Genesis 17

¹ When Abram was ninety-nine years old the Lord appeared to Abram and said to him, “I am God Almighty; walk before me, and be blameless, ² that I may make my covenant between me and you, and may multiply you greatly.” ³ Then Abram fell on his face. And God said to him, ⁴ “Behold, my covenant is with you, and you shall be the father of a multitude of nations. ⁵ No longer shall your name be called Abram, but your name shall be Abraham, for I have made you the father of a multitude of nations. ⁶ I will make you exceedingly fruitful, and I will make you into nations, and kings shall come from you. ⁷ And I will establish my covenant between me and you and your offspring after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your offspring after you. ⁸ And I will give to you and to your offspring after you the land of your sojournings, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession, and I will be their God.” ⁹ And God said to Abraham, “As for you, you shall keep my covenant, you and your offspring after you throughout their generations. ¹⁰ This is my covenant, which you shall keep, between me and you and your offspring after you: Every male among you shall be circumcised. ¹¹ You shall be circumcised in the flesh of your foreskins, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and you. ¹² He who is eight days old among you shall be circumcised. Every male throughout your generations, whether born in your house or bought with your money from any foreigner who is not of your offspring, ¹³ both he who is born in your house and he who is bought with your money, shall surely be circumcised. So shall my covenant be in your flesh an everlasting covenant. ¹⁴ Any uncircumcised male who is not circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin shall be cut off from his people; he has broken my covenant.”

²³ Then Abraham took Ishmael his son and all those born in his house or bought with his money, every male among the men of Abraham’s house, and he circumcised the flesh of their foreskins that very day, as God had said to him. ²⁴ Abraham was ninety-nine years old when he was circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin. ²⁵ And Ishmael his son was thirteen years old when he was circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin. ²⁶ That very day Abraham and his son Ishmael were circumcised. ²⁷ And all the men of his house, those born in the house and those bought with money from a foreigner, were circumcised with him.

James Earl Massey has passed on a charming story from Harry Emerson Fosdick’s youth:

Harry Emerson Fosdick told the story of his father’s leaving the house one morning on his way to work, and he told his wife to have a young Harry mow the lawn if he felt like doing so. Fosdick’s father paused on the walk when he saw just how tall the grass had grown. He called back loudly and said, “Tell Harry he’d better feel like it!”[1]

It is a charming story but it raises an intriguing question: Is it possible to bring one’s desires in line with the commands put upon one? Or, put another way: Might we actually want to do what we ought to do?

William Temple once wrote, “The most agreeable experiences in life are those which are marked by a coincidence of duty and pleasure.”[2] This is so, but I wonder if such seemingly rare occurrences must remain merely coincidental? Might they become natural?

In Genesis 17, we find God calling for Abraham’s life to reflect the covenant promises he has received, for his behavior to match the promises. What is interesting about this is that this call for consistency between character and covenant does not hinge upon a raw assertion of divine power. The Lord rather speaks of Abraham having a changed character and being a new person, and he does so by giving Abraham a new name and a physical mark of belonging.

To be in the family of God is to see your life function in harmony with God’s blessings.

Chapter 17 begins with words that are, at this point, familiar: the words of the covenant promises of God.

¹ When Abram was ninety-nine years old the Lord appeared to Abram and said to him, “I am God Almighty; walk before me, and be blameless, ² that I may make my covenant between me and you, and may multiply you greatly.” ³ Then Abram fell on his face. And God said to him, ⁴ “Behold, my covenant is with you, and you shall be the father of a multitude of nations. ⁵ No longer shall your name be called Abram, but your name shall be Abraham, for I have made you the father of a multitude of nations. ⁶ I will make you exceedingly fruitful, and I will make you into nations, and kings shall come from you. ⁷ And I will establish my covenant between me and you and your offspring after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your offspring after you. ⁸ And I will give to you and to your offspring after you the land of your sojournings, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession, and I will be their God.” ⁹ And God said to Abraham, “As for you, you shall keep my covenant, you and your offspring after you throughout their generations.

In verses 3-8 we see the words of promise. God, again, says that His covenant is with Abraham, that He will make Abraham “exceedingly fruitful,” that, indeed, “kings shall come from” Abraham, that the covenant is between God and Abraham and “Abraham’s offspring. The Lord then, again, promises Abraham possession of the land of promise.

So, yes, we have heard this before, this expression of the covenant. However, if you look closely, there is something different this time. I agree with R.R. Reno completely when he points out that the various expressions of the covenant in Genesis “are not simply reiterative” but rather “have an ascending logic.” Consider:

• Genesis 12:1-3: “First, Abraham is called by the promises.”
• Genesis 13:14-18: “Abraham is told to walk within the land of the promise.”
• Genesis 15:1-21: “Next, the covenant is announced…and a vision of God’s mighty deeds in the future serves as a down payment on the fulfillment of the promise.”
• Genesis 17: “Abraham has walked the land, and now he is directed to walk in the covenant.”[3]

Yes, there is something new here: Abraham is told now to walk in the covenant, to let his life harmonize with the contents of the divine promise. In fact, you will notice that this expression of the covenant is bookended by a call for obedience:

¹ When Abram was ninety-nine years old the Lord appeared to Abram and said to him, “I am God Almighty; walk before me, and be blameless, ² that I may make my covenant between me and you, and may multiply you greatly.”

⁹ And God said to Abraham, “As for you, you shall keep my covenant, you and your offspring after you throughout their generations.

This is called an inclusio: the bracketing of a section with a repeated refrain that informs what is expressed between. The inclusio of Genesis 17:1-9 is simply this: obedience. Abraham is to walk in such a way as to reflect the fact that God has blessed him. His life is to match harmoniously the covenant Reno summarizes all of this with the nice phrase, “God will shape the plasticity of the human creature.”[4]

One of the ways that God expresses the fact that His people’s lives should change as a result of their receiving the divine promise is in the fact that God changes Abram’s name.

⁵ No longer shall your name be called Abram, but your name shall be Abraham, for I have made you the father of a multitude of nations.

When you enter the family of God it means a change in the trajectory, the focus, and the meaning of your life. It means a new name! And that new name reflects a life lived in harmony with the saving covenant of God! The great Jewish philosopher Martin Buber said of this, “God names him anew, by casting a letter from His own name into the midst of the original name of the man.”[5] What a beautiful image! God gives Abraham a part of His own name, which is to say, a part of His own character. So it is with all of us! Our lives must reflect that we are now covenant people.

Let us be clear on this: to claim the covenant while shielding your character from its implications is to show that you have never truly accepted the covenant. You can profess to be the recipient of saving grace while your life stays exactly like it was! You can claim the covenant without a change of your spiritual name, a fundamental reordering of your character. To be saved is to change, to grow Godward, and to look and sound increasingly like Jesus Christ.

To be in the family of God is to give not only your past to God in repentance but your present and future to God in radical, countercultural, and shocking obedience.

Actually, changing Abraham’s name is not the most surprising mark of covenant belonging in this chapter. The most surprising is God’s institution of the physical mark of circumcision as an external sign of covenant belonging.

¹⁰ This is my covenant, which you shall keep, between me and you and your offspring after you: Every male among you shall be circumcised. ¹¹ You shall be circumcised in the flesh of your foreskins, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and you. ¹² He who is eight days old among you shall be circumcised. Every male throughout your generations, whether born in your house or bought with your money from any foreigner who is not of your offspring, ¹³ both he who is born in your house and he who is bought with your money, shall surely be circumcised. So shall my covenant be in your flesh an everlasting covenant. ¹⁴ Any uncircumcised male who is not circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin shall be cut off from his people; he has broken my covenant.”

²³ Then Abraham took Ishmael his son and all those born in his house or bought with his money, every male among the men of Abraham’s house, and he circumcised the flesh of their foreskins that very day, as God had said to him. ²⁴ Abraham was ninety-nine years old when he was circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin. ²⁵ And Ishmael his son was thirteen years old when he was circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin. ²⁶ That very day Abraham and his son Ishmael were circumcised. ²⁷ And all the men of his house, those born in the house and those bought with money from a foreigner, were circumcised with him.

Simply put, God puts a mark on all of those who are His. He calls for a sign upon the bodies of all male members of the covenant and, by extension, of their families. Walter Brueggemann argues that:

Biblical faith is never cerebral. It is always lived and acted. Belonging to this strange community and trusting in a scandalous promise requires a mark of distinctiveness. Circumcision announces that Israelites belong only to this community and only to this God.[6]

Yes, it is a sign of belonging exclusively to the YHWH God! But why this sign? Why circumcision? R.R. Reno rightly points out that “the male member…is essential to the primal commandment (“be fruitful and multiply”) and the part of the body that is integral to Abraham’s complaint in Gen. 15 and the dramatic tension of Gen. 16…”[7] In other words, this particular mark upon the body consecrated not only the individual but all of his offspring, all of his lineage to come. It was a giving of oneself and one’s family to God.

And, yes, it is true, it is a mark in the area of Abraham’s great struggle and doubt: the absence of an heir. While circumcision certainly was not punitive, it is intriguing to note that God calls for the mark in the precise area of Abraham’s struggle to fully believe: the reproductive organs. God calls for radical trust and faith in the area of Abraham’s greatest fear and struggle to believe. Walter Brueggemann has stated that “the entire text of Gen. 17 concerns binding Abraham to God in radical faith.”[8] Perhaps no other mark but circumcision could have communicated this need for radical faith so clearly.

Thus, circumcision enters the story of salvation history. It will play a significant and, at times, controversial role in the life of Israel. Yet we must not miss the fact that the point of circumcision was never truly the physical mark itself. Rather, circumcision was a sign, a marker, a statement. It was not the thing itself. The thing itself was belonging, was salvation, was a changed life.

Even in the Old Testament, for instance in Deuteronomy 30, we see that circumcision was a deeper issue than a mere medical procedure:

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.

Ah! Our hearts are to be circumcised! That is, our very lives. To what end? That we might “love the Lord our God with all our heart and with all our soul, that we may live!” When Jeremiah foretold judgment in Jeremiah 4 he used the same image:

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.

So if your body has been circumcised but not your heart, you invite the wrath of God. In other words, if you claim the externals of faith but do not allow the Lord to change you, you invite His wrath. This emphasis on the reality itself and not merely the sign continues in the New Testament. We see it in Galatians 5 when Paul, a Jew of Jews by his own testimony, says:

⁶ For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith working through love.

This is important in that it more precisely defines what “circumcision of the heart is.” It is “faith working through love!” That is the reality to which circumcision pointed. Furthermore, in  Galatians 6:

¹⁵ For neither circumcision counts for anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creation.

Here we see that, in Christ, the emphasis shifts from the sign to the inner reality: new creation. For this reason, the physical mark of circumcision is no longer necessary, though Paul never says it is wrong to be circumcised. Rather, we can now live in the reality of which circumcision is merely a pointer, a sign: new creation. How is this reality brought about? Who is it that circumcises the heart? Paul tells us in Colossians 2:

⁶ Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him, ⁷ rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.

¹¹ In him also you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ, ¹² having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God, who raised him from the dead. ¹³ And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, ¹⁴ by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross. ¹⁵ He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him.

Christ circumcises the heart! Christ changes our very nature! We received, by grace through faith, “the circumcision of Christ” (v.11). Baptism is now the physical symbol of covenant belonging, but it too is a sign of a deeper reality: death, burial, and resurrection, that is to say, new life in and through the finished work of Jesus on the cross and the empty tomb. Christ, through His victory, has given us victory! We now walk with new, with changed, indeed, with circumcised hearts. We have received the signs, it is true, but we have received something greater: the one to whom the signs point, the reality of which they speak, the truth of which they were markers.

We now stand in relationship with the God of the universe because Christ Jesus has made us new and is making us new, and we receive this relationship and enter into it when we come to Jesus in faith and, like Abraham, fall on our faces before God and His saving love.

 

[1] James Earl Massey, Spiritual Disciplines. (Anderson, IN: Warner Press, 1985), p.49

[2] Massey, James Earl. Views from the Mountain: Select Writings of James Earl Massey (Kindle Locations 2446-2448). Aldersgate Press. Kindle Edition.

[3] R.R. Reno, Genesis. Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible. (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2010), p.168.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid., p.172.

[6] Walter Brueggemann, p.155.

[7] R.R. Reno, p.169.

[8] Walter Brueggemann, Genesis. Interpretation. (Atlanta, GA: John Knox Press, 1982), p.156.