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covenantal relationship. Israel was enjoined to be faithful in “circumcising” all males;
each male baby was to be “circumcised” on the eighth day (Gen. 17:12; Lev. 12:3). Not
only were the physical descendants of Abraham “circumcised,” but also those who were
servants, slaves, and foreigners in the covenant community (Gen. 17:13-14).
The special act of circumcision was a sign of God’s gracious promise. With the
promise and covenantal relations, God expected that His people would joyously and
willingly live up to His expectations, and thus demonstrate His rule on earth. To describe
the “heart” attitude, several writers of Scripture use the verb “to circumcise.” The
“circumcision” of the flesh is a physical sign of commitment to God. Deuteronomy
particularly is fond of the spiritual usage of the verb “to circumcise”: “Circumcise your
hearts, therefore, and do not be stiff-necked any longer” (Deut. 10:16,
NIV
; cf. 30:6).
Jeremiah took over this usage: “Circumcise yourselves to the Lord, and take away the
foreskins of your heart, ye men of Judah … , because of the evil of your doings” (Jer.
4:4).
Few occurrences of the verb differ from the physical and the spiritual usage of “to
circumcise.”
"$
in the Book of Psalms has the meaning of “to cut off, destroy”: “All the
nations surrounded me, but in the name of the Lord I cut them off” (Ps. 118:10,
NIV
; cf.
vv. 11-12).
The verb is translated as
in the Septuagint. The verb and the noun
are used in both the physical and the spiritual sense. In addition to this, it also is a figure
for baptism: “In him you were also circumcised, … not with a circumcision alone by the
hands of men but with the circumcision done by Christ, having been buried with him in
baptism and raised with him through your faith in the power of God, who raised him
from the dead” (Col. 2:11-12,
NIV
).
In the English versions, the verb is rendered “to circumcise,” “to destroy” (
KJV
), as
well as “to cut off” and “to wither” (
RSV
,
NASB
,
NIV
).
CITY
(
, 5892), “city; town; village; quarter [of a city].” Cognates of this word appear
in Ugaritic, Phoenician, Sumerian, and old Arabic. This noun occurs about 1,092 times
and in every period of biblical Hebrew.
The word suggests a “village.” An unwalled village is represented by the Hebrew
word
! +
a synonym of is an Aramaic loanword.
But and its synonym do not necessarily suggest a walled city. This usage is seen in
Deut. 3:5, where may be a city standing in the open country (perhaps surrounded by
dirt or stone ramparts for protection): “All these cities were fenced with high walls, gates,
and bars; beside unwalled towns a great many.” A comparison of Lev. 25:29 and Lev.
25:31 shows that can be used as synonym of
&
“And if a man sell a dwelling
house in a walled city, then he may redeem it within a whole year after it is sold; … but
the houses of the villages [
] which have no wall round about them shall be
counted as the fields of the country.…”