When was the last time you had a nice healthy theological discussion about circumcision? Chances are, it’s not a topic you bring up in everyday conversation. You may be familiar with its importance as an Old Testament ritual and some heated debates about it in the New Testament, but most people are not deeply invested in understanding the significance of circumcision.

This is partly why I decided to write my Th.M. thesis on circumcision. It was a topic that I had a peripheral knowledge of, but there were many questions in my mind that I never explored very deeply. Questions like, what does circumcision mean? Why did God make Abraham circumcise himself when he was an old man? Why would someone have to cut such a sensitive area of the body as a sign of loyalty to God? What was communicated in the rite, and why not just pierce an ear or cut off a piece of elbow skin instead?

Studying circumcision very closely, as with any other biblical topic that I have been less familiar with, has given me a fuller appreciation of God’s revelation and the hope found in the Bible’s storyline. Particularly, I have a greater joy when pondering the magnitude of God’s promises and the faithfulness God has demonstrated to keep His covenant. God’s Word—all of it—really is a treasure trove to be mined for infinite worth!

The focus of my thesis, and the question I want to begin to answer here is, why circumcision? What is the point in making somebody cut off a part of the most sensitive area of his body? It seems so unlike anything else in Hebrew or Christian religious practice. Yet, it has been an important sign for Jews and some Gentiles for millennia.

Starting Points – The Covenant with Abraham

To begin to answer the question of why circumcision, one needs to grasp some important concepts about what bible scholars call the “Abrahamic Covenant.” The terms of this covenant were laid out across multiple chapters of Genesis (12–22) and spanning many years of Abraham’s life.[1]

In Genesis 12, the key bullet points of the Abrahamic Covenant are spelled out initially. God will make a great nation out of Abram (Gen 12:2), He will make Abram’s name great and make him a blessing to all the nations (Gen 12:2–3), and He will give to Abram and his offspring a land inheritance for their own possession (Gen 12:7). These promises are sometimes summarized as Land, Seed, and Blessing (See also Gen 15:5–16).[2]

These promises are totally unmerited, especially when one considers the scope of what God says He will do as well as Abram’s weaknesses and failures. One of the most dramatic displays of the astounding grace of God occurs in Genesis 15 when God puts Abram to sleep and walks through the severed animal pieces alone, symbolically saying, “thus shall it happen to me if I do not keep my covenant obligations.”

To make the promise even more dramatic, the narrative of Genesis really shows that the deck was stacked against Abram. Genesis 11 provides a striking background to Abram’s life because it shows how sinful all of humanity had become, wickedly trying to make a name for themselves by defying God at the Tower of Babel. After God confused their language and scattered them all over the earth, the next section of the story recounts the family tree that descended from Noah’s son, Shem. The section beginning in Genesis 11:10 is the largest literary unit in the whole book of Genesis—the one dealing with Shem’s line.

If you’ve ever read this specific section of text, you may have become bored repeatedly reading “Arpachshad fathered Shelah….Shelah fathered Eber…Eber fathered Peleg” and so on. It’s just a bunch of names, and the point is seemingly clear: lots of people had babies and became grandpas and great grandpas and died. And that’s the story of humanity, right?

When we get to Terah though, the pattern breaks. We learn a little bit more about where Terah lived, where he died, and some details about his sons and their wives. The significant tidbit we find juxtaposed regarding Abram in this chapter is that his wife was Sarai (Gen 11:29), and that she “was barren; she had no child” (Gen 11:30). The freight train of birth after birth comes to a screeching halt with those painful words.

Unlike everyone else, Sarai can’t produce children. Abram is left without an heir, and seemingly his family line will die out.

But God chose to use Abram in such a dramatic way to show His glory that Sarai’s barrenness was really a gift in God’s hand. He would reverse it in the most unlikely way at the most unlikely time, late in the life of the patriarch and his childless wife. It was a laughable proposition by the time it came about (Gen 18:12).

And everything hinges on Abram having a child. It’s so important to the covenant that Abram even tries to take matters into his own hand to bring God’s promise into effect with Hagar (with the full blessing of his wife, mind you!)—see Genesis 16. He produces an heir with Hagar, the Egyptian maid servant. But God quickly sets him right, and assures him that this child of an adulterous relationship will by no means be the son of promise.

The Sign of Circumcision

Right at this moment of weakness and doubt, God gives Abram the covenant sign of circumcision and changes his name to Abraham (“father of a multitude”). Circumcision functions as a sign or token of the covenant with Abraham much in the same way that other covenant signs function––like the sign of the rainbow in God’s covenant with Noah (Gen 9:14–15), or the sign of the Sabbath in the Mosaic Covenant (Exod 31:13–17).

The promise of God is that Abraham will have abundant offspring (a promise that is truly difficult to believe as Abraham continues to age), that his offspring will possesses a great land, and that through his offspring all the nations, descended from every tribe and tongue, will be blessed. What better part of the body to enact a sign of such a covenant than the procreative member? Abraham, who formerly could not produce an heir through Sarai, is going to be a father of a multitude of nations. When God told Abraham to cut off part of his member, it was a perfect sign of a covenant that dealt with offspring.

Why circumcision? To remind Abraham and his offspring perpetually of God’s covenant promise to bless Abraham’s line and bring about worldwide blessing through his seed. That is one of the major functions of circumcision that cannot be missed. That is why it was necessary for Abraham to perform such a delicate surgery at a late stage in life. He and his offspring would be reminded of God’s promise through this “everlasting covenant.”

I will further expand on this function and discuss some additional purposes which circumcision served in the coming posts.

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[1] Some scholars would even argue there were multiple covenants with Abraham laid out over this span, but I would argue on several counts that there is only one covenant made with Abraham. The most significant reason for this would be that later biblical writers only ever refer to one covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (Exod 6:3-4; 2 Kgs 13:23; Ac 3:25).

[2] See Keith Essex, “The Abrahamic Covenant,” in the Master’s Seminary Journal, 1999. Page 208