The Pulpit Commentary — Joshua — Section 144

xvii. 2a). Perhaps the best explano.tion is usually rendered in the LXX.). It is applied tho.t the word :i1ci, though it is rightly to the Israelite8 in eh. iii. 17 ; iv. 1 ; Isa. translated '' o.go.in " here, and in severo.1 i. 4 ; ix. 2 ; xxvi. 2. See also Exod. xxxiii. other plo.ccs in Scripture, co.rries with it the 13. In the singular it means a people in iclco. of a return intu a former condition (kehr, the more general sense, a nation, as dis- zrtriicl,, Knobel). So Gen. xxvi. 18, xxx. 31, tinguished from a people in whom one has :Hos. ii. 11 (9, in our version). In 2 Kings i. an interest. In the plural it always m~ans 11, 13 we have the king's return to his former tbe Gentiles. 0:!:7 (LXX., >..aot), the word . purpose in the second and third mission to usually applied to the people of God, is not Elijah. Thus here the word is used of the used here, because the people who " pro- bri11ying back the children of Isro.el to their voked God in the wilderness" had made · former state, that.of a people who were in themselves in a sense e. rejected people. the enjoyment of a visible sign and seo.l Delitzsch regards this (alter Calvin) as a (Rom. iv. 11) of their being God's covenant sign that, for the time at least, the covenant people. The meaning therefore would seem between God and Israel was annulled, per- to be, " Restore the children of Israel a manently in the case of those who were second time to the position they formerly condemned to die in the wilderness, tempo- held, as visibly bound to me, and placed rarily only in their descendants, who were under my protection, by the rite of circum- formally reconciled to God, and restored cision." u The person must be in favour to their former covenant position by this ere the work can hope to prosper; his pre- solemn performance of the covenant rite decessor Moses had like to have been slain • of circumcision (see note on verse 2). So for neglect of this sacrament, when he went also Hengstenberg, 'Geschicbte des Reiches to call the people out of Egypt; he justly Gottes,' p. 205. The difficulty about the feo.rs his own safety, if now he omit it, passover may be met by supposing that when they are brought into Canaan " those only who were circumcised-a. con- (Bp. Hall). stantly decree.sing number, of course-were Ver. 3.-The hill of the foreskins. The allowed to celebrate that feast. Knobel name given to the hill where the circum- would understand that in conseq nence of the cision took place. " unquiet, unsettled, uncomfortable life " Ver. 4.-After they came out from Egypt. the Israelites led in the wilderness, they Rather " on their journey from Egypt." See could keep v,,:y few of the ordained feo.sts. next verse, where the same words are trans- He continues : " the Elohist knows nothing lated " as they came out." of any cessation." Nevertheless we read of Ver: 5.-Now all the people that came no passover being kept after the one re- ou'• were circumcised. The Hebrew of this corded in Nnm. ix. 5, so that if "the Elo- passage (which runs litero.lly thus-" Now hist knows of no cessation," he knows as circumcised had they been, all the people little of any continued observance of the wlao were going forth") is sufficient to feast. But there is no certainty on the refute the idea that there was a greo.t cir- point. Considering the loose way in which cumcision of the people under Moses, on the word ~::J is used in Scripture (see, for account of the neglect of the rite in Egypt. instance, Gen. iv. 14), we need not press the For, before the exodus, Moses was not in a word to include all who were born after the position to perform any general o.ct of this departure from Egypt, but only those who kind, as the history plainly shows, while were born e.fter the rejection of the people alter it such a rite could not have taken recorded in Num. xiv. 26, sqq. This reiec- place, since the Hebrew 1'Q denotes a state tion, be it remembered, did not include all of things which was completed at the time the Israelites who were born in Egypt, but spoken of, and therefore must here be ren- only those who were over twenty years of dered (as o.bove) by the pluperfect. Them o.ge (Num. xiv. 29). The view of Kurz they had not ct-:~umc1sed. Here 11ge.in the (iii. 323, Clark's translation), that circum- Hebrew is used of the perfected action, and cision was suspended on account of the is therefore rightly rendered by our version, continue.I movements of the Israelites, is giving the idea that the Israelites who were refuted by Delitzsch's remark that the born in the wilderness had not been circum- Israelites were not continually on the march, cised up to the point which our history has but that they often encamped in one plo.ce now reached. See also ver. 7, where the for a long period, a period far longer, in fact, so.me construction is foun.d. tho.n the time in which they abode in Gilgal. Ver. G.-Till all the people. The Hebrew Delitzsch asks why this circumcision did here is '1l, not the usual word for people, not take pluce before, why it was not per- but that usually applied to the Gen~iles formed 11s soon o.s they crossed the brook (equivalent to .Ovot, by which word 1t 1s Zered. The answer is that, until the Jor- 80 THE BOOK OF JOSHUA. [cu. v. 1-9.