Lesson 8 - Joshua 5 Cont. Lesson 8 - Chapter 5 Continued. We ended last week in Joshua chapter 5 discussing the mass circumcision event at Gilgal that was instructed in verse 2. It is obvious that this circumcision ceremony was a pre-requisite for celebration of the Passover in Canaan.
The rules and instructions of God given through Moses out in the Wilderness move from theory and lofty idealism into practical reality now that Israel has crossed over the Jordan and into the land of their inheritance, Canaan. And I suppose that little else is more important to me, personally, as a goal of this teaching ministry than to restore to the body of Believers that organic connection between what has become two testaments of a divided Bible. The Lord told Joshua that the reason that this so-called 2nd circumcision was needed was because while the males of Israel had been circumcised before they left Egypt, during their time in the Wilderness they had rebelled and suffered the penalty of being prohibited from entering the place of their destination: the Land of Promise.
Further no circumcisions had occurred after leaving Egypt so the generation entering Canaan was uncircumcised. The significance of those titles are that at the heart of the Bronze Age, bronze was the hardest metal in general use and it was always the hardest substances that were used to make knives and spear heads for obvious reasons.
As the title Iron Age implies, technology had developed to the point that iron metal harder than bronze was now being used; in the Early Iron Age use of iron was spotty and bronze was still the predominant substance of choice for making cutting instruments and weapons. The point being that the divine instruction to use FLINT knives for the circumcision ceremony was to tell Israel to use a type of knife that had gone out of use at least 2 or 3 centuries earlier.
So why was flint called for? Since it is not explicitly explained in Scripture this has been a topic of interest among Hebrew and Christian scholars.
In the end I see two reasons for it: one has to do with Traditions that developed naturally, and the other with following a long established God-pattern. The use of a flint knife in the near-death incident of Abraham being asked to sacrifice Isaac but then stopped, of course, by the Lord also influenced the use of flint knives long after better choices were available.
Thus knives made of flint were preferred by the Israelite priests for centuries in the ritual sacrifices made at the Tabernacle and then the Temple. I imagine it would have been quite dramatic to witness rituals using a flint knife as opposed to the more modern blades of bronze and iron used by the general population and thus greater meaning and a sense of the event being holy rather than ordinary was imparted.
And that pattern was the command that we saw given to the Patriarchs that they were to build altars for sacrifice to Yehoveh, but that knives of bronze and later iron were NOT to be used to shape the stones. Why was flint OK and metal was not? Because flint was a natural substance usable just as found; metal had to be extracted, heated, purged of impurities, and worked to be usable. Therefore neither is to have a metal tool used on them in an act of obedience that essentially MAKES them members of a holy body.
Consider this: the stones used to the build the holy altar were just like all the other stones scattered on the ground; these were not special stones, nor different stones, whether used for the altar or not they were all natural just as God made them. It was from a rather random act of selection that these particular stones would be fitted carefully together to produce a holy place of sacrifice to God; in fact they were chosen from among stones that physically had no substantial differences.
Yet, once chosen, and once united together for the purpose of serving the Lord those particular stones used for the altar became sanctified stones and thus had to be treated differently than ordinary stones because they had been separated and elected for God Almighty. The rule was that these now-sanctified stones could NOT be changed and modified using manmade metal instruments applied to them. Anything manmade is by definition not created by God and therefore falls short of perfection.
Those imperfect metal knives would those stones that God had made perfect in the first place. Notice the parallel: we have the men of Israel who, physically, were no different from other humans on the planet except that they were about to be selected and elected to become a set-apart people for God.
Even genealogically, by now, the Israelites were mixed. Egyptians formed a substantial part of Israel; foreigners from all races and cultures had been allowed to become Hebrews since the days of Abraham. So from among all men who are created basically physically the same, God selected those few who He would call Israelites and once chosen, and once united together for the purpose of serving the Lord, they became as sanctified stones and so had to be treated differently than all other men.
There is yet another fascinating element to this circumcision requirement that gets hidden from our view by its translation from the original Hebrew; and this is such an important principle that I could barely wait for today to come so that I could tell you about it. Flintworking at that time revolved primarily around a method called Blade-Core technology. It involves procuring a chunk of flint which is then shaped in a way that allows production of predictable, parallel sided blades.
This type of flint blade is sharp. How sharp? Sharp enough to serve as a surgical instrument, and much sharper than a bronze knife is capable of being, due to the relative softness of the metal.
So here we have Stone-Age technology, which apparently enjoyed some degree of familiarity even in the Bronze Age. How did He know that? But wait. They were saying that it would be better to go back to Egypt to slavery and saying that God was leading them from slavery to be killed by another people and their wives and children plundered.
Instead of following God and his appointed leaders, Moses and Aaron , they were talking about stoning people. God was ready to wipe them out and raise up a new generation of children from Moses and Aaron. Yet they were spared and forgiven. With the caveat that they would not see the Promised Land.
Only their children would. And so as Joshua led the next generation across the Jordan, they were a generation whom had not been circumcised.
And so God was creating a new identity for them as they entered the land. There is one more aspect of this story that blows my mind. Whereas God could have circumcised them on the other side of the river, he did not. God waited until they were in the enemy territory, in the land that he promised to give them, before he circumcised his people.
They actually had to remain in the camp until they were healed before they could move. Which put Israel at risk of attack by their enemies. And meant that they had to rely completely on their God for safety and protection. This was an everlasting covenant. It applied to servants and slaves as well as true-born Israelites. All the Patriarchs observed the rule. In the story of the rape of Dinah in Genesis , the Hivites of Shechem were uncircumcized. Josiah circumcised all the people of Israel at the sanctuary of Gilgal after the Exodus.
But from Exodus it is clear that Moses had remained uncircumcised. This suggests that the custom had been neglected during the sojourn in Egypt as well as in the desert. It was revived with the entry into the Promised Land. It is not known when circumcision at the age of eight days was substituted for the adolescent rite. Rite of passage for a young man, possibly involving a form of circumcision. When circumcision was renewed in Canaan it was given a strong religious significance.
It has retained this ever since. Eventually the Jews remained the only circumcised people in the area.
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