in their generations, for an everlasting covenant, to be a God unto thee, and to thy seed after thee. 8. And I will give unto thee, and to thy seed after thee, the land wherein thou art a stranger, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession; and I will be their God. 9. And God said unto Abraham, Thou shalt keep my covenant therefore, thou, and thy seed after thee, in their generations. 10. This is my covenant, which ye shall keep, between me and you, and thy seed after thee; every man-child among you shall be circumcised. 11. And ye shall circumcise the flesh of your foreskin; and it shall be a token of the covenant betwixt me and you. 12. And he that is eight days old, shall be circumcised among you, every man-child in your generations, he that is born in the house, or bought with money of any stranger, which is not of thy seed. 13. He that is born in thy house, and he that is bought with thy money, must needs be circumcised: and my covenant shall be in your flesh for an everlasting covenant. 14. And the uncircumcised man-child, whose flesh of his fore-skin is not circumcised, that soul shall be cut off from his people; he hath broken my covenant.
Here is,
I. The continuance of the covenant; intimated in three things. 1. It is established; not to be altered or revoked: it is fixed, it is ratified, it is made as firm as the divine power and truth can make it. 2. It is entailed; it is a covenant, not with Abraham only, (then it would die with him,) but with his seed after him, not only his seed after the flesh, but his spiritual seed. 3. It is everlasting in the evangelical sense and meaning of it. The covenant of grace is everlasting; it is from everlasting in the counsels of it, and to everlasting in the consequences of it; and the external administration of it is transmitted with the seal of it to the seed of believers, and the internal administration of it by the Spirit, to Christ's seed in every age.
II. The contents of the covenant; it is a covenant of promises, exceeding great and precious promises. Here are two, which, indeed, are all sufficient. 1. That God would be their God, v. 7, 8. All the privileges of the covenant, all its joys, and all its hopes, are summed up in this: a man needs desire no more than this, to make him happy. What God is himself, that he will be to his people; his wisdom their's, to guide and counsel them; his power their's, to protect and support them; his goodness their's, to supply and comfort them. What faithful worshippers can expect from the God they serve, believers shall find in God as their's. This is enough, yet not all. 2. That Canaan should be their everlasting posession, v. 8. God had before promised this land to Abraham, and his seed, ch. 15. 18. But here, where it is promised for an everlasting possession, surely it must he looked upon as a type of heaven's happiness, that everlasting rest which remains for the people of God, Heb. 4. 9. This is that better country to which Abraham had an eye, and the grant of which was that which answered to the vast extent and compass of that promise, that God would be to them a God; so that if God had not prepared and designed this, he would have been ashamed to be called their God, Heb. 11. 16. As the land of Canaan was secured to the seed of Abraham, according to the flesh, so heaven is secured to all his spiritual seed, by a covenant, and for a possession, truly everlasting. The offer of this eternal life is made in the word, and confirmed by the sacraments, to all that are under the external administration of the covenant; and the earnest of it is given to all believers, Eph. 1. 14. Canaan is here said to be the land wherein Abraham was a stranger; and heaven is a land to which we are strangers, for it does not yet appear what we shall be.
III. The token of the covenant, and that is circumcision, for the sake of which the covenant is itself called the covenant of circumcision, Acts 7. 8. It is here said to be the covenant which Abraham and his seed must keep, as a copy or counterpart, v. 9, 10. It is called a sign and seal, Rom. 4. 11, for it was, 1. A confirmation to Abraham and his seed, of those promises which were God's part of the covenant, assuring them that they should be fulfilled; that in due time Canaan should be their's: and the continuance of this ordinance, after Canaan was their's, intimates that that promise looked further, to another Canaan, which they must still be in expectation of: see Heb. 4, 8. 2. An obligation upon Abraham and his seed, to that duty which was their part of the covenant; not only to the duty of accepting the covenant and consenting to it, and the putting away of the corruption of the flesh, (which were more immediately and primarily signified by circumcision,) but, in general, to the observation of all God's commands, as they should at any time hereafter be intimated and made known to them; for circumcision made men debtors to do the whole law, Gal. 5. 3. They who will have God to be to them a God, must consent and resolve to be to him a people.
Now, (1.) Circumcision was a bloody ordinance; for all things by the law were purged with blood, Heb. 9. 22. See Exod. 24. 8. But the blood of Christ being shed, all bloody ordinances are now abolished; circumcision therefore gives way to baptism. (2.) It was peculiar to the males; though the women also were included in the covenant, for the man is the head of the woman. In our kingdom, the oath of allegiance is required only from men: some think that the blood of the males only was shed in circumcision, because respect was had in it to Jesus Christ, and his blood. (3.) It was the flesh of the fore-skin that was to be cut off, because it is by ordinary generation that sin is propagated, and with an eye to the Promised Seed, who was to come from the loins of Abraham. Christ having not yet offered himself for us, God would have man to enter into covenant by the offering of some part of his own body, and no part could be better spared. It is a secret part of the body: for the true circumcision is that of the heart: this honour God put upon an uncomely part, 1 Cor. 12. 23, 24. (4.) The ordinance was to be administered to children when they were eight days old, and not sooner: that they might gather some strength to be able to undergo the pain of it, and that at least one sabbath might pass ever them. (5.) The children of the stranger, of whom the master of the family was the true domestic owner, were to be circumcised, v. 12, 13, which looked favourably upon the gentiles, who should, in due time, be brought into the family of Abraham by faith: see Gal. 3. 14. (6.) The religious observance of this institution was required, under a very severe penalty, v. 14. The contempt of circumcision was a contempt of the covenant; if the parents did not circumcise their children, it was at their peril, as in the case of Moses, Exod. 4. 24, 25. With respect to those that were
