Why is God fixated with male foreskins?

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FriendlySkeptic

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Hello,

I am a skeptic, but I am friendly, so I hope you will be too!

I recently started reading the old testament, and I have a question. Forgive the language…I mean no disrespect, but I don’t know how else to ask it.

Why is God fixated with male foreskins? It seems BIZARRE to me that a covenant would be sealed(?) by the cutting of male foreskins. Couldn’t an omniscient, omnipotent God come up with something a little less off the wall than penis parts to officiate a deal?

Thank you.
 
The only answer I could come up with, and this is completely speculation on my part, is that He wanted some sort of pact that would be permanent and involve blood. Chopping off the foreskin would serve this purpose, and be a lot less damaging than, say, chopping off a finger.
 
Since God IS omniscient and omnipotent etc.–and we are NOT–then whatever He came up with is just right. If we are having trouble seeing it from our very limited, not omniscient view, well, the simple solution is to take God’s words and deeds on faith.
 
Christopher West (he’s kind of an authority on Pope JPIIs Theology of the Body) and he has put forth a theory (only a theory) that since women know the pain, sacrifice and true self donation that is having children this was so that men would know something of pain, sacrifice and self donation. Because of the nuptual meaning of the body (as understood in TOTB) it points to self-donation on the part of men (meaning male persons, men meaning people in general.

And you can’t say God is fixated. It is the sign of the Old Covenant.
 
Hi Friendly,

There is not great mysticism involved here.

Among desert peoples, hygiene was a huge problem. Water was rare and they had sometimes to go weeks before being able to wash adequately. This was often the cause of infection in men.

Circumcision became a common practice to prevent these infections. It also became a distinguishing mark of desert peoples and, among others a distinguishing mark of God’s people, Israel.

Certain food prescriptions can also be explained for hygienic reasons. For example, both Jews and Arabs do not eat pork. This was to prevent trichinosis, a common disease up to relatively recent times.

Verbum
 
While other ancient peoples such as the Egyptians (I seem to recall) practiced ritual and/or hygienic circumcision, the procedure became symbolic of God’s covenant with the Hebrew people, because “through Abraham’s seed all nations of the earth will be blessed” - that is, the Messiah Redeemer would come from Abraham’s progeny.

It is thus a covenant both perpetuated and fulfilled through the procreation of the Chosen People. Also, the pain and bloodshed involved foreshadow that of Christ in His Passion. Further, it ensured that male converts to Judaism had to be pretty darn serious and sincere about their intentions. It was not a painless matter of convenience for a man to become a Jew.

In general re: reading over the Old Testament, I would advise one also to study ancient Near Eastern history and culture, keeping in mind that, in order to teach a primitive and barbaric people, the Almighty often had need of recourse to primitive and barbaric means!
 
Why is God fixated with male foreskins? It seems BIZARRE to me that a covenant would be sealed(?) by the cutting of male foreskins. Couldn’t an omniscient, omnipotent God come up with something a little less off the wall than penis parts to officiate a deal?
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Perhaps it’s the very fact that it is so off the wall, and disturbing, that it was an element of the Covenant. Remember, God also asked Abraham to sacrifice his heir, Isaac. That is *unthinkable, *especially in that day, but God asks it. It’s the fact that Abraham went ahead with God’s command that demonstrated his worthiness, and the worthiness of his bloodline, to carry out the Covenant and eventually the Messianic plan for humanity.

Think about it: in both the Scriptural context God is setting up a very big plan, one that will “bless all nations”. The seed is sown with Abraham, and will grow into the tree of Israel, and the fruit will be the Messiah and the redemption of the world. God is not simply forcing this on people, however, He’s asking us to participate, to prove we want it, and in so doing prove we deserve it in some sense.

Circumcision isn’t the last sacrifice God would ask of the Chosen People, and definately not the biggest. As the Apostle Paul would later point out, it’s not the circumcision itself that matters, it’s the desire and willingness that the circumcision represents, a desire and willingness that would eventually lead to the Sacrament of Baptism, and indeed the death of Christ. It’s not God that’s obsessed with masculine sexual anatomy, it’s us; God simply turned that obsession to His own Will.

If you continue to read Scripture, you’ll find that God constantly disrupts our obsessions and expectations in order to remind us that we are dependant on Him, and that our truest desire is union with Him, even if we fixate on material things like our sexuality.

Peace and God bless!
 
To help answer your question, in ancient Jewish mythology and commentary on Genesis, when God created man our bodies did not have skin as we know it now. Our bodies were covered in a glorified “Skin”. After the fall, when Genesis relates that God, with His own hands made clothes for Adam and Eve, the clothes we actually the covering of skin we have today. Circumcision, then, became a symbol of removal of the fallen man and a reminder of the original covenant between God and Adam and that we are God’s.
 
Well, this is what I learned from Jeff Cavins Bible Timeline seminar.

In Gen 15 God promises land.

In Gen 16 Abram takes Hagar as a concubine and she conceives Ishmael. Hagar is an Egyptian slave. In the Egyptian culture it was common to take concubines.

In Gen 17 the covenant with Abram had to be renewed because of Abram’s relation with Hagar (concubinage). The circumcision is a covenant sign. The Egyptians circumcised and Abram’s “punishment” or part in the renewal of the covenant was circumcision. Basically they said that God was reminding Abram about his sin (taking a concubine as the Egyptians did). Taking a concubine was Abram taking “matters into his own hand” instead of trusting God when God told him he would have an heir of his own issue (Gen 15:4). God chose circumcision as the sign since the Egyptians practiced circumcision, Abram had taken a concubine (an Egyptain custom) and his concubine was Egyptian. God made the sign fit to Abram’s understanding and his sin.

In Gen 18 we have the promise of a son to Abraham and Sarah. This is the seed that Jesus comes from, not Ishmael.

They did a much better job of explaining it than I did, but this is what I have in my notes.
 
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Verbum:
There is not great mysticism involved here.
Among desert peoples, hygiene was a huge problem. Water was rare and they had sometimes to go weeks before being able to wash adequately. This was often the cause of infection in men.
Circumcision became a common practice to prevent these infections. It also became a distinguishing mark of desert peoples and, among others a distinguishing mark of God’s people, Israel.
Certain food prescriptions can also be explained for hygienic reasons. For example, both Jews and Arabs do not eat pork. This was to prevent trichinosis, a common disease up to relatively recent times.
Verbum
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Being a Catholic convert from Judaism, That is what we were taught in Hebrew school.
 
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FriendlySkeptic:
Hello,

I am a skeptic, but I am friendly, so I hope you will be too!

I recently started reading the old testament, and I have a question. Forgive the language…I mean no disrespect, but I don’t know how else to ask it.

Why is God fixated with male foreskins? It seems BIZARRE to me that a covenant would be sealed(?) by the cutting of male foreskins. Couldn’t an omniscient, omnipotent God come up with something a little less off the wall than penis parts to officiate a deal?

Thank you.
Click to expand...
What better way to remind your people of their convenant than by changing a private peice in apearance. I wouldn’t say it is any fixation, it is only mentioned a few times.
 
Above are a lot of good reasons for circumcision but I would like to add another which I learnt of recently.

In Abramic times a covenant between two men was a big ritual involving many steps. One of these was to cut a wound in the forearm of each of the people making the covenant. These would be rubbed together to form a scar (even perhaps rubbing salt in the wound to help form the scar. Then when one of the parties was attacked) he would hold up his right arm showing the scar. The opponent seeing the scar would then know he was in covenant with someone who might be more powerful & would then back off.

Obviously a Hebrew could not display his covenant scar as a sign of his covenant. So why a hidden scar - because he is a hidden God, and he would have to act on faith. And God is a God of faith and would act when his faith was lifted up as a shield “Do not be afraid, Abram, I am your shield;" Gen 15:1
 
What? Is someone saying here that God is more fixated on body parts than anybody else is today? It may not be Biblical, but I see in this God putting a mark of the covenant on the body part that everybody is fixated on.
 
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BayCityRickL:
What? Is someone saying here that God is more fixated on body parts than anybody else is today? It may not be Biblical, but I see in this God putting a mark of the covenant on the body part that everybody is fixated on.
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That’s a neat observation! :clapping:
 
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