TEXT [Commentary]

D.   First Circumcisions and First Passover (5:2-15)

1.   Circumcision of every male (5:2-9)

2 At that time the LORD told Joshua, “Make flint knives and circumcise this second generation of Israelites.[*]” 3 So Joshua made flint knives and circumcised the entire male population of Israel at Gibeath-haaraloth.[*]

4 Joshua had to circumcise them because all the men who were old enough to fight in battle when they left Egypt had died in the wilderness. 5 Those who left Egypt had all been circumcised, but none of those born after the Exodus, during the years in the wilderness, had been circumcised. 6 The Israelites had traveled in the wilderness for forty years until all the men who were old enough to fight in battle when they left Egypt had died. For they had disobeyed the LORD, and the LORD vowed he would not let them enter the land he had sworn to give us—a land flowing with milk and honey. 7 So Joshua circumcised their sons—those who had grown up to take their fathers’ places—for they had not been circumcised on the way to the Promised Land. 8 After all the males had been circumcised, they rested in the camp until they were healed.

9 Then the LORD said to Joshua, “Today I have rolled away the shame of your slavery in Egypt.” So that place has been called Gilgal[*] to this day.

NOTES

5:2 circumcise this second generation. Lit., “circumcise a second time” (see NLT mg and commentary).

5:3 Gibeath-haaraloth. This means “the Hill of the Foreskins” (cf. NLT mg). The name suggests Joshua circumcised the men on a hill or hillock near Israel’s camp at Gilgal. The foreskin (‘arelah [TH6190, ZH6889]) is the skin covering the glans; in circumcision, it is surgically cut away.

5:6 the LORD vowed . . . he had sworn. The Hebrew phrasing is the same in both places: “which Yahweh had sworn.”

flowing with milk and honey. This means it had especially good pastureland for the flocks of sheep and goats, which produced the milk, and abundant flowering plants for the bees, which made the honey. “Date honey” was not a product of the hill country of Canaan/Israel; moreover, jellied grape and other fruit juices hardly qualify as “honey,” in light of the numerous Egyptian (south), Hittite (north), and other references to bee honey throughout the eastern Mediterranean and western Asia from many periods. We now have also the evidence of the large apiary from the tenth to ninth centuries BC at Rehov in the upper Jordan Valley, just below Beth-shan (Mazar and Panitz-Cohen 2007:202-219).

5:7 those who had grown up to take their fathers’ places. Lit., “so their children [Yahweh] established [in the fulfillment of God’s covenant promises] instead of them.” The emphasis is not on the children’s growing up, but on their receiving from God what their parents had refused.

5:9 Gilgal. See NLT mg. The name has been associated with the root galal [TH1556, ZH1670] (to roll), the noun gilgal [TH1536, ZH1651] meaning “wheel” and referring to the stone monument Joshua set up there (4:20). Given the forms involved (gilgal, galal, and possibly ­others), Gilgal may refer both to the presumed circular shape of the stone memorial and to the rolling away of “the shame . . . of Egypt.”

COMMENTARY [Text]

First actions in new circumstances often are of great symbolic value. Before Israel turned their attention to Jericho, the first military objective, God directed Joshua to perform a covenant renewal ceremony, circumcising all the males born in the 40 years since their exodus from Egypt. For males, circumcision was the sign of participation in the covenant, the sign instituted already when God established the covenant relationship with Abraham (Gen 17:9-14).

“Circumcise this second generation of Israelites” (5:2) is the correct understanding of the Hebrew here (lit., “and return again [to] circumcise the sons of Israel a second [time]”) as the following verses make clear. All who had left Egypt in the Exodus had been circumcised before they left, but no circumcisions had been performed during the wilderness sojourn. With Israel about to begin taking possession of the land, a central aspect of God’s covenant with them, now was the time to circumcise the men under 40 years of age. They and all Israel needed this physical sign of their inclusion within the covenant people.

The explanation of 5:4-7 is an unexpected detour from the straight line of the narrative events. Its length indicates its importance as a reminder of Israel’s unfaithfulness at Kadesh-barnea, where they had refused to believe God would bring them safely into the land of Canaan (Num 14). This summary of God’s judgment upon their fathers reminded the present generation that trust in God still was necessary if they were to occupy the land their fathers had forfeited. It also served the purpose of announcing the completion of that judgment God had pronounced upon the earlier generation. The sentence God had previously pronounced was now fully carried out.

The author’s admonitory discourse functions also as a reminder that God’s promises are sure and unchangeable, but our individual participation in them depends on our response (keeping always in mind that our response, too, is rooted in God’s initiating grace). God was about to fulfill his sworn promise to Israel’s ancestors that he would bring their descendants back to the land of their own sojourn and give it to them as a perpetual inheritance. At the same time, those who had refused to believe God’s word (or God’s ability to perform his word, which amounts to the same thing) all had died, never accepting their share in God’s bountiful promises.

The phrase “the shame of your slavery in Egypt” (5:9) is literally “the reproach of Egypt.” This phrase may have recalled to the older Israelites their enslavement in Egypt when they were very young, but “slavery” is not actually present in the Hebrew phrase. Moreover, the reproach of slavery had been done away with long before this time, when God liberated Israel, administering disastrous justice upon Egypt in the process. There was no reproach left to Israel (if ever there had been any) because of her slavery in Egypt. More probably, “the reproach of Egypt” refers to a scenario Moses had raised with God in his several intercessory prayers (Exod 32:12; Num 14:13-16; Deut 9:28). If Israel perished in the wilderness, Moses had argued, the Egyptians would hear about it. They would reason that though God had delivered Israel out of Egypt, he had not been powerful enough to bring them safely through the wilderness. This would bring reproach not only upon Israel, but also upon God. With Israel now safely in the land of Canaan, their disappearance in the wilderness no longer was a possibility; God had “rolled away the [potential] reproach of Egypt.”