I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.
Today, I am reading and commenting on Joshua 5-7.
This passage talks about something which has always puzzled me: none of the Israelite men born from the time they left Egypt until they crossed the Jordan River had been circumcised. What makes it even more interesting is that when Moses’ son was not circumcised until Moses was returning to Egypt to lead the Israelites out of Egypt. I spent some time looking for what other people thought about this and found nothing satisfactory. However, I found that people who were concerned about why the Israelite boys born in the wilderness were not circumcised also wondered why they used flint knives rather than metal ones on this occasion. The answer to that is actually pretty easy. Flint knives would have been sharper than any metal knives which the Israelites would have had access to at that time.
Now, I have my own theory about why the Israelites did not practice circumcision in the wilderness. The Egyptians of that time also practiced circumcision. Further, I suspect that the Israelites were circumcised in Egypt as part of the Egyptian practice, not as a result of being descendants of Abraham. In addition, the practice almost certainly had religious meaning for the Egyptians, meaning which would have been idolatrous. So, circumcision would have had idolatrous meaning to those who left Egypt, but when that meaning was completely gone when the Israelites entered Canaan, as all of those who were adults when they left Egypt had died by then. I don’t know if this explanation will stand up to thorough examination, but I wanted to throw it out there.
