Genesis Vol 3.pdf - College Press

17: 1-27 GENESIS
for the purpose of facilitating coition; the last-named was
for the purpose of preventing coition until the proper age
was reached. These practices were all characteristic of
initiation ceremonies associated with arrival at the age of
puberty. Obviously this could not have been the design
of circumcision in the Abrahamic covenant: hence, we
must conclude that in it females we considered as repre-
sented by the males, as stated above. (2)
is eight days dd” (cf. Lev. 12:3; Luke 1:
3:j). This specific age requirement shows that in the
Abrahamic covenant circumcision could not have been a
Puberty rite in any sense of the term: we know of no
puberty rites performed on infants only eight days old.
(Note the interesting case of Zipporah and Moses and their
two sons, Exo. 2:22, 18:2-4, 4:24-26. The narrative in vv.
24-26 is somewhat obscure. It seems, however, that Eliezer
had been born a few days before Zipporah and Moses set
out on the journey back to Egypt. In the course of the
journey, the eighth day from the birth of the child arrived
and his circumcision should have taken place. Evidently
the rite was repugnant to Zipporah and she deferred it,
with Moses weakly consenting to this act of disobedience.
At the end of the eighth day, when Moses went to rest for
the night, he was seized by what was probably a dangerous
illness of some kind. This he rightly regarded as a divinely
inflicted punishment, visited on him for his act of dis-
obedience. “To dishonor that sign and seal of the covenant
was criminal in any Hebrew, particularly so in one des-
tined to be the leader and deliverer of the Hebrews; and
he seems to have felt his sickness as a merited chastisement
for the sinful omission. Concerned for her husband‘s
safety, Zipporah overcomes her maternal feelings of aver-
sion to the painful rite, performs it herself, by means of
one if the sharp flints with which that part of the desert
abounded, an operation which her husband, on whom the
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