Whether they are born in your household or purchased, they must be circumcised. My covenant in your flesh will be an everlasting covenant.
13. For an everlasting covenant The meaning of this expression may be twofold: either that God promises that his grace, of which circumcision was a sign and pledge, should be eternal; or that he intended the sign itself to be perpetually observed. Indeed, I have no doubt that this perpetuity ought to be referred to the visible sign.
Here is, I. The continuance of the covenant, intimated in three things: - 1. It is established; not to be altered nor revoked. It is fixed, it is ratified, it is made as firm as the divine power and truth can make it. 2.
Commenting on Genesis 17:7-14
He that is born in thine house, and he that is bought with thy money, must needs be circumcised,.... Or "in circumcising shall be circumcised" (l), shall certainly be circumcised; this is repeated to denote the necessity of it, and what care should be taken that this be done, because there was to be no uncircumcised male among them, Gen 17:10; nor any conversation and...