Generation after generation, every male among you is to be circumcised on the eighth day after his birth, including the servant born in your house or the one purchased from a foreigner, who is not of your offspring.

Any uncircumcised male who does not have the foreskin of his flesh circumcised on the eighth day after his birth is to be eliminated from his people because he has broken my covenant.”

The firstborn gave birth to a son and named him Moab, and he is the ancestor of the Moabites to this day.

The younger daughter also gave birth to a son and named him Ben-ammi, and he is the ancestor of the Ammonites to this day.

The Dreams are Fulfilled

On the third day, which just happened to be Pharaoh’s birthday, he threw a party for all his servants. He lifted the head of both his senior security advisor and of his head chef in front of his servants—

“If she gives birth to a female, then she is to remain unclean for two weeks, just like her menstruation. She is to remain in purification for 66 days due to her blood loss.

One day the angel of the Lord presented himself to the woman. “Hello!” he greeted her. “Though you are infertile at this time and haven’t borne a child, you’re about to conceive and give birth to a son.

He told me, ‘Surprise!—you’re going to conceive and give birth to a son!’ and as for you, ‘Be sure that you don’t drink wine or anything intoxicating, and don’t eat anything unclean,’ ‘because the young man will be a Nazirite dedicated to God from inside the womb’ until the day he dies.”

Three days later, this woman also gave birth. We lived alone there. There was nobody else with us in the house. It was just the two of us.

They announced to him: “This is what Hezekiah says: ‘Today is a day of trouble, rebuke, and blasphemy, because children are about to be born, but there is no strength to bring them to birth.

Lessons for Life

A good name exceeds the value of fine perfume, and the day of someone’s death exceeds the value of the day of his birth.

“Here is what Hezekiah says,” they told him. “This day is a day of trouble, rebuke, and disgrace, as when children come to the point of birth and there is no energy to deliver them.

“The woman who gave birth to seven will grow faint, her life will expire. Her sun will set while it’s still day. She will be disgraced and humiliated. I’ll kill the rest of them with swords in the presence of their enemies,” declares the Lord.

Jeremiah Curses the Day of His Birth

Let the day on which I was born be cursed. Don’t let the day on which my mother gave birth to me be blessed.

Now as to your birth, on the day you were born your umbilical cord wasn’t cut. You weren’t washed with water to clean you, and nobody rubbed you with salt. And it’s certain that you weren’t wrapped in strips of cloth.

The Birth of Jesus

Now in those days an order was published by Caesar Augustus that the whole world should be registered.

Now a man who had been crippled from birth was being carried in. Every day people would lay him at what was called the Beautiful Gate so that he could beg from those who were going into the Temple.