Blood Covenants, Specifically Circumcision

When I was a little girl, I was very close to my cousin.  She and I played together all the time; we spent many nights with one another and so on. 

One day when I was 9 or 10, we decided to seal our relationship in blood.  She cut her finger and I cut mine.  We pressed the tips of out fingers together, mingling the blood and swore our friendship to one another, forever.  We declared ourselves 'blood sisters'.  I'm sure many children went through similar rituals.  Somehow, we are born knowing the importance of blood oaths.

If you are like me, you wonder what God was thinking when he instituted circumcision as a sign of the covenant between Abraham and Him.  My take on the whole thing is that circumcision is a type of blood oath.

Circumcision was given in the 17th chapter of Genesis to Abram whose name was changed at the same time to Abraham.  God tells Abraham that He will be the God of his offspring after him throughout their generations with an everlasting covenant.  God said to him, 

"Kings shall come from you."

If you read the Bible, childlessness is always attributed to the woman.  It may or may not be the case, but the people of that day figured that if a man had parts that worked and there were no children, it had to be barrenness on the woman's part.  In the same way, offspring was called 'seed' which is basically the same as semen.  God attributed offspring to Abraham, of course the promised seed would come though Sarah, but the promise was to Abraham's seed, forever.  

Let's not forget that God knows the end from the beginning. He sees the big picture.  God thinks in terms of generations.  

Hebrews 7: 9-10 says that Levi who receives tithes, paid tithes through Abraham for he was still in the loins of his ancestor when Abraham tithed to Melchizedek.

We have also learned in our previous studies the importance of blood.  

"Without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sin." (Hebrews 9:22).  

We saw in Genesis 15 that there was bloodshed for the 'cutting of the covenant' with Abraham.  Animals were slaughtered, blood was spilt. 

There is another blood covenant that most of us don't think about.  It is the covenant of marriage.  When a virgin gives herself in marriage, more often than not, there is a small amount of bloodshed.  This covenant cannot be repeated. You can't take it back. Marriage is a blood covenant.

Circumcision wasn't only a outward mark of the covenant God made with Abraham, it is sealed in blood.  Not only that, every person born through a descendant of Abraham, passed as seed through the mark of the covenant.

Circumcision was such a big deal, that it overrode the law of the Sabbath.  If a male child turned eight days old on the Sabbath, they didn't say, "Oh, we will have to wait til tomorrow when Sabbath is over."  Jesus said in John 7:23, 

"If a boy can be circumcised on the sabbath so that the law of Moses will not be broken, why are you angry with Me for making the whole man well on the Sabbath?"

I didn't write this to say circumcision is necessary for salvation.  We know it is not.  I just wrote it to explain my perspective of why God implemented circumcision in the first place.  The picture of circumcision we were given in the Old Testament is now to be applied to our hearts. (Romans 2:9, 28-29, Colossians 2:11, Galations 5:2-3, 1Corinthians 7:18-19, et al)