Circumcision the woman and the Kinsman Redeemer
Mar 10th, 2008 by Cheryl
In dealing with women in ministry, the question has been asked of me, isn’t circumcision a proof that God only wants men to minister through leading and teaching since God gave the sign of circumcision for males only to his people in the Old Testament? Did God give preferential treatment to males when he brought them into the Abrahamic covenant in the Old Testament through circumcision?
While some believe that the entrance into the Abrahamic covenant of blessing through circumcision gave preferential treatment for males, the fact is that only the males had a necessary ritual of entrance into the covenant and without this ritual they were rejected as part of the covenant. Females entered the covenant without restriction and without rejection. To understand the reasons why, we need to look at the biblical requirement for circumcision.
Circumcision was performed on babies when they were 8 days old and if the parents did not circumcise their baby boy, the baby was rejected.
Gen 17:14 “But an uncircumcised male who is not circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin, that person shall be cut off from his people; he has broken My covenant.”
It is an interesting fact that babies did not circumcise themselves and the failure of their father to cut off his son’s foreskin would result in that baby being cut off from the people of God. This means that the physical act of circumcision was done by a father to his son without the son having done anything sinful of his own. This was a generational sign done to the next generation and then passed on to the next generations. When Israel disobeyed God in the wilderness for 40 years and one of the ways they disobeyed is that they did not circumcise their sons, Joshua took the responsibility to circumcise the males, sons of the ones who fell in the desert, so that they could be in God’s covenant and go into the promised land. The females were allowed to go into the promised land without restriction.
To understand God’s restriction on males and how it relates to the Kinsman Redeemer we need to understand the physical and spiritual sign that God gave as a symbol for sin. The symbol in scripture for sin is the foreskin.
While only males carried the symbol of sin in their body, both males and females carried the spiritual symbol of sin that God says must be cut off to be right with him.
Deuteronomy 10:16 So circumcise your heart, and stiffen your neck no longer.
Deuteronomy 30:6 Moreover the LORD your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your descendants, to love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, so that you may live.
Jeremiah 4:4 “Circumcise yourselves to the LORD And remove the foreskins of your heart, Men of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem, Or else My wrath will go forth like fire And burn with none to quench it, Because of the evil of your deeds.”
Sin needed to be dealt with and the spiritual symbol of sin is the “foreskin” of our heart. It needs to be cut off from our heart so that we can be right with God. So while the Abrahamic covenant dealt with the fleshly sign of sin, the fleshly foreskin on the males, the New Covenant in our Lord Jesus deals with the spiritual sign of sin, the uncircumcised heart. We must circumcise our heart through repentance turning away from sin (Deut. 10:16), but God himself does the actual work by removing our sin (Deut 30:6). In this way God gives us a new heart.
Ezekiel 36:26 “Moreover, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.
While females also have a piece of physical skin that will be removed when they get married, their skin was not likened to sin but to purity. The symbol of a woman’s skin of her virginity was the symbol of purity. The Messiah then was to come through a virgin alone and no male would be involved in passing on of the seed of Adam to the Messiah. This is an important fact since the male alone has the physical symbol of sin in his body.
Circumcision was created to be a sign of righteousness but it was also created to be something that was done to a person not what one does for ones self. This symbolizes that the righteousness does not originate in us but through the grace of God. Romans 4:11 explains:
Rom 4:11 and he received the sign of circumcision, a seal of the righteousness of the faith which he had while uncircumcised, so that he might be the father of all who believe without being circumcised, that righteousness might be credited to them,
So circumcision was a seal of righteousness. It was a seal, a sign of the cutting off of sin that results in a righteous standing before God.
The physical sign of sin had to be cut off to enter God’s Abrahamic covenant. Only the males carried in their body this sign of sin. Cutting off of the sign of sin was the seal of righteousness, a sign of the physical fleshly standing before God. Abraham received this sign even while he was yet uncircumcised so that the ultimate symbol would be a symbol of God’s work of grace not a work that Abraham accomplished. This is why the cutting off of the physical sign of sin was done to babies who could not accomplish this “work” for themselves.
So why is there a physical sign of sin only on the males when the spiritual sign of sin is on both males and females? The answer comes in the sin nature that we inherit from Adam. We are under a double condemnation of sin both by the sin that we inherit and the sin that we personally commit.
The first condemnation of sin is that which we have inherited through Adam.
Psalms 51:5 Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, And in sin my mother conceived me.
Psalms 58:3 The wicked are estranged from the womb; These who speak lies go astray from birth.
We all have inherited a sin nature that causes us to sin from a little child on. No one needs to teach a child how to lie. They do it naturally because they are born with a sin nature. Scripture also says that sin entered the world through one man. It doesn’t say that it was just corruption that entered the world but “sin” itself entered the world.
Romans 5:12 Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned—
Notice in this scripture that the death that came through sin “spread” to all men. The Greek word that is translated as “spread” is dierchomai and it means to pass through. How did death pass through all humans? The literal Greek says:
Romans 5:12 Because of this as even as through one human the sin into the world entered and through the sin the death and thus into all humans the death passed through on which all sinned.
It is clear from the literal translation that the sin that entered the world is passed through all humans with death as a result and the sin that we personally sin is based on our sin nature. The Greek says “on which” all sinned. It is what has been passed through to us, “on which” or on the basis of this all sin.
Romans 5:14 Nevertheless death reigned from Adam until Moses, even over those who had not sinned in the likeness of the offense of Adam, who is a type of Him who was to come.
We enter the world in a dying body because we have inherited the sin nature from Adam and death follows to all who are descendants of Adam by his seed because these are the ones who were “in” Adam when he sinned. All of us are the seed of Adam and all of us were there inside him in the form of his seed when he sinned. It was Adam’s one sin that caused us to start our life as dying beings. The fact that we enter the world in a body that is susceptible to sickness and death proves that we inherit Adam’s sin nature since death follows sin. There would be no death if sin didn’t exist first.
Romans 5:15 But the free gift is not like the transgression. For if by the transgression of the one the many died, much more did the grace of God and the gift by the grace of the one Man, Jesus Christ, abound to the many.
Yet it wasn’t just that we enter this life in a dying body, we also enter in a fleshly body that has inherited the sin nature. We were created as sinners because of Adam’s sin. Adam’s sin caused both a physical death and a spiritual separation from God. The very day that Adam sinned, he was separated from God and kicked out of the garden. We inherit this separation from God because we were “in” Adam when he sinned. Verse 19 proves that it wasn’t just our death that came as a result of Adam’s sin, but we were made sinners through Adam’s sin:
Romans 5:19 For as through the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, even so through the obedience of the One the many will be made righteous.
How is it through one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners? “The many” were made sinners because Adam’s sin was spread to us by inheritance. By the one man’s sin, we inherited his rebellion and this spread to us tainting us even in our mother’s womb because we are the seed of Adam. Romans 5:19 makes a strong point that one man’s sin made the many to be sinners.
Scripture also makes it clear that this sin is brought into the world, not by Eve and through her seed, but by Adam. Yet scripture also makes clear that the one who would pay for our sin must be a kinsman Redeemer of Adam’s. Jesus must be the last “Adam” not the last “Eve” or the last “Abraham”. The one who started the sin must be dealt with by the life and work of the “last” Adam. The word Redeemer in the Hebrew is “gaal” and it means to act as a redeemer to a deceased kinsman, to redeem or buy back from bondage. Jesus is to be that kinsman Redeemer who buys back from bondage all that was lost by Adam’s sin. In order for Jesus to be that Redeemer he must be a perfect sacrifice without sin or blemish.
Jesus was born from a virgin without a human father so that he would not have the inherited sin nature that comes through the seed of the man. Jesus is the only one who is not a seed of Adam. Jesus was not in Adam when Adam sinned. By showing us that only the man has the physical sign of sin, we have a fleshly sign to show that the Messiah could not come through the seed of the man. The foreskin is a powerful symbol of sin. It must be cut off because the foreskin is identified with sin and with the rebellion of Adam.
Scripture also tells us that the father can affect the seed within him.
Hebrews 7:9, 10 And, so to speak, through Abraham even Levi, who received tithes, paid tithes, for he was still in the loins of his father when Melchizedek met him.
If scripture says that the seed within the father can be credited with the act of the father, then the seed within the father can also be credited with the sinful rebellion when Adam fell just as scripture says. Scripture very clearly says that Adam brought sin into the world. He brought sin into the world just as surely as Levi paid tithes while he was in his father’s loins.
So if the male transfers the sin nature of Adam (Adam’s seed) to Adam’s fleshly descendants, then why was Jesus born with a foreskin that needed to be cut off? The reason is that Jesus was to be made like us in all ways but without sin.
Romans 8:3 For what the Law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did: sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh,
Jesus was sent in the “likeness of sinful flesh”. What was that “likeness” of sinful flesh? Jesus was born without inherited sin but he did have the symbol of sin in his body just as all other men had. Jesus had a foreskin and this foreskin had to be cut off in order to fulfill the law.
Although Jesus was without inherited sin because he received his humanity through the woman’s seed, not the man’s, Jesus still had to fulfill all of the law on our behalf. In the same way, although Jesus had no sin of his own, Jesus had to fulfill the law by being baptized. Baptism symbolizes the washing away of sin by cutting off the foreskin of the heart, yet Jesus had no sin to be washed away and no foreskin of his heart that needed to be cut away. But because he was to fulfill the entire law on our behalf, Jesus needed to go through these acts in order to be identified with us in our sin so that he could be our sin bearer.
As the sin bearer of the entire human race, as the last Adam, Jesus needed to be a descendant of Adam but not through Adam’s seed. How is that possible? God bypassed the man’s seed by going through the woman’s seed which had not been tainted with Adam’s sin. God bypassed the one who brought sin and stain into our lives by going through the very one who had been deceived by Satan. Click here to read how God did this by reading my article on Adam as head of the family.
To sum up the importance of circumcision and the importance of cutting off of sin, we need to see that:
1. Adam alone brought sin into the world.
2. Adam alone was kicked out of the garden as the one whom God pinpointed as the one who would continue to rebel against God’s rules and eat from a tree that was no longer available to him.
3. Adam’s seed was not to be used to bring the Messiah into the world.
4. Only the males have the physical sign of sin (foreskin)
5. Death is passed through to each one of us because of Adam’s sin.
6. The sin nature that we inherit causes us to practice sinning on our own.
5. Jesus was made in the image of the first Adam and Jesus had a foreskin the physical sign of sin.
6. Entrance into God’s family requires the removal of the foreskin of our hearts and this is a requirement of both males and females who all have their own sin.
7. We are saved by grace through faith and it is God who removes the symbol of sin from our hearts and He is the on who makes us clean.
As born-again Christians we need to allow the Spirit to do his work in our hearts. The Jewish nation had the symbol of fleshly circumcision but they resisted God and would not allow God to do the work in their hearts.
Act 7:51 “You men who are stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears are always resisting the Holy Spirit; you are doing just as your fathers did.
What started through Abraham with a fleshly symbol is now shown to represent a spiritual symbol of the work that God does in our hearts.
Rom 2:28 For he is not a Jew who is one outwardly, nor is circumcision that which is outward in the flesh.
Rom 2:29 But he is a Jew who is one inwardly; and circumcision is that which is of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the letter; and his praise is not from men, but from God.
So in answer to the question about circumcision, this rite of entrance into the Abrahamic covenant was not a lifting up of the male as more important than the female. Females were not given circumcision because sin does not pass through from the seed of Eve. The sign of circumcision was God’s finger pointing toward the birth of the Messiah through the seed of the woman. Praise God that he found a way to bring the Messiah as a kinsman Redeemer without the stain of inherited sin. Christ and Christ alone was the unblemished lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!
Wow Cheryl, this is a lot to take in. I certainly plan on printing this out and studying it. The circumcision question and how women relate to this has confused me for somtime.
Now, not that you are busy or anything (smile) but how does this verse relate to any of this…it has confused me for years:
Exodus 4
24At a lodging place on the way the LORD met him and sought to put him to death. 25Then Zipporah took a flint and cut off her son’s foreskin and touched Moses’ feet with it and said, “Surely you are a bridegroom of blood to me!” 26So he let him alone. It was then that she said, “A bridegroom of blood,” because of the circumcision.
Lin,
God had chosen Moses to lead the people out of Egypt, but in order to do this job he needed Moses to be completely obedient. The sons born to the Israelites as well as the servants born to their family must be circumcised on the eighth day and it is apparent that Moses had not done this to his son. Perhaps it was because his wife was not an Israelite and did not approve of the practice and he listened to her rather than obeying the commandment. When God came to put Moses to death for disobedience, it appears that his wife had been holding back Moses from circumcising his son, so Zipporah finally relented when she saw that there was no other option, but she did the circumcision in anger and threw the foreskin at Moses’ feet calling him a husband of blood. The fact that Zipporah did the circumcision and it was not Moses who did the job, appears to give strong evidence that she was the hold-out and Moses should have had some backbone to do what was right even if his wife didn’t want to follow God.
Although scripture says that the uncircumcised son will be cut off from the people of God, it appears that God threatened to cut off Moses too for disobedience. Circumcision was a requirement, not an option in obeying God. It symbolized the importance of cutting off of sin, so much so that God chose to make this a “hill to die on” and would have removed Moses if there wasn’t complete obedience.
Actually, females have a foreskin too. It’s normally called the clitoral hood, but medically they are both the same thing - the prepuce. Cutting the prepuce off a girl is illegal though. Why don’t boys get the same protectection?
Hardly any Christian countries circumcise boys, and for Catholics, it’s actually a sin (http://www.catholicsagainstcircumcision.org).
There are also Jews who oppose circumcision:
http://www.jewishcircumcision.org/
http://www.jewsagainstcircumcision.org/
http://www.circumcision.org/
Mark,
The “hood” in a female is not called a foreskin however cutting it off is not illegal. What you are probably referring to is not cutting of the piece of skin but cutting off the entire organ. This is widely done in third world countries where the woman’s sexuality is stifled by female mutilation. This procedure is illegal and it is brutal. For this procedure to be similar in boys would be to cut off the entire organ.
God’s law required cutting off the foreskin in an act of obedience for the Jews in the same way that God’s law requires that we have the foreskin of our hearts dealt with by the Lord Jesus. We stubbornly cannot hold on to our sin and think that we are following God. When we repent and turn away from our sin, and submit to the cutting work of the Holy Spirit, God has promised to give us a new heart and a new spirit. God’s way is the way of obedience and man’s way is the way of rationalization and disobedience.
The clitoral hood is the exact equivalent of the foreskin, and both are called the “prepuce”. Cutting off a clitoral hood *is* illegal in the USA, and has been since 1997. In fact, just making an incision without removing any tissue is illegal.
I agree that removing the clitoris is considerably worse than regular male circumcision, but many forms of female circumcision do not remove the clitoris, and most forms of Type I female circumcision do less damage than standard male circumcision.
The more you find out about female circumcision, the less difference you will find with male circumcision. For instance:
1) Male circumcision amongst Christians in the USA became popular in the 19th century to stifle male sexuality. Christians didn’t circumcise anywhere until then.
2) The USA is almost the only country where Christians circumcise (the Philippines is the other, where the practice was introduced by Americans).
3) Clitoridectomy used to be performed in the USA on “wayward” girls.
4) Almost every country which practises male circumcision also practises some form of female circumcision.
Mark,
I have never heard of female circumcision except for what is wrongly labeled as circumcision but it is actually mutilation. It has been widely reported on in the media. As a mother of a son who had to be circumcised because the tissue grew shut when he was just a small baby, I would rather see a child circumcised in a painless way than go through what we did when it became medically necessary. It was very hard on us to see him in such pain.
The point is that as Christians we do not need to follow the Jewish law but it is not wrong to have the procedure done. There is reasons to have males circumcised. There are no health benefits for cutting of a woman’s skin and God did not require this.
The question on circumcision for the Jews or circumcision for our hearts all revolves around obedience. Many Jews didn’t obey God when they came out of Egypt and that generation died in the wilderness due to their disobedience. God has a right to our obedience because he is God.
It’s only in the USA that doctors find reasons to circumcise small boys. In other Christian countries, less than 1% of males ever need to be circumcised, and it *never* happens before puberty. I very much doubt that any British or Australian or South American doctor would have thought that your son needed to be circumcised, especially not if he was still a baby. US doctors try to find reasons to circumcise though, and don’t know what intact penises are supposed to be like, so they find problems where none exist. Conversely, you can find doctors in many countries that will argue that there are significant health benefits for various forms of female circumcision. Over 90% of Egyptian girls are circumcised by surgeons in clinics (though their version does a lot less damage than regular male circumcision)
Circumcision is not painless at any age, and in fact hurts newborns *more*, since a) you can’t use general anaesthetic and b), you have to separate the foreskin from the glans, which is the most painful part of the circumcision.
I also regard male circumcision as mutilation, and it is also the view of the Catholic church that circumcision is a sin.
Thanks Cheryl. That passage has been confusing because there is no ‘leading’ up to it. It is astonishing to read that God would have killed Moses. Moses!
What is even more interesting is that Moses did not seem to be punished not marrying a Hebrew woman.
Mark,
First of all our son was done as an emergency. Even with a stretching he wouldn’t drink or go to the bathroom. I completely disagree with you especially since I have been through this. And if God required something then God is the one who knows best not us. The bottom line is that when God says to do something we must obey. God almost killed Moses because he had not circumcised his son. Although we do not have this law for Christians today, to say that it is wrong to do is simply not true.
Lin,
God does test us to see if we will obey and I think Moses was tested until the very end. God did something similar with Balaam where he told him that he could not go with the Midianites to curse Israel. Later when Balaam asked again (why would he even ask God again?) God said that he could go but with the Midianites but he must only say that God gave him to say. God was testing Balaam. Since Balaam was hoping to get some money for his “work” it appears that it took him all of two seconds to get up and go with the men. But God put an angel in the way to kill Balaam and ultimately Balaam was saved through the miracle of a talking donkey who protected Balaam from coming across the path of the angel who would have killed Balaam.
So here we have two examples, one of God’s leader for Israel and another of a “prophet” who were both almost killed and each had a savior provided to keep them from being killed. In Balaam’s case God provided a talking donkey to keep Balaam from going further. In Moses’ case he was on the way to lead Israel when he too encountered a God-ordained appointment with death if he would have gone an further without an obedience to God in what he already knew to be true. He too was saved when his wife obeyed the commandment.
It seems to me that these two instances are about God showing us how serious he is in our obedience and there are consequences for disobedience, yet he also provided a “way of escape” so that he didn’t have to kill the man. It also shows to me that before we take the next “step” of faith in going on with God we need to make sure that we have obeyed God in what he has already told us. The next step of faith is dependent on what we already have revealed to us and we cannot move on until we are obedient to God’s revealed will.
Cheryl, it sounds like your son had a bad UTI, and I’m sorry to hear that. However, if you’d gone to most doctors in the world, they wouldn’t have thought that being intact was the cause, or that circumcision was the cure. Circumcised boys get UTI’s too, and girls get them about four times as often as boys, but then the treatment is antibiotics, not surgery. Circumcision wouldn’t even be considered in a European or South American hospital. Stretching isn’t applicable btw.
(there is one medical reason that babies do get circumcised for, and that’s hypaspadias)
I think we’re going to have to agree to disagree, but I believe that circumcision is not just unnecessary for Christians, but wrong. Three Popes have spoken out against circumcision, and it also appears to contravene the Catechism.
Is the pope infallible?
Is the Roman Catholic Catechism in any way the guideline of a Bible believing Christian?
In His amazing grace,
Martin
While circumcision was never mandated for Christians, it certainly was for Jews, as long as there are Jews. A case could be made for Paul forbidding it, but context tells us the forbidding was due to the motivation. In other words, if someone wanted it strictly to be legalistic and “boast in your flesh”, that would violate Paul’s clear commands not to go back under any part of the old Law.
Seeing that it isn’t expressly forbidden for other reasons, we can’t call it wrong or a sin. But that only leaves one other reason, which would be medical. Even so, there are conflicting medical views on this. One side says it prevents or minimizes the chance of infection from improper hygiene, while the other cites the pain and reduced sensitivity.
So I’d call it a matter of medical judgment, but the Christian must never do it out of any kind of legalistic religious duty. Neither must it be done to reduce sexual pleasure, male or female. I see that as barbaric, especially female genital mutilation.
Paula,
Good points!
Just for a little levity’s sake, I still crack up at Rabbi Tuchman’s circumcision gadget in Mel Brooks’ “Robin Hood, Men in Tights”…
Greg, levity is good.
Here is my understanding.
Circumcision of males was the sign of a FAMILY entering Abraham’s covenant. This is one you want to be in as it is just promises from God and is therefore sometimes called the Promise.
It is a physical sign of a spiritual truth, the need for heart circumcision, which is true for everyone, males and females Some pagans also circumcized males, so JUST because one is circumcized does not mean anything, it needs to have been done in faith, as does everything that counts spiritually.
ANYONE IN CHRIST has put on Christ and so is in Abraham’s covenant and so can partake in Passover in good faith, for example, where it is required to be circumcized if male to participate.
But I do not see explicitly where the foreskin is a symbol for sin, rather removing the foreskin is a sign of being tenderized.
Don,
Thanks for your comments!
Circumcision was a sign of the family progenitor entering into the covenant but this doesn’t mean that a male was need to get into the covenant. The fact is that only males were required to be circumcised, but female slaves and single women did not need a male to be a part of the Abrahamic covenant. This brings up the question of why?
You are right in that it is absolutely true that anyone who is in Christ is part of the Abrahamic family of God. We all had our hearts filled with sin and it is Jesus Christ who removed the foreskin of our hearts. Removing the foreskin was a sign of removing the sin. The question that I was asking is why is the removal of the foreskin a sign of removing of sin? It is because the foreskin is a symbol or sign of sin. If is it true that we all have a spiritual foreskin that needs to be removed off our hearts, we need to also consider why it is that only men have a physical foreskin that needs to be removed that allowed them to come into the family of God in the OT? There was never one woman who was refused entrance because she did not have a male member of her family to bring her into the covenant. The covenant did not have a male mediator who brought the family into the covenant. The covenant was for each person individually. The father could not bring the sons into the covenant even if he was circumcised. The father’s circumcision was not good enough. Each male member had to be circumcised or they were out of the family of God. This is quite a sober warning of God that each son was rejected with or without their father’s own circumcision.
When we see the importance of the cutting off of the foreskin in the males as a sign of passing on of the inheritance of the sin nature, it should cause us to realize why God did not give the promise to Adam of his seed being the Savior and why it was the seed of the woman alone who became our Savior. So many say that the virgin birth is unnecessary but that is not correct. The virgin birth of Jesus has been and continues to be a important part of our faith. Jesus had to be the sinless lamb who was able to take away our sin. He could not have inherited a sin nature in any way and he could not have sinned on his own or he would not qualify to be our Savior.
It is interesting also to note that God rejected a sacrificial lamb that had any physical blemish. It wasn’t just the innocence of the lamb that was required but there there was also a requirement that there be no physical mark or blemish on the lamb in order for them to be a pure sacrifice for sin. Everything that God does is for a reason and each symbol has a meaning. Jesus as the lamb of God had to be physically without blemish (a sin nature inherited by birth would have disqualified him) and internally without blemish (without personal sin). If he failed in either way to be sinless then he could not be our Kinsman Redeemer.
I was going to ask one other thing, Don, if you see scripture as saying that removing the foreskin was a sign of being tenderized, where do you get this from? Scripture says that the need for circumcision of the heart was because of our evil deeds. Jeremiah 4:4 says that if they do not circumcise their hearts, God’s wrath will go out against them. This is a consequence of their sin, their uncircumcised hearts.
Uncircumcised heart = sin (or evil) in their heart. God’s wrath is poured out against our sin. This is why we are told that we need a new heart not a tenderized heart. That is the way I see scripture. If I have missed something, I welcome correction.
I can find 73 hits in e-sword in the ESV on “circumc*” and 7 on “foreskin”. I cannot find any of them saying that the foreskin is a symbol for sin or circumcision is a symbol for removing sin. If you can, please post it.
On the tender aspect, the Bible talks about healing after it is done, and it is obvious that some of the protection is removed for a very sensitive part of a male.
Don,
Thanks for clarifying what you meant. That was a very thoughtful answer.
Let’s have a look at the physical and spiritual meaning of protection over a sensitive part. First of all we can see that both men and women have a piece of skin that acts as a protection over a sensitive part. While it is fairly rare that women’s skin is removed by circumcision, that is the removing of the skin of protection over her very sensitive part, it is very common in the third world to have a young girl’s entire organ cut out resulting in genital mutilation. If we ignore the mutilation part, we can readily see that it is possible to remove the skin covering the sensitive part on both men and women. Agreed?
We should also be able to agree that removing the foreskin in the flesh is a fleshly act that is spiritualized by removing the foreskin of our hearts. Agreed?
Next I think that we can agree that God only required males to be circumcised in the flesh and there was no such requirement for the females even though females also had a piece of skin that covered their very sensitive part.
Let’s go on next to the spiritual end of the circumcision of the foreskin. Let’s look at Jeremiah 4:4 in the ESV.
The key words here are circumcise, foreskin, hearts, wrath, evil, deeds. So what is God saying? One thing that we know for sure is that each one of us has had a foreskin on our hearts. The foreskin of the heart is not limited to males as females also have it. God says that the foreskin on our hearts brings God’s wrath and what we need to have cut away has to do with evil deeds that have something to do with our heart.
Is God saying that we need to remove a piece of skin from our hearts that keeps us from being sensitive or we need to be made tender by the removing of the skin? Jeremiah 4:4 doesn’t appear to be saying this at all. Does God say that his wrath is to go forth like a fire because we are not tender? Or is God saying something else that is far worse? What exactly is it that God says that equates with the foreskin of our heart? Read on to see that God’s anger against us is because of the evil of our deeds. It is the evil that needs to be cut away from our hearts. Evil is sin. The evil of our deeds is the sinful thoughts of our heart that gives birth to sinful deeds.
The next problem I think you would have if you made removing the foreskin to be a symbol of making a person more tender, is explaining why only males are to be made more tender? There is no family mediator in the OT who speaks on his wife’s behalf to God thus answering for her sin. The sacrificial system shows that each person must made a sacrifice acceptable to God for their own sin. There is no required mediator of the family where the man’s circumcision covers other people. In fact it is very clear that a father’s circumcision does not even cover his own son. A circumcised father still will have his son rejected from the people of God if his son is not circumcised.
When I read scripture it is clear that the foreskin of the heart is a symbol of the sin and evil that is in our heart. When the evil and the sin that starts in our hearts is cut off, God says that he will give us a new heart one that follows hard after him. It is our sin that separates us from God and the foreskin is the symbol of that evil and evil is sin.
Yes, removing the foreskin is a fleshly act. Yes, there can be ROUGHLY analogous parts in males and females, except the females are smaller. In my way of seeing it, the female MAYBE is ALREADY tender, but the male needed to be made so, in the physical shadow of the spiritual reality. Or perhaps it was just not a good idea to circumcize females when flint cutting tools were the norm. In the spiritual reality, both genders need to be made tender and this was true in the Torah.
Deu 10:16 Circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart, and be no longer stubborn.
Deu 30:6 And the LORD your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your offspring, so that you will love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, that you may live.
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And the other 2 refs to heart circumcision:
Jer 4:4 Circumcise yourselves to the LORD; remove the foreskin of your hearts, O men of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem; lest my wrath go forth like fire, and burn with none to quench it, because of the evil of your deeds.”
Rom 2:29 But a Jew is one inwardly, and circumcision is a matter of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the letter. His praise is not from man but from God.
So I can agree with all these verses and you can, we just see them differently, we explain the metaphor differently. Being a Greek thinker, I used to believe that one should seek for the ONE truth and then try to convince everyone of it. As I become more Hebraic, I realize that on SOME things there are many truths as there are many ways to see it. I try as much as possible for each to find their own truth and let each be. Of course, each should have enough info on context and culture to make an informed decision about what works for them. And always be willing to learn more and change, when more evidence comes in. And of course we all seek to have a relationship with God, who is Truth, capital T.
Don,
While I can see “tender” is a by-product of circumcision, I think there is a much greater application concerning what is cut off not what is left. This is why I believe very strongly that the scripture’s metaphor for sin is “foreskin”. I would agree with you the unprotected part now having the protection cut off is more open to being tender, but again in my article I am not dealing with the after-effects so much as the part that necessitates it to be cut off. Why must the foreskin be cut off? It can be pushed back and that would also create sensitivity. But scripture doesn’t say to pull back the foreskin but to cut it off. The emphasis is on cutting off what must not be there to be in God’s covenant.
Although I rarely appeal to commentaries because I believe that the Bible is the final say, let me copy a few words from other commentaries showing that the foreskin is indeed identified with sin, corruption, evil, body of sins etc.
John Wesley’s explanatory notes:
In John Gill’s exposition of the Bible he says:
Matt Henry’s commentary on the bible says:
Jamieson, Faussett and Brown’s commentary says:
Keil & Delitzsch Commentary:
NET notes:
The Bible Knowledge Commentary
Don and Cheryl, I think both aspects are applicable. As to which is to be in the forefront, well first one must cut off the sin before the heart can be made tender.
Thanks for quoting the commentaries. I have Keil and Delitzsch’s also. Good quotes.
BTW Don, a couple people have asked if you knew about the Christian egal discussion forum at http://equalitycentral.com/. Seems you are getting a name for being a Christian scholar with a heart of grace.
I sent in my application to ECA based on your suggestion.
tiro3,
Amen! Good way to put it.
Well Done Sister Cheryl Well Done!
This is amazing, you been the sciptures out so clearly a little child can understand. I thank Our Lord for feeding us using you a Woman! Amen
Hi all
everytime i read about the council of Jerusalem it blows me away.
it really is quite incredibe how they council, on Paul and Barnabas’ encouragement agree to do away with this incredibly significant ritual from the days of Abraham…
what is perhaps even MORE amazing is that a few verses ‘later’ in the next chapter Paul ‘makes’ Timothy get the ‘chop’ (just after he’s fought for Christian’s right to NOT need circumcision physically!) so that the gospel is not hindered….
i’d love to have been a fly on the wall when he sat poor Tim down to give him the ‘bad’ news of what ‘had’ to be done ….
i just think that’s ‘amazing’ - but Paul was all about forwarding the gospel …. i think that this illustration of two opposite ‘practices’ in Ch 15 and 16 of Acts is a warning to us on taking too ‘literally’ specific local actions taken in the early church such as stuff that is discussed in the gender debate… ???
on a purely ‘medical’ note… on my dad’s side, my hubby’s side and my brother in law’s side there have been at least one or two circumcisions done after the age of 10 due to serious infections. God has given me three daughters - so i am thankful it’s a ‘non’ issue for us! but these poor blokes went through circumcision at ages where it was not only painful but very embarrasing… not sure about official stats - but ‘local’ ones seem to be a lot higher than ‘1%’. (based purely on medical, not religious reasons that is!)
God bless you all!
kerryn
I too have wondered what on earth Paul was thinking. It didn’t make any sense to me the first time I read it, and it still doesn’t.
Why is that only the USA seems to find medical needs for circumcisions at a later age though? The rate is 1 in 150 in the UK. It just looks like they’re trying to find reasons to do it. The other possibility is that parents used to be told to retract their sons’ foreskins, and this itself causes problems.
It’s actually less painful to be circumcised when you’re older - you can use general anaesthetic, and you don’t have to separate the foreskin (in Scotland, hospitals will perform circumcision for Muslims, but the child must be at least six months old, so that general anaesthetic can be used). In most countries, 99% of Christian males are intact, and 99% of them have no problems. If there is a problem and they need to be circumcised, then it’s easier to have it done later on anyway.
drops in male circumcision:
USA: from 90% to 56%
Canada: from 47% to 14%
UK: from 35% to about 3% (
(some of that was truncated)
UK: from 35% to about 3% (
(the website doesn’t seem to like a bracket next to an angle bracket)
UK: from 35% to about 3% (less than 1% among Christians)
Australia: 90% to 12.6%
New Zealand: 95% to below 3% (mostly Samoans and Tongans, less than 1% among whites)
South America and Europe: never above 3% (includes many of the world’s most Christian countries eg Poland, Spain, Italy, Brazil)
Regarding the sin that passed through the seed of the male alone, Here is a quote from Luther:
Luther also made a clear difference between the seed of the woman and the seed of man so that it was only the male seed that passed inherited sin to all of us.
While I am not a Calvinist, I certainly can quote from Calvin too:
Ulrich Zwingli said:
This original sin cannot be “washed away” by baptism as the Catholics suppose. It can only be dealt with by Jesus Christ who alone came through the seed of the woman.