At that time the Lord said to Joshua, “Make for yourself (A)flint knives and circumcise again the sons of Israel the second time.” So Joshua made himself flint knives and circumcised the sons of Israel at [a]Gibeath-haaraloth. This is the reason why Joshua circumcised them: (B)all the people who came out of Egypt who were males, all the men of war, died in the wilderness along the way after they came out of Egypt. For all the people who came out were circumcised, but all the people who were born in the wilderness along the way as they came out of Egypt had not been circumcised. For the sons of Israel walked (C)forty years in the wilderness, until all the nation, that is, the men of war who came out of Egypt, [b]perished because they did not listen to the voice of the Lord, (D)to whom the Lord had sworn that He would not let them see the land which the Lord had sworn to their fathers to give us, a land flowing with milk and honey. So their children whom He raised up in their place, Joshua [c]circumcised; for they were uncircumcised, because they had not circumcised them along the way.

Now when they had finished circumcising all the nation, they remained in their places in the camp until they recovered. Then the Lord said to Joshua, “Today I have rolled away (E)the shame of Egypt from you.” So the name of that place is called [d]Gilgal to this day.

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Footnotes

  1. Joshua 5:3 I.e., the hill of the foreskins
  2. Joshua 5:6 Lit were finished
  3. Joshua 5:7 Lit circumcised them
  4. Joshua 5:9 I.e., wheel, or stone circle

Circumcision

At that time the Lord said to Joshua, “Make yourself flint knives. Circumcise the Israelites for a second time.” So Joshua made flint knives for himself. He circumcised the Israelites at Foreskins Hill. This is the reason Joshua did so: All the people who went out of Egypt, that is, all the men who were soldiers, had died in the desert on the way after they left Egypt. All the people who went out were circumcised. But none of the people born in the desert on the way after they had left Egypt had been circumcised. This was because the Israelites journeyed forty years in the desert until the whole nation died off. These were the men old enough to fight who went out from Egypt and who hadn’t obeyed the Lord. The Lord had pledged to them never to show them the land that the Lord had pledged to their ancestors to give us. It is a land full of milk and honey. Joshua circumcised their children, the ones the Lord had set in their place. They were uncircumcised because they hadn’t been circumcised on the way. After the whole nation had undergone circumcision, they remained in the camp until they got well again. Then the Lord said to Joshua, “Today I have rolled away from you the disgrace of Egypt.” So the place was called Gilgal,[a] as it is today.

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Footnotes

  1. Joshua 5:9 Gilgal sounds like the Heb verb galal, “to roll away.”