Perhaps the opposite. Per Jewish teaching, women are “born circumcised,” and are therefore under the Covenant from the beginning. It is only men who must be “fixed.”
I will establish my covenant as an everlasting covenant between me and you and your descendants after you for the generations to come, to be your God and the God of your descendants after you.
Genesis 17:7 (NIV)Whether born in your household or bought with your money, they must be circumcised. My covenant in your flesh is to be an everlasting covenant.
Genesis 17:13 (NIV)Then God said, “Yes, but your wife Sarah will bear you a son, and you will call him Isaac. I will establish my covenant with him as an everlasting covenant for his descendants after him.
Genesis 17:19 (NIV)
The Hebrew phrase “brit olam” (בְּרִית עוֹלָם), means “everlasting covenant,” and it shows up three times in Genesis 17. It is a promise of relationship: “I will be your God, and the God of your descendants.”
The first time we see brit olam, it’s when God says He will not destroy the world by flood. One symbol of the flood is the rising of darkness and chaos, so this covenant gives us hope.
Whenever the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and all living creatures of every kind on the earth.”
Genesis 9:16 (NIV)
After God’s brit olam with Abram in Genesis 17, the next time we see it is in Exodus 31, where God gives us rest as an everlasting covenant.
The Israelites are to observe the Sabbath, celebrating it for the generations to come as a lasting covenant.
Exodus 31:16 (NIV)
From this, God tells us: Rest. Be still. Remember.
So these are the words of God’s everlasting covenant with us:
“I will not harm you.”
“I will be with you.”
“I will give you rest.”
When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the Lord appeared to him and said, “I am God Almighty; walk before me faithfully and be blameless.
Genesis 17:1 (NIV)
There is so much depth in the Hebrew names of God, and the English has a hard time capturing it succinctly.
Yes, “El Shaddai” means “God Almighty.” But it also means so much more.
Shaddai is a word that has several meanings. The root is assumed to be SH-D-D, related to power, force, and destruction. The related Hebrew word “shadad” means to devastate, ravage, or plunder.
The integrity of the upright guides them, but the unfaithful are destroyed by their duplicity.
Proverbs 11:3 (NIV)
The scriptures use this word as power against unrighteousness. Divine judgement.
But some scholars suggest that the root of “El Shaddai” may be something else. Focusing on the last part of the word (dai), the Hebrew meaning becomes “sufficient” or “enough.”
Then Moses gave an order and they sent this word throughout the camp: “No man or woman is to make anything else as an offering for the sanctuary.” And so the people were restrained from bringing more, because what they already had was more than enough to do all the work.
Exodus 36:6-7 (NIV)
In this, they see El Shaddai as:
The God who is self-sufficient.
The God who is enough.
The God who says ‘it is enough.’
And it’s from this third name (The God who says ‘it is enough’) that we arrive at this teaching that says “with the name יְהֹוָה (I AM), God creates the world and it expands; with the name אֵל שַׁדַּי (God Almighty), God stops the expansion, so the world is contained.”
As the rabbis explored this name, they also saw something special about this covenant of Genesis 17.
Abram was already given a promise of land and progeny in Genesis 15; this new covenant can’t seal those two things which were already unconditionally promised.
So what is new?
God uses this Hebrew word “olam” four times in this chapter, which means “everlasting.”
It’s not the first time the word shows up. Previously, God mentions the “everlasting covenant” with all humanity after the flood.
I will establish my covenant as an everlasting covenant between me and you and your descendants after you for the generations to come, to be your God and the God of your descendants after you.
Genesis 17:7 (NIV)Whenever the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and all living creatures of every kind on the earth.”
Genesis 9:16 (NIV)
But what’s different here is this promise of **relationship.**
In Genesis 9, God promises not to destroy the world by flood, but in Genesis 17, God promises to always be Abram’s God and the God of Abram’s descendants.
But this is conditioned on circumcision. An outward sign.
This is the nature of relationships: It has to go both ways. God is not merely “out there” keeping the universe from flying apart. He’s right here, desiring intimacy with us. He wants us to be whole hearted with Him as He is with us.
And if we will not? If Abram refused?
The rabbis see something else in the “sufficient” part of El Shaddai: Perhaps God says if we will not participate with Him, then there is no point to any of it. The world could end in fire and God will still be holy and have kept His word: “shadad = destroyer.”
To be “self-sufficient” is to need nothing. God can do it all himself.
And yet… God desires to engage the world with us, through us, in relationship. He wants us involved. He loves us. Though He is self-sufficient, God *wants* us.
To love God back is to respond.
In this way, our “works” in response earn us nothing. It doesn’t save us from fire or elevate us in righteousness. It is purely the manifestation of relationship: to be circumcised is to dedicate ourselves in relationship. To be circumcised of heart is to belong to God.
There is another meaning of “El Shaddai,” and it is tied to nurturing. It is the word “shad,” or “breasts.”
… because of your father’s God, who helps you,
because of the Almighty, who blesses you
with blessings of the skies above,
blessings of the deep springs below,
blessings of the breast and womb.
Genesis 49:25 (NIV)
In Genesis 49, Jacob blesses his sons, and “shaddai” and “shad” are tied together here.
And there is both a meaning of blessing of progeny and of comfort, like a mother holding her child against her body. Nurturing. Compassion.
El Shaddai cares deeply for you.
All of this in a name of our God: mighty, sufficient, nurturing, compassionate… for us. For you.
Come and meet my God.
The rabbis even say that all 613 of the Jewish laws fall below circumcision.
1. Exceedingly old people being told they’ll have babies: That’s rather weird.
2. God institutes a covenant through circumcision: That’s even weirder.
3. Abram gets his name changed to Abraham, and he is instructed to start calling his wife by a different name as well. That’s just completely bonkers.
Could you imagine if your spouse did that?!
But it’s Abram who cleaves the animals, and we might agree that this is a destructive act, rather than a creative one. However, we see that God dwells even in those separations, shown as a torch that passes between them. It’s quite powerful imagery: God in the spaces between.
I like to think that God healed those animals that were cleaved, and He brought them back to life so Abram could see that God is Lord over death and life as well.
On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying,
“To your descendants I have given this land,
From the river of Egypt as far as the great river, the river Euphrates.
Genesis 15:18 (NIV)
When the scriptures tell us that God “made a covenant” with Abram in Genesis 15:18, the word “made” is the hebrew word כָּרַת (kaw-rath). It means to cut down. The idiom is to “cut a covenant.”
1. to cut off
– 1. to cut off a body part, behead
2. to cut down
3. to hew
4. to cut or make a covenant
H3772: כָּרַת (kāraṯ)
I wonder if scripture gives this because God is responding to Abram’s action.
So the Lord said to him, “Bring me a heifer, a goat and a ram, each three years old, along with a dove and a young pigeon.”
Abram brought all these to him, cut them in two and arranged the halves opposite each other; the birds, however, he did not cut in half.
Genesis 15:9-10 (NIV)
It seems very sad to me that Abram cut up the animals. If you look closely, God did not ask him to do this.
Then [God] said to him, “I am יהוה who brought you out from Ur of the Chaldeans to assign this land to you as a possession.”
Genesis 15:7 (The Contemporary Torah, JPS 2006)
The Midrash contains a fascinating story about Abram, suggesting that Nimrod (king of Babylon) threw Abram into a blazing furnace for not worshipping his idol. “Ur” means “flame.”
He was in the fire, but not consumed by it.
The rabbis say that Genesis 15:7 is the first time God tells Abram His name.
Later, when God meets Moses, He presents His name and another fire, this time on a bush that is not consumed.
Perhaps this is how Moses remembers the covenant God made with Abram: these are intentionally linked stories. God preserves us, even through the fire that should consume us.
Whoever sheds human blood,
By man his blood shall be shed,
For in the image of God
He made mankind.
As for you, be fruitful and multiply;
Populate the earth abundantly and multiply in it.”Then God spoke to Noah and to his sons with him, saying, “Now behold, I Myself am establishing My covenant with you, and with your descendants after you.
Genesis 9:6-9 (NASB)
Rabbi Ovadiah Seforno in the 1500s suggests that the Covenant God makes with Noah in Gen 9 is a CONDITIONAL covenant tied to the previous verses about the shedding of blood.
Ie., “I won’t destroy the earth with a flood IF you deal rightly with murderers.”
He ties this conditional covenant to Numbers, saying that if human blood is spilled and not addressed rightly, the land will need to be wiped clean again; there is no atonement otherwise.
So you shall not defile the land in which you live; for blood defiles the land, and no atonement can be made for the land for the blood that is shed on it, except by the blood of the one who shed it.
Numbers 35:33 (NASB)
I’ve given a lot of thought to the nature of death, and how we read clearly that God killed many people in the flood. Going back to the start, we read that God Himself positioned death in the garden by way of a certain tree. It wasn’t “IF” you eat the fruit, it was “WHEN.”
So when we read that God was “sorry” He made humanity, and that this word “sorry” has a meaning tied to a desire for comfort and repenting, the Numbers passage suddenly resonates.
An image of what the Messiah will do emerges.
It will take His blood.
So you shall not defile the land in which you live; for blood defiles the land, and no atonement can be made for the land for the blood that is shed on it, except by the blood of the one who shed it.
Numbers 35:33 (NASB)
This is not the same as saying that God made a mistake in introducing death. It is acknowledging that despite death being here, God will undo all of it with His own blood.