Sorry parents, but in order to teach Genesis 17, we can’t avoid talking about circumcision—a subject that was absolutely normal and not at all embarrassing in the ancient world. It’s actually incredibly interesting! And not only that, but we have to talk about what holiness is and about the nine special signs in the Old Testament. I will also be posting an episode on my grown-up show, Character in Context, helping adults to understand circumcision if you want to teach it yourself.
If you want to watch me recording a slightly longer version of this live on YouTube, check this out! If you can’t see the podcast player, click here.
Hi! I’m Miss Tyler, and welcome to this week’s episode of Context for Kids, where I teach you stuff most adults don’t even know. If this is your first time hearing or if you have missed anything, you can find all the episodes archived at contextforkids.podbean.com, which has them downloadable, or at contextforkids.com, where I have transcripts for readers or on my Context for Kids YouTube channel, where I now post slightly longer video versions. (Parents, all Scripture this week comes from the MTV, the Miss Tyler Version, which is the Christian Standard Bible tweaked a bit to make it easier for kids to understand the content and the context without reading an entire chapter every week!) And parents, we have to talk about circumcision this week so if that is too sensitive a subject for you then a lot of Genesis 17 is going to be a mystery. Don’t worry, I won’t be too graphic but you might want to listen to this or read this on my website before your kids listen. I will also be doing a special episode on my grown-up channel about this subject.
Okay, we’re about to get into the part of the Bible where God is going to start making big changes in Abram’s family compared to all the other families on the earth. Some of them can be really confusing and hard to understand. Some seem cruel and maybe even a bit crazy, but they were all necessary—but why? Well, that’s what we are going to talk about today because Genesis 17 is going to seem really bizarre if we don’t take the time to understand why God is telling Abram about the need to be different and set apart. First, I think we need to talk about what “set apart” or “holy” means and what it doesn’t mean. And I am going to cheat and just read you two chapters from my curriculum book The Ten Commandments and the Covenants of Promise.
Adam and Eve had it all, really, they had it all – except for two things. They weren’t God, and so they weren’t allowed to eat of the fruit of one of the trees in the garden, the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. You know, it was in the Garden sanctuary, so it had to be holy – everything within the garden was special. Holy is a very misunderstood Hebrew word, kadosh, but it is incredibly important to understand holiness, at least a little bit, if you are going to understand the importance of God’s Covenants and why they are there. I used to think that holy just meant “super good” but that isn’t it at all. Holy is a unique word that means something is special, set aside for an important function. To make it as simple as possible, something is holy, or kadosh, if it has restrictions set up by God in the areas of time, space, things, and activities. And of course, that made no sense at all, so now I will make it simple. Restrictions mean limitations – in other words, there are things that are forbidden, or not allowed, when something is holy.
A group of people are kadosh/holy if they have restrictions on their behavior set up by God. If they have no restrictions, then they are called common or profane instead. Whoa! That sounded kinda insulting right? But it really isn’t. Profane doesn’t really mean what we say it means now – in modern language, profane automatically means something is bad but originally it just meant “secular” and secular is a word that simply means something that is not set apart by God. After all, out in the world, people have restrictions on their behavior that change over time – what was wrong when I was born isn’t always considered to be wrong anymore. When I was born, everyone believed it was wrong to be gay, but I am in my fifties now, and now more and more people think it is right and natural. Abortion was also wrong when I was born but now people think it is right. That’s how the secular, common, or profane world works. They don’t have any permanent, binding restrictions placed on their lives by God setting boundaries around their behavior. What isn’t allowed today might be expected tomorrow.
You want to hear something unbelievable? Not one person in the scriptures is ever called holy. Not Noah, or Abraham, or Moses or anyone. There is one passage where it looks like the prophet Elisha is being called holy, in 2 Kings 4:8-9 where the passage is usually translated as describing Elisha as a “holy man of God” but it seems really strange that something like that would only happen once in the entire Bible! One of my teachers once told me that it is possible to translate the verse as “the man of a holy God” instead. That would line up with the rest of the Bible perfectly. God is holy, Israel the nation is holy, but individuals are never called holy – not even the High Priest! Individually then, we are not holy persons, we are a holy nation, under God! The people of Israel as a whole were called holy at Mount Sinai because God personally set boundaries on their behavior.
Over and over again throughout Scripture, certain places are called kadosh. In fact, the second time the word is used in Scripture is to describe the land around the burning bush! The first is in Genesis 2 when the Sabbath is called kadosh. The next place described as holy is Mount Sinai itself and then the Tabernacle because God set them apart for His own purposes. Each time a place is made holy (and, of course, only God can do that – we can’t declare anything holy ourselves as much as we might like to) there are things that are and are not allowed to be done there.
The ground around the burning bush was holy and so Moses was commanded to remove his shoes when he walked there (and the priests had to minister at the Tabernacle and Temple barefoot). Mount Sinai was holy when the presence of God was upon it, and the Israelites had to set up barriers around it to keep people from touching it. The Tabernacle/Temple grounds were holy and the closer you got to the holy of holies, the more restrictions there were based on behavior, cleanliness, and which tribe you were born into. Only the sons of Aaron through Phineas and Zadok were permitted to come near – even Jesus never dared to come into the Priest-only areas because He would never disobey His Father’s commandments. Specific areas are called holy by God because there are serious restrictions upon who can approach them, how they can be approached and when they can be approached.
There are also things that are holy, special things. Things that God specifically commanded to be created, in order to be used at His kadosh times, in His kadosh places, by specific people, and exactly how He says they are to be used. Once something has been used for a kadosh purpose, it can never be used for anything profane. Did you know that the priest’s linen garments, once they were worn out, couldn’t be used for rags? They were too holy for that, it would be an insult to God and so they remained in the Tabernacle/Temple forever and were used as wicks for the seven menorah lamps when they finally wore out. Even things like ash shovels were considered to be so holy that they would never leave the Temple grounds. In fact, the Temple altar was defiled on Kislev 25, 168 BCE, by the sacrifice of a pig on it by Antiochus Epiphanies and even after the Temple was liberated, and the altar stones taken down, they still had to store them on the Temple Mount because they could not risk them being used for anything common or profane!
The Ark of the Covenant was so holy that a man died just from touching it. It was so holy that even the High Priest could only come near it once a year unless the Tabernacle was being transported.
The Feast tithes were so holy that they could only be eaten within the walls of Jerusalem during the Feasts. The Passover Lamb was so holy that it could not be eaten by anyone uncircumcised.
The tribe of the Levites, which includes the Priesthood, are kadosh like the rest of Israel, but they are also kadosh in a different way. The Levites couldn’t live the same way that normal Israelites could – they couldn’t have a Land inheritance and they had restrictions on where they could live and what they could do. The Priests, the descendants of Aaron, had even more restrictions – for example, they had limits on who they could marry because of the holiness or kedushah, of their position. The High Priest had more restrictions than anyone but going into the Holy of Holies once a year made everything worth it! Now all that might sound like a drag but the benefits of being kadosh are the perks of having a Covenant relationship with the Creator of Heaven and Earth and all that is in them. It means that we aren’t the boss of ourselves – but because we have a blessed and honored status, we don’t need to be our own bosses. And none of the restrictions are terrible; none of them deprive anyone of anything we need in order to live. God has always wanted what is best for us.
Now, time can also be made holy – by restrictions on what can be done during certain times and in fact, time was the very first thing to be declared holy! There are six days in which we do our work and the seventh is kadosh. But what does that mean? That means God sets the rules about what will and will not be done on certain days that He says are kadosh and we cannot do what we want on those days if we are in Covenant with Him. In the Ten Commandments, there is an instruction for absolutely everyone to stop working, and it doesn’t matter if you are the highest king or the lowliest pauper, or even an animal! No one works on God’s kadosh day – no one is a slave on the Sabbath. Everyone gets a day off to celebrate God’s rest – do you remember what rest means? God’s enthronement on the seventh day of Creation, the Sabbath day. That is the day when all of Creation was meant to celebrate God as the King of kings, from the very beginning. Six days a week we have to work at profane jobs, doing profane work, practicing for sports teams, achieving this or that (do you remember the definition of profane?) – and the work is good but it isn’t kadosh. Work is something we all must do, but we shouldn’t ever allow it to invade a kadosh day if we have a choice.
In Leviticus 23, we see other holy times–they are called Feasts, or moedim in Hebrew. There are restrictions on those days as well. God’s people don’t work on those specific days, seven days in the year that are special kadosh Sabbaths – two days in the spring at the beginning and end of Passover week, a day in the late spring called Shavuot (Pentecost), and four days in the fall, Yom Teruah, Yom Kippur and two days at the beginning and end of the eight days of the Feast of Tabernacles. Those are kadosh days and certain people need to be doing certain things and not doing certain other things. Some holy times,
like feasts, have limitations as well as obligations. The men living in Israel were required to go to the Tabernacle or Temple three times a year to celebrate with God and pay tribute to Him. They couldn’t just do whatever they wanted wherever they wanted because the time was kadosh. Working was permitted during the days between the special Sabbaths, but the men of Israel were required to be there to honor God and celebrate. They were joyous times! Certain times were called holy by God, both at Creation and then again at Sinai because God set boundaries on what would and could not be done on those days.
Okay, back to this week’s lesson. God is going to make rules about what Abram and his family can and can’t do, and what they have to do and don’t have to do. Some of these rules that He will give later are about going to certain parties—those are fun rules! Another rule is about only working six days a week—and when you have worked hard there is nothing better than having a rest day as a vacation. They won’t be allowed to eat certain animals or behave in the same ways the people around them do. They won’t be allowed to worship any god except Abram’s God, who Hagar called El Roi (the name she gave Him) and who Moses will call Yahweh (not because Moses gave Him that name but because God introduced Himself by that name). They will have to dress differently, and some of the ways they will worship will be different than all the people around them. But not everything in their lives will be different from the people around them. In fact, most things will be the same.
Why does God tell His people to live differently? Well, there are a few reasons. Sometimes, He wants His people to know that they need to be different from everyone else around them. That’s what chapter seventeen of Genesis is about. Sometimes, God wants to make sure they won’t be too friendly with the people around them who worship other gods, so He will make it impossible for them to eat meals with them or marry them. When King Solomon began to worship false gods at the end of his life it was because he married women from every country under the sun and built them temples for their gods and then worshiped those gods with them. That was a huge mistake from beginning to end, and from then on, it was just a matter of time before the nation of Israel was completely destroyed. Solomon stopped remembering that God’s people have to be only God’s people and not every god’s people. In chapter seventeen, God is going to tell Abram to do something that would make his entire family special in the eyes of the world and in their own eyes. That special thing is called circumcision. And again, parents, if this isn’t something you want your kids to learn about then this would be a good time to stop listening together and just go look at my transcript to pre-approve (or not) what I am about to teach.
In the ancient world, men who had special jobs were sometimes circumcised. In Egypt, the priests were circumcised. Circumcision is an operation that cuts away some of the skin around the end of a boy’s or man’s penis. If any of you boys are circumcised, it probably happened when you were a newborn baby and you don’t remember. In fact, you probably didn’t even remember a few hours later. Circumcision in the ancient world could be about many things. Sometimes, it was something called a “rite of passage,” which is a ritual that changes your status in your community or in the world. Different cultures do different things to show the world that someone is a man or a woman now and “part of the tribe.” In some cultures, they use tattoos, cuts in the skin, rings around the neck, earrings, bracelets, and even small plates inserted into the lip. When people get married, there are all sorts of things done around the world to show that they aren’t single anymore. Wedding rings are what we mostly use here in the US, but in other countries they have women wear a covering over their head (like in ancient Rome) or aprons (in Tibet). Sometimes, married men are the only ones allowed to grow a beard or wear a prayer shawl. Doing these things shows the members of the community that you are “one of them” and about your life. In ancient Rome, a head-covering on a woman was a status symbol for free married women; Paul wanted all the women to wear them in church, so that no one would look superior to anyone else—even if they weren’t allowed to wear them outside the church.
But God wanted all of His people to be a nation of priests—meaning they would all have access to God. That means they could pray to Him without needing to go through a priest, and He would hear them. So for the men, it meant they needed to be treated like priests in the ancient world, from the time they were only eight days old. It doesn’t mean that every man was an actual priest but that the entire nation, men and women, were all set apart for God and they were supposed to live their lives in such a way that everyone could see what God is like. Of course, you know how we all are, so it wasn’t always a big success. In fact, it usually wasn’t. But that was the idea and that’s what God was telling Abram. Every man or baby boy who was born into Abram’s household or bought by Abram, including Ishmael and Abram, had to be circumcised as a sign of God’s covenant with Abram. I don’t know about you, but it would be way better to have that done as a baby than when you are eighty-nine years old, like Abram, or thirteen, like Ishmael.
God told Abram that everyone in His household must do this as a sign of the Covenant God was making with Abram to inherit the Land of Canaan. And so every man who would ever inherit that land would have to be circumcised too. If they didn’t, it meant that they were rejecting God’s land and that they were rejecting God too. This was really serious business. Circumcision is one of about nine things that are called “signs” in the Bible. This was the second—do you remember what the first sign was? The rainbow! God called that a sign that would remind Him of His promise to all the people and animals and all the earth that He would never flood the world again—that He was done fighting with people and was going to save them instead.
There will be other signs too: (1) when they are about to leave Egypt, God will tell the children of Israel that throwing away all their leavened flour and eating flat bread for a week once a year after Passover was a sign (Ex 13:3-10), (2) there was a special ceremony where the firstborn child in a family was set apart to God (Ex 13:15-17), (3) the Sabbath (Ex 31:13-17), (4) the destruction of the bronze censors at the Tabernacle to make a covering for the altar (Num 16), (5) Aaron’s rod in the wilderness (Num 17), (6) the memorial stones that Joshua set up in the Land of Israel (Joshua 8), and maybe (7) phylacteries (Deut 6:8). Of course, these aren’t the only signs in the Bible but they are special signs that show the world that the people of Israel were separated from the rest of the world by God, and so was the Land God gave them, and so was Aaron as priest. All of these signs were to remind people about God’s choices. Of course, Jesus gave us some even better signs because His signs were for the whole world and not just the people of Israel.
The Gospel of John tells us about the wonderful things Jesus did to prove that He was sent by God to save the world. First, he took a bunch of water jars and made the water in them into wine! Then, He told the leaders that He would be raised from the dead in three days—but they didn’t understand Him and thought he was talking about the Temple in Jerusalem—and it happened just as He promised it would! He totally healed a child who was about to die without even touching him. He made it so that a man who hadn’t walked in thirty-eight years got right up and walked around in front of everyone. He fed five thousand people with just a few small loaves of bread and some fishes. And then He walked on the water out in the middle of the sea of Galilee. There was a man who was born blind—he had never seen anything in his entire life. Jesus made mud with his spit and told the man to go wash his eyes in one of the city pools in Jerusalem and the man came back seeing perfectly! But that was nothing compared to the time that He raised a man named Lazarus who had been dead for four whole days! Then Jesus kept telling them that He was about to be killed by the leaders of the Jews and Romans but He would live again after three days.
But Jesus said that there would be bad signs too. He said if people were always looking for signs then they were going to get tricked by people who could do amazing things. But not everyone who does amazing things is sent by God. If we are always looking for miracles and signs in the sky and stars and in the world then we are making a terrible mistake. And I have seen a whole lot of people in my life tricked by people who wanted them to believe that the end of the world is very soon because they could recognize “the signs” but they have all been wrong. What we are supposed to do instead is follow Jesus and do the things He did so that everyone in the world will believe Him as their King.
I love you. I am praying for you. Did you know that we have already seen all the signs we will ever need to believe that Jesus is King of kings and Lord of lords? Now we just have to live life the way He taught us.