Circumcision was the sign of the covenant Abraham made with God. And ever after this time when Abraham and his family were circumcised, all of his male descendants were also circumcised. In verse 11, the word "sign" (or in the King James it says, "token") is a word of very wide application. It generally means something that points to another. Used in this kind of context, what the sign points to cannot be seen. Thus it carries the implication of evidence, proof, argument, that which authenticates.
In other words, this sign authenticates something. It is pointing to something that cannot be seen. The circumcision itself could be seen. It was pointing to something that could not be seen. Used in this kind of context, it comes very close to the English word seal. A seal is that which gives genuineness to something. So if a highly placed person puts his seal on a letter (and since that person is the only person that has the seal), it authenticates that the letter came from that person—such as a king, a duke, or whatever. Circumcision authenticated something. It pointed to something that could not be seen.
That is the same word, token, as used in Genesis 17. The blood was a sign pointing to the fact that there were Israelites inside. The Israelites could not be seen. The blood could. I am going to change that just a bit and say that the blood authenticated that there were people under its protection inside the house. Do you get it?
Same word again. We are dealing with circumcision; and, in this case, it authenticated—it pointed to—someone who was permitted to eat the Passover. This was the Lord's Passover. And so then the circumcision was the sign that authenticated that this person had, indeed, made the covenant with God. You could not see the covenant. You could see the sign.
Under the Old Covenant, circumcision was the sign that one had made the Old Covenant; and it represented that which ensured his acceptance with God. It was proof that he was heir of the promises given to Abraham. It was this fact—when contrasted to Christ's sacrifice, faith, and grace—which precipitated the major theological argument of the first century. And it is through Paul's persuasive writings that we understand clearly that no physical thing, no ritual of or by itself, has any power to transfer righteousness to the doer. Please get that. No physical thing—ritual, mark, or whatever—has the power, of and by itself, to transfer righteousness to the doer.
Do you understand what He was getting at there? This is very, very interesting, I think. We tend to think of this covenant in religious terms, but it was much, much more than that. God does not necessarily think of His way of life as religion. It is "the way of life." It encompasses more than religion. Maybe we should say religion encompasses all of life. God's way should be with us (as He says in other places), from the time we get up till the time we go to bed. And even while we are in bed it says that His law keeps us. We read that. His covenant is very practical. His way is very livable.
Three things stand out here in this context. I do not know if you picked them up.
1. Every male was circumcised, whether he was born in the family, or whether he was bought. Every current and potential father.
2. God makes this covenant with all the males; not with the females. It is not that the females did not have a part in the covenant. He gave the sign to the males.
3. The body part that was affected in the circumcision is the male sexual member. Call it the instrument of his becoming a father—the means of procreation.
Think of it. Every time a man went to the bathroom, he should have been reminded of the covenant. "You shall be circumcised in the flesh of your foreskins, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between Me and you." Every time the man looked down, while he was going to the bathroom, he should have been reminded that he had a covenant with God. And every time he had sexual intercourse it should have reminded him that he had a covenant with God, because that was where God put His sign. Very, very interesting.
Why there? Why not a tattoo on the arm, or something? No. He did it at a very important part of the body. For a man (most women would say) all his attention is focused there anyway. God wanted to move that attention from the sexual to the spiritual. It was to remind him that he had a covenant with God.
This is the conclusion that I have come to. Circumcision set apart all the fathers and all the potential fathers in Israel for a specific task—to teach God's way to the next generation. I do not know if you agree with that, but let us go to Deuteronomy 6. We read these verses every time there is a childrearing sermon, but do we read verse 2? I am going to start in verse 1. This was just after God gave the Israelites going into the Promised Land the Ten Commandments one more time. He reiterated them through Moses.
Circumcision is then given, you might say, as a mark, it is a sign, it is a seal of those who are God’s chosen, those who have made the covenant with Him. It is the sign or the seal of an ordaining, a sanctifying, a consecrating, by God. As such, it acts to separate them from others who have not made the covenant, but it also acts to unify them as a body. This was more than just an external act. It was a mark which made a man a part of a body whose whole purpose—its dignity, its character, its trials—he then became part of, he shared in it. This gave Israel a great deal of strength to draw upon and they did it with a fierce determination that separated them from the other nations. You know how frequently that appears in the New Testament, about the circumcision. It also brought persecution upon them as well.
God intended that it be an outward and somewhat visible sign of a far more important circumcision that was taking place inside. God intended that the circumcision linked the man with Him that would be a fellowship, that would be a means of fulfilling the spiritual purpose. But what happened is that the rite of circumcision, instead of it being a source of inspiration, eventually became nothing more than a tradition whose real meaning evaporated. The Israelite became so self-assured over the fact of his circumcision that it helped paralyze their spiritual growth.
To this day, the Ishmaelites, the Arabs, are circumcised at thirteen, as for the sons of Abraham, the sons of Isaac, they are circumcised on the eighth day. What do you think the eighth day signifies? Well I will tell you what my idea is. I believe that it is at least a veiled reference to the fact that God took seven days to create or refashion the earth and that it indicates that which is physical. We might also say, that which is carnal. It is the day of the first Adam, the day of man apart from God. It is the period of this world.
The eighth day signifies a new beginning, it signifies a new creation, of being created in Christ Jesus, it signifies the second Adam. So I think that there is a veiled spiritual overtone that is indicating that the way that we become a new person, created in Christ Jesus, a new creation is to under go a spiritual circumcision, the circumcision of the heart.
It's interesting to notice something here—and that is God's foresight. And, I might add here, also His plan. Remember that Abraham didn't have a child yet. But already God is planning a discipline that He is going to put the descendants of Abraham [through], in which they would be subject to others. But also planned was their release from that subjugation, the destruction of the Amorites under Joshua, and the inheritance of the Land. What God is showing is that the events of the exodus were part of a much larger plan, which God inaugurated through Abraham and then continued through Isaac, Jacob, Joseph and Moses. So let's go to chapter 17, where the real covenant was made with Abram.
Now let's jump, in the story here, to Exodus 19. We have gone from Exodus 12:40-41 with an emphasis on the 430 years, and underlining that is the language "that very same day." Then we jump back to Genesis 15 and pick up a promise which God sealed with a covenant that He would give to Abraham heirs from his own body to inherit the land. In chapter 17, we see the covenant given to Abraham. And now it is made an eternal covenant—an eternal inheritance of the land. And we find that sealed by circumcision—and, again, with language talking about the self-same day. In Exodus 19, the children of Israel are out of the land, and God is about to make the covenant with them—with the descendants of Abraham.
On that very day Abraham, Ishmael, and all the males of Abraham's household were circumcised, and thus they received the sign of the covenant. The covenant that was made at Mt. Sinai was essentially the same covenant as that entered into by God and Abraham, but expanded to include the entire nation (that is, all the descendants of Abraham). And added to it, then, were civil and ceremonial laws necessary for administering the covenant to the whole nation. That makes the 15th of Nisan (or, if you prefer, Abib) a very significant date.
Other Forerunner Commentary entries containing Genesis 17:11:
