Circumcision commanded
17
📚And when Abram was ninety-nine years old, the LORD appeared 📖 to Abram, and said to him, “I am God Almighty 📖. Walk in my presence and be blameless 📖. 2 📚And I will make my covenant between me and you, and will increase your numbers exceedingly”.3 📚And Abram prostrated himself, and God talked with him, saying, 4 📚“As for me, now this is my covenant with you: you will be a father of many nations 📖. 5 📚And your name will no longer be called Abram, but your name will be Abraham, for I have made you a father of many nations.
17:5 Abram means “exalted father”. Abraham means “father of a multitude”.⚜
6 📚And I will make you exceedingly fruitful, and I will make nations of you, and kings 📖 will come from you. 7 📚And I will establish my covenant between me and you and your offspring after you in their generations as an everlasting covenant, to be your God 📖 and the God of your descendants after you. 8 📚And I will give to you, and to your descendants after you, the land where you are a stranger, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession. And I will be their God”.
9 📚And God said to Abraham, “Therefore you shall keep my covenant, you and your descendants after you in their generations. 10 📚This is my covenant, which you shall keep, between me and you and your descendants after you: Every male among you must be circumcised. 11 📚And you shall circumcise the flesh of your foreskin. And it will be a sign of the covenant between me and you. 12 📚And among you he who is eight days old shall be circumcised, every male in your generations, he who is born in the house, or bought with money from any foreigner, who is not of your offspring. 13 📚He who is born in your house, and he who is bought with your money, must be circumcised. And my covenant will be in your flesh for an everlasting covenant. 14 📚As for the uncircumcised male, the flesh of whose foreskin is not circumcised, that soul shall be cut off from his people. He has broken my covenant”.
17:9-14 Circumcision was to signify something spiritual – Deut 10:16; 30:6; Jer 4:4; 9:25-26; Col 2:11. It spoke of faith in God’s word, and a righteousness that comes by faith (Rom 4:11). It was an agreement to be the people of God and listen to His voice. The mere outward ceremony meant nothing if there was not faith and a desire to please and serve God (Rom 2:28-29). But if the rite was not practiced, if a person had no faith, no obedience to God’s covenant, he was to be cut off from the people. Men had responsibility under the covenant God made with Abraham. It was to believe God and act accordingly.⚜
Isaac promised
15 📚And God said to Abraham, “As for your wife Sarai, you shall not call her name Sarai, but her name will be Sarah 📖. 16 📚And I will bless her, and give you a son by her also. Yes, I will bless her, and she will be a mother of nations. Kings of people will come from her”.
17:16 For the first time God promises that Sarah shall bear a son.⚜
17 📚Then Abraham prostrated himself and laughed and said in his heart, “Will a child be born to him who is a hundred years old? And will Sarah, who is ninety years old, bear a child?” 18 📚And Abraham said to God, “O that Ishmael might live in your presence!”
17:17-18 The faith of Abraham, the man of faith, and the father of all who believe, temporarily stumbles. Perhaps he “believed not for joy” (Luke 24:40-41). In all of God’s believers there is a mixture of faith and unbelief, and we all have reason enough to cry out as the man in Mark 9:24 did.⚜
19 📚And God said, “Your wife Sarah will certainly bear you a son, and you shall call his name Isaac. And I will establish my covenant with him as an everlasting covenant, and with his offspring after him. 20 📚And as for Ishmael, I have heard you. Now I have blessed him and will make him fruitful, and will increase his numbers exceedingly. He will become the father of twelve princes, and I will make him a great nation. 21 📚But my covenant I will establish with Isaac, whom Sarah will bear to you by this same time next year”.
17:19-21 God repeats the promise. Isaac means “he laughs”. God says He will establish the covenant with him, not with Ishmael (but Ishmael also was to receive God’s blessing because he was a son of Abraham.) Now Abraham fully believed the promise concerning Isaac. See Rom 4:17-24.⚜
22 📚And he finished talking with him, and God went up from Abraham.
23 📚And Abraham took his son Ishmael, and all who had been born in his house, and all who had been bought with his money, every male among the persons of Abraham’s household, and that very day circumcised the flesh of their foreskin, as God had told him.
17:23 Abraham immediately obeyed. See also Gen 22:1-3. This is a mark of a man of God. Many people put obedience to God’s Word off to another time, and then never get around to it (Acts 24:25; 2 Cor 6:2; Heb 3:15; John 2:5).⚜
24 📚And Abraham was ninety-nine years old when he was circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin. 25 And his son Ishmael was thirteen years old when he was circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin. 26 📚Abraham and his son Ishmael were circumcised on the same day. 27 📚And all the men of his household, born in the house and bought with money from foreigners, were circumcised with him.