covenant between me and you, and I will multiply you greatly.” 3 Then Abram fell facedown and God spoke with him: 4 “As for me, here is my covenant with you: You will become the father of many nations. 5 Your name will no longer be Abram; your name will be Abraham, for I will make you the father of many nations. 6 I will make you extremely fruitful and will make nations and kings come from you. 7 I will confirm my covenant that is between me and you and your future offspring throughout their generations. It is a permanent covenant to be your God and the God of your offspring after you. 8 And to you and your future offspring I will give the land where you are residing—all the land of Canaan—as a permanent possession, and I will be their God.” 9 God also said to Abraham, “As for you, you and your offspring after you throughout their generations are to keep my covenant. 10 This is my covenant between me and you and your offspring after you, which you are to keep: Every one of your males must be circumcised. 11 You must circumcise the flesh of your foreskin to serve as a sign of the covenant between me and you. 12 Throughout your generations, every male among you is to be circumcised at eight days old—every male born in your household or purchased from any foreigner and not your offspring. 13 Whether born in your household or purchased, he must be circumcised. My covenant will be marked in your flesh as a permanent covenant. 14 If any male is not circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin, that man will be cut off from his people; he has broken my covenant.” 15 God said to Abraham, “As for your wife Sarai, do not call her Sarai, for Sarah will be her name. 16 I will bless her; indeed, I will give you a son by her. I will bless her, and she will produce nations; kings of peoples will come from her.” 17 Abraham fell facedown. Then he laughed and said to himself, “Can a child be born to a hundred-year-old man? Can Sarah, a ninety-year-old woman, give birth?” 18 So Abraham said to God, “If only Ishmael were acceptable to you!” 19 But God said, “No. Your wife Sarah will bear you a son, and you will name him Isaac. I will confirm my covenant with him as a permanent covenant for his future offspring. 20 As for Ishmael, I have heard you. I will certainly bless him; I will make him fruitful and will multiply him greatly. He will father twelve tribal leaders, and I will make him into a great nation. 21 But I will confirm my covenant with Isaac, whom Sarah will bear to you at this time next year.” 22 When he finished talking with him, God withdrew from Abraham. 23 So Abraham took his son Ishmael and those born in his household or purchased—every male among the members of Abraham’s household—and he circumcised the flesh of their foreskin on that very day, just as God had said to him. 24 Abraham was ninety-nine years old when the flesh of his foreskin was circumcised, 25 and his son Ishmael was thirteen years old when the flesh of his foreskin was circumcised. 26 On that very day Abraham and his son Ishmael were circumcised. 27 And all the men of his household—whether born in his household or purchased from a foreigner—were circumcised with him.

So we're told that Avram was a son of 99 years. Chapter 16 just ended and told me that Ishmael was born when he was 86, meaning that Ishmael is 13.

Yahweh became visible to Avraham and said, "Hey, we're gonna make a covenant between me and between you, I'm gonna multiply you very much." And Avram's response is to fall down on his face. Falling down before the Lord. We often see people in some traditions falling backwards in response to God. But in the Scriptures there is no place where they fall back wards its always to their face in response to God. (some argue John 18:6, but I see not evidence of a direction there)

"When Avram was 99 years old, Yahweh appeared to Avram and said, 'Hey, I'm God Almighty (El Shaddai). Shape up, buddy. Walk before me and be blameless.'" Who was the righteous one who walked with God and was blameless? Remember? It was Noah. Noah. So what Noah was, Avram has to be commanded to do.

Which assumes that, at least for the last story, he's not been walking with God, and he is definitely not blameless.

"Shape up, buddy. You're my covenant partner, for goodness' sakes, and this is how you treat people? 

Listen, I told you, I'm gonna bless you and make you exceedingly numerous." And Avram said, "Thank you, Lord. So good to be with you on this walkabout"? No. He's afraid and he falls, yeah. So this is God coming in force and power and saying, "If we're gonna work together, you have to stop what you're doing."

He says, "We're gonna, my covenant is with you, and you are no longer Avram.

Who you thought you were as Avram, Exalted Father, it's not who you are anymore. Avraham will be your name."

So we've taken Av and Raham, and we split it open and we put a Ha in there. Do you see that? Okay. So he says, "You'll be called Av-Rah-Ham because I will make of you a hamon of nations." The word "multitude" is "hamon." So you'll be known as Exalted Father of a Whole Bunch of Nations. Avraham.

"I will make you fruitful very much, and kings are gonna come from you."

Then there's is this thing in the middle is the thing about circumcision, we'll talk about that in a second. As soon as the circumcision is done, Elohim starts speaking and says,

"As for Sarai, she will not be called Sarai anymore. She will be called Sarah." They're both variations of the word "princess." Sarai is my Princess but now she is not just Abrams princess she is Princess to the nations

"I'm gonna bless her. She will turn into nations, and kings will come from her." So they're both being re-created, but as God's agenda. Here's my agenda for you. 

Name Change in scriptures shows a ownership. You're being renamed, which is about God determining their identity and their destiny.

Once God finishes that speech, he falls on his face again. And what he asks is, first of all, "Are you saying that a couple that's like they're both 100 years old is really gonna give birth?" And God's like, "Oh my goodness.

This is my work partner." So what he says is, "Yes, you are gonna have a kid." Avraham speaks up and says, "Well, listen, I already have one now. It's Yishmael." He says, "Let Yishmael be the chosen one." And Yahweh says, "Listen, I worked it out with Hagar. I'm gonna bless him. He's gonna become a nation. But it's actually through a son that you're gonna have with Sarah." And he laughs.

And the Hebrew word for laugh, it's "tsakhaq." He tsakhaqs. And God says, "Okay, then you don't believe me? Then we'll name your kid Yitskhaq, laughter, to remind you of the fact that you didn't believe me and you laughed at me when I told you. And I'll take care of Yishmael." And Yahweh finished speaking to him. 

That's the story. So even though there are positive promises here, this is God showing up to like call Avram and, Avraham and Sarai to account. And right in the middle is what God calls Avram to do. 

So it's sort of like God shows up, Avram falls down, and there's no negotiating. You're gonna have a son. Laugh if you want. We'll name him Laughter, and that's gonna be the chosen one. I'll take care of Ishmael, because you haven't.

So that's what frames all this.

Circumcision

 And then right in the middle is, "As for you, Avraham." So everything so far has been what God is gonna do. Here's what I'm gonna do for you. And in the center is the thing that God wants Avraham to do. 

Genesis 17:9–14 LEB

9 And God said to Abraham, “Now as for you, you must keep my covenant, you and your offspring after you, throughout their generations. 10 This is my covenant which you shall keep, between me and you, and also with your offspring after you: Every male among you shall be circumcised. 11 And you shall circumcise the flesh of your foreskin, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and you. 12 And at eight days of age you shall yourselves circumcise every male belonging to your generations and the servant born in your house and the one bought from any foreigner who is not from your offspring. 13 You must certainly circumcise the servant born in your house and the one bought with your money. And my covenant shall be with your flesh as an everlasting covenant. 14 And as for any uncircumcised male who has not circumcised the flesh of his foreskin, that person shall be cut off from his people. He has broken my covenant.

So this is the introduction of circumcision into the storyline of the Bible. It's gonna play a significant role throughout, but especially once we get into the book of Acts and the letters of Paul. This is gonna be a major issue. 

So first of all notice, let's just think through the two plants Genesis 16 and 17. 

With what part of Avram's body did he just use as a part of the oppression of Hagar?

The part that is having a big chunk of it cut off by God's command. So let's just notice that. There's no coincidence there. So even though circumcision may come to have positive connotations, something that Israelites were very proud of as their identity, the actual origin story, in context, 15 to 17 of Genesis, has a much more sobering portrait.

Even though this is a speech about blessing and God's covenant promise, I mean, Avraham's freaked out. He falls on his face. And whatever symbolism circumcision will come to have, just the bare fact of cutting off a part of a human body is not a good thing.

When was circumcision first practiced? 

There are many hypotheses regarding the roots of the practice. Early Western scholars attributed the origins of circumcision to ancient Egypt. But many scholars today believe that the origin of the practice, as it is done in the West and the Middle East, goes back farther and originates with the inhabitants of southern Arabia and parts of Africa. Over the millennia, circumcision has been most often used as a religious rite, a rite of passage into manhood, but also as a form of punishment in wartime.

Circumcision has been practiced in parts of Africa, Oceania, Judaism, and Islam. The form of circumcision that westerners are most familiar with is complete removal of the foreskin or prepuce, as it is practiced in Judaism.

However, in ancient Egypt and other cultures in Africa, only part of the foreskin was removed. In the Pacific islands, the frenum was snipped but the foreskin was left unmodified. This is interesting considering a Biblical reference where Yahweh commands the Israelites to circumcise their children again, “a second time” (Joshua 5:2). This could imply that some of them had already been circumcised the Egyptian way and had to be circumcised the Jewish or Israelite way.

In ancient Israel, circumcision was taken as a sign of membership in the covenant community established between God and Abraham. It was an ethnic marker showing that they were a part of the Israelite nation.

Although it could be performed on adults if needed, it was usually performed on infants, eight days after birth, like among modern Jews. An adult was usually only circumcised if a non-Israelite decided that he wanted to be inducted into the Israelite community. Later, when the Israelite religion become more organized, becoming ancient Judaism, converts to Judaism were required to undergo circumcision. One way that early Christianity first distinguished itself from Judaism was that non-Jewish Christians were not required to be circumcised.

Ancient Egyptian carved scene of circumcision, from the inner northern wall of the Temple of Khonspekhrod at the Precinct of Mut, Temple of Karnak, Luxor, Egypt. Eighteenth dynasty, Amenhotep III, c. 1360 BC. (Lasse Jensen/CC BY 2.5)

In Egypt, it was typically done on adolescent men who were about to be initiated into the priesthood or as adult males of the noble class. It is not clear that this is the case from archaeological and historical records, but Egyptian circumcision may also have been used to demarcate a special elite class. Egyptian circumcision is depicted on temple walls where young men are seen being restrained as a priest performs the circumcision with a knife.

 It is common among east African peoples and the Bantu, usually as a rite of passage into manhood. Young males of the Xhosa and Zulu ethnic groups traditionally had an elaborate circumcision ritual where their bodies would be painted with whitewash before their circumcision.

During the process, they would be isolated from the community for several weeks, especially from women. After the circumcision, they would abandon their cut foreskin in the forest, a symbol of them leaving behind their boyhood lives to become men, and then wash the whitewash off in a river. Circumcision is still regularly practiced among these cultures, but usually in hospitals instead of the traditional way.

A form of circumcision was also practiced in Oceania and Aboriginal Australia using sea shells as the cutting instrument. Circumcision in Oceania and Australia was a rite of passage into manhood as well as a test of bravery.

The De-creation and Re-creation of Avram and Sarai

If I'm thinking about the melody, I'm also thinking about when there's been the de-creation and re-creation of the violent oppressors.

This complex narrative is designed to culminate the themes at work so far in all of Genesis 1-17, and especially the earlier patterns of creation and Eden and of flood and covenant.

Numerous details in this chapter only make sense based on our ability to track the hyperlinks and analogies with these earlier narratives

See Chart

This linking of Noah and Avraham creates a clear set of similarities and contrasts between the two characters and God’s covenant with them.

While Noah simply was “blameless” when God initiated the conversation, Avram, on the other hand, has just participated in a great sin against Hagar (on analogy with Gen. 3 and 6), resulting in the oppression of the immigrant, so he now has to be commanded: “be blameless.”

The “sign” of the covenant for Noah and Avraham is crucial for understanding the nature and purpose of circumcision. In Genesis 9:12-17, the “sign” of the covenant is the rainbow which shines when the rain clouds come. Rain was the instrument of divine judgment, and so the rainbow is a reminder of humanity’s evil that brought the flood. But rain was also the divine response of judgment combined with covenant love that spared a remnant. In a similar way, in Genesis 17:11, 13, the “sign” of the covenant marks the instrument of human failure, that is, Avraham’s genitals (this seems hinted at in the design pattern of Gen. 9:17 “covenant with flesh”). But the judgment is on the part of Avraham’s body that will become fruitful for the nation. 

Rainbow and Circumcision Chart

And I got to this moment when Noah got off the ark. God also made another speech, it was the first covenant. Do you remember this? God said to Noah, "This is my covenant with y'all." And here is what is fascinating. Is that all of the language in this little speech in 17 is built off of and recalling the language of God's speech to Noah when they get off the boat. So here's just a few examples. God says, "I'm going to establish my covenant with you and your seed after you." That's what he says to Noah, copy and paste, Genesis 17. "I establish my covenant with you and your seed after you." What is the symbol or the sign of the covenant? In Genesis 9, it's the bow in the clouds. It's a bow, which in English is, we have the word "rainbow." In Hebrew, the word bow is both rainbow but also like the bow that you shoot with. So you've got that going on.

And what God says is, "I sent the flood." The Hebrew word for "flood" is "hammabbul." And what did the flood do? The flood cut off flesh from the face of the land.

And God's covenant is going to be with Noah and with all living beings, all "nephesh," living creatures, so that they will no longer be cut off by the "mabbul." Here in Genesis 17, "I'm going to establish my covenant with you and your seed after you." The sign of the covenant, the symbol is circumcision. The word "circumcision" is spelled with the letters of the word "flood." So hammabbul, flood. Himmol, circumcision. There's just one letter, it's literally the same letters in the same order with one letter absent.

So in other words, the author is inviting us to see circumcision as playing the same role as that of the flood that cut off flesh: the flood cut off flesh, circumcision is about cutting off flesh. Of every living thing: God says every male living one in your house. So let's think about the flood. Was the flood bad or was the flood good? Well, it needed to happen as an act of judgment, but it was also God's way of removing violence from the land and washing it clean from the bloodshed and bringing about a re-creation.

So if we're honoring the hyperlinks, the author is wanting us to see circumcision as both an act of judgment and an act of grace. An act of judgment on evil, and an act of re-creation. So God is judging the part of the body that was just used to oppress the immigrant, but also it's marking the part of the body that will, that contains and be the conduit of the future of the family. And that's what this whole thing is about, is about the future of the family. So circumcision as a symbol is gonna come to mean a lot of different things throughout the rest of Israelite history and Jewish history. But this really spun my brain once this kind of hit me that it's both a symbol of judgment and mercy.

Just like the rainbow in the clouds.

When do rainbows show up? When it's raining. And so when it's raining you're like, "Oh no, I hope that one thing doesn't happen again." And yet it's both reminding you through its beauty and promise that God won't ever do that thing again. And so there's something about circumcision here that's really important and very similar to it.

Just as the flood (לובמה) was a judgment of cutting off (תרכי) all flesh (רשב) in Genesis 9:11, so now circumcision (לומה) is a "local flood" of judgment that cuts off (התרכנ) the flesh (רשב) of the foreskin of Avraham’s family in Gen. 17:10-14. It is as if Avraham’s sin “cuts off” all hope except for an Yitskhaq-remnant (Isaac-remnant) that God will miraculously bring into the world through Sarah’s womb // the Noah-remnant that God miraculously saves through the ark. Both events happen “on the very day” ( הזה םויה םצעב in Gen. 7:13 and Gen. 17:24, 26) of the command.

Both covenants with Avraham and Noah have a universal scope. Noah’s sons produce all the nations of Genesis 10, and Avraham will become the father of many nations. This aligns well with the fact that Yishmael is the first to be circumcised in Genesis 17, and that circumcision is associated with the inclusion of the nations into God’s covenant with Avraham. 

The blessed sons: Just as two of Noah’s three sons found blessing and fruitfulness after the flood (Japheth and Shem), so also Avraham’s two sons Yishmael and Yitskhaq (Isaac) will be blessed and become great nations. In both cases, only the younger of the two will become the line of the covenant (Shem and Yitskhaq), while the older (Japheth and Yishmael) will be blessed, but not as the carrier of covenant blessing.

The role of Sarah in this story is like the ark (הבת) . She is the vehicle of the future seed, but her distorted efforts to build her own Eden-blessing (remember “build" הנב in Gen. 16:2) have also replayed the fall and introduced division into Avraham’s family. Her role in this way also recalls the ark’s role as an analogy to the woman in Genesis 2 ( Gen. 2:22 הנב ). Note how Sarah here ( Gen. 17:17) is also called “a daughter of 90 years” which is an anagram of the word “ark” ( Gen 6:14 הבת // תבה Gen. 17:17)

Bibliography

https://bibleproject.com/classroom/abraham

Middleton, J. Richard. Abraham’s Silence: The Binding of Isaac, the Suffering of Job, and How to Talk Back to God. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic: A Division of Baker Publishing Group, 2021.

Cotter, David W. Genesis. Edited by Jerome T. Walsh, Chris Franke, and David W. Cotter. Berit Olam Studies in Hebrew Narrative and Poetry. Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 2003.

Josephus, Flavius, and William Whiston. The Works of Josephus: Complete and Unabridged. Peabody: Hendrickson, 1987.

Richard N. Longenecker, “The Melchizedek Argument of Hebrews: A Study in the Development and Circumstantial Expression of New Testament Thought,” in Unity and Diversity in New Testament Theology: Essays in Honor of George E. Ladd (ed. Robert Guelich, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1978), 161.

https://bible.org/article/melchizedek-covenantal-figure-biblical-theology-eschatological-royal-priesthood#P8_421

Anders Aschim, “Melchizedek and Jesus: 11QMelchizedek and the Epistle to the Hebrews,” in The Jewish Roots of Christological Monotheism: Papers from the St. Andrews Conferences on the Historical Origins of the Worship of Jesus (eds. Carey Newman, James Davila, and Gladys Lewis, JSJSup. 63; Leiden: Brill, 1999), 130.

Paul J. Kobelski, Melchizedek and Melchiresa (CBQMS 10; Washington DC: Catholic Biblical Association of America, 1981), 126-7.

https://bible.ca/manuscripts/Septuagint-LXX-Shem-was-Melchizedek-Masoretic-chronology-Messiah-Jesus-Christ-priesthood.htm

https://www.ancient-origins.net/history-ancient-traditions/history-circumcision-0010398

https://www.gotquestions.org/city-gate.html