(14) Shall be cut off from his people.--Jewish commentators generally consider that this penalty consisted in the offender being left to the direct interposition of God, who would punish him with childlessness and premature death (Talmud: Tract Yebam, 55). Most Christian commentators suppose that the offender was to be put to death by the civil magistrate; but this view is untenable. For a distinction is constantly drawn between the penalty of death, and the being "cut off from among the people," as, for instance, in Leviticus 20. So, too, the killing of a clean beast anywhere, except at the door of the tabernacle (Leviticus 17:4), and the eating of blood (Leviticus 17:9; Leviticus 17:14), are to be thus dealt with, while blasphemy and murder are to be punished with death (Leviticus 24:16-17). Now it became very common to kill clean beasts in all parts of the land, and the eating of blood, though regarded with horror (1Samuel 14:32-34), apparently had no penalty attached to it. The Jewish commentators seem to err only in being too special, and in defining the method in which God would punish. The punishment really seems to have been that of excommunication or outlawry, to which other penalties might have been attached by custom: but the main point was that one uncircumcised (as subsequently one who violated the principles of the Mosaic law) forfeited his privileges as a member of the Jewish nation, could claim no protection from the elders for life and property, and could not take his place at the gate of the city.

Verse 14. - And the uncircumcised man child whose flesh of his foreskin is not circumcised, that soul shall be cut off from his people. Ἐξολοθρευθήσεται ἐκ τοῦ γένους αὐτῆς (LXX.), i.e. shall be destroyed from amongst his nation, from among his people (Leviticus 17:4, 10; Numbers 15:30), from Israel (Exodus 12:15; Numbers 19:13), from the congregation of Israel (Exodus 12:19), by the infliction of death at the hands of the congregation, the civil magistrate, or of God (Abarbanel, Gesenius, Clericus, Michaelis, Rosenmüller, Keil, Wordsworth, Alford); or shall be excommunicated from the Church, and no longer reckoned among the people of God (Augustine, Vatablus, Piscator, Willet, Calvin, Knobel, Murphy, Kalisch, Inglis). That excision from one s people was in certain cases followed by the death penalty (Exodus 31:14; Leviticus 18:29; Numbers 15:30) does not prove that the capital infliction was an invariable accompaniment of such sentence (vide Exodus 12:19; Leviticus 7:20, 21; Numbers 19:13). Besides, to suppose that such was its meaning here necessitates the restriction of the punishment to adults, whereas with the alternative signification no such restriction requires to be imposed on the statute. The uncircumcised Hebrew, whether child or adult, forfeited his standing in the congregation, i.e. ceased to be a member of the Hebrew Church. He hath broken my covenant.

CHAPTER 17:15-27

17:7-14 The covenant of grace is from everlasting in the counsels of it, and to everlasting in the consequences of it. The token of the covenant was circumcision. It is here said to be the covenant which Abraham and his seed must keep. Those who will have the Lord to be to them a God, must resolve to be to him a people. Not only Abraham and Isaac, and his posterity by Isaac, were to be circumcised, but also Ishmael and the bond-servants. It sealed not only the covenant of the land of Canaan to Isaac's posterity, but of heaven, through Christ, to the whole church of God. The outward sign is for the visible church; the inward seal of the Spirit is peculiar to those whom God knows to be believers, and he alone can know them. The religious observance of this institution was required, under a very severe penalty. It is dangerous to make light of Divine institutions, and to live in the neglect of them. The covenant in question was one that involved great blessings for the world in all future ages. Even the blessedness of Abraham himself, and all the rewards conferred upon him, were for Christ's sake. Abraham was justified, as we have seen, not by his own righteousness, but by faith in the promised Messiah.And the uncircumcised man child, whose flesh of his foreskin is not circumcised,.... Whose circumcision was neglected by his father, or by his mother, or by the civil magistrate, or by himself; for each of these, according to the Jewish canons, were obliged to see this performed;"the commandment lies upon a father to circumcise his son, and upon a master to circumcise his servants born in his house, or bought with money (m):''and it is elsewhere said (n),"if a father does not circumcise his son, the sanhedrim are bound to circumcise him; and if they do not circumcise him, he is obliged when he is grown up to circumcise himself; and if he does not circumcise himself, he is guilty of cutting off,''as it here follows:

that soul shall be cut off from his people; which Jarchi interprets of his being childless, and dying before his time; and which, according to some in Aben Ezra, is, when a man dies before he is fifty two years of age; and some erroneous persons, as the same writer calls them, thought that if a child died, and was not circumcised, it had no part in the world to come. The simplest and plainest meaning of the phrase seems to be, that such should be cut off, and deprived of all civil and religious privileges with the Israelites in the land of Canaan, and be reckoned as Heathens. Concerning this matter, Maimonides (o) thus writes;"a father or a mother that transgress, and circumcise not, make void the affirmative commandment, but are not guilty of cutting off; for no cutting off depends but upon the uncircumcised person himself; and the sanhedrim are commanded to circumcise a son or a servant in its time, that they may not leave an uncircumcised person in Israel, nor among their servants; if the thing is hid from the sanhedrim, and they do not circumcise him, when he is grown up, he is bound to circumcise himself; and every day that passes over him, after he is grown up, and he does not circumcise himself, lo, he maketh the commandment to cease; but he is not guilty of cutting off until he dies, and he is a presumptuous uncircumcised person;''and so, according to him, this must respect his punishment after death in another world:

he hath broken my covenant; made it null and void, neglecting the token of it, circumcision.

(m) Maimon. ut supra, (Hilchot Milah) c. 1. sect. 1.((n) Schulchan Aruch, ib. c. 361. sect. 1.((o) Maimon. Hilchot. Milah, c. 1. sect. 1, 2.