Genesis 17:10The Passion TranslationSo here is the sign of the covenant that you are to keep, so that it will endure between you and me and your descendants: circumcise every male among you. See the chapter |
So don’t forget that you were not born as Jews and were uncircumcised (circumcision itself is just a work of man’s hands); you had none of the Jewish covenants and laws; you were foreigners to Israel’s incredible heritage; you were without the covenants and prophetic promises of the Messiah, the promised hope, and without God.
Jesus’ God-given destiny was to be the sacrifice to take away sins, and now he is our mercy seat because of his death on the cross. We come to him for mercy, for God has made a provision for us to be forgiven by faith in the sacred blood of Jesus. This is the perfect demonstration of God’s justice, because until now, he had been so patient—holding back his justice out of his tolerance for us. So he covered over the sins of those who lived prior to Jesus’ sacrifice.
Joshua had to circumcise all the men and boys—all the fighting men. Although they had been circumcised before leaving Egypt, the male children born during the forty years they spent in the wilderness had not been circumcised. Also, by the end of that forty years, all the fighting men who had come out of Egypt had died because they had not listened to the voice of Yahweh. So Yahweh had made an oath that they would not see the land he had promised to give their ancestors, a fertile land.