Circumcision.

Male circumcision, cutting away the foreskin, became a feature of Jewish heritage, in common with other groups worldwide. Why is a mystery. It continued as a sanctified symbol of the covenant between God and the people.

The first mention comes in the final writer's organising structure, into which other stories are placed. As part of the promise of descendants, given by Yahweh in person plus two other 'men', he is instructed to circumcise all household males. The instruction follows later practice: it is to be done to boy children of eight days old. The second story is that of Shechem, described above, where the requirement of circumcision is given as a deceptive condition of alliance (Genesis 17).

A third story is told of Moses. Moses had been brought up as an Egyptian prince but developed pro-Hebrew sympathies. The story in fact declares that he was actually born a Hebrew and adopted. His active protection of the slaves causes him to become a wanted man and he escaped into Midian, where he similarly protected the seven daughters of a priest named Reuel (Jethro in later verses). Moses is brought into the family and given the hand of his daughter Zipporah as wife. A son, Gershom was born, the name linked to the Hebrew word ger, 'stranger, alien'.

The call of Moses at the burning bush, and commission to return to Egypt to save the Hebrews is well known. The verse comes on the journey to undertake this commission:

During the journey, while they were encamped for the night, Yahweh met Moses, meaning to kill him, but Zipporah picked up a sharp flint, cut off her son's foreskin, and touched him (the son? or Moses?) with it, saying, 'You are my blood bridegroom'. So Yahweh let Moses alone. Then she said (or: therefore women say) 'Blood-bridegroom by circumcision. Exodus 4:24-26.

Much is obscure here. Clearly in the constructed redeemer narrative leading to the exodus, it makes no sense for Yahweh to want to kill Moses. It is a physical meeting, much like Abraham's meeting with the three men, one of whom was said to be Yahweh. In the sequence of stories justifying the intermarriage and adultery prohibition and levirate marriage, this one introduces circumcision as a puberty/marriage custom. Other stories justify non-sexual customs, such as the refusal to eat the sciatic nerve in animals. That there is such a gap between this account of superstitious custom and theological symbol suggests that this story has some antiquity. Jacob similarly had wrestled with a man he assumed was God (Genesis 32:22-32). The blood-bridegroom story has superstitious assumptions, another phyical meeting with God. The magic of circumcision was thereafter thought to protect young men about to be married.

A fourth story moves us forward to the conquest and settlement of Canaan: the Israelite army, described as a bit of a hotch-potch, is unified by circumcision. The foreskins are removed on 'the hill of the foreskins'. As Hebrews we would expect them to be already circumcised, but clearly this was not so. Circumcision is therefore declared to originate with Abraham, with Moses and with Joshua. For the settlement of the land, read resettlement after exile. Problems then are read back into an ancient past. All the issues in Genesis, of national identity and ancestry, were crucial for the construction of post-exilic Israel. Unfortunately that means they tell us little about the ancient past.