Albert Barnes Commentary Deuteronomy 10:16

"Circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart, and be no more stiffnecked." — Deuteronomy 10:16 (ASV)

On “circumcision,” see (Genesis 17:10). This verse points to the spiritual significance of circumcision. Man is by nature “very far gone from original righteousness” and in a state of enmity to God. Through circumcision, as the sacrament of admission to the privileges of the chosen people, this opposition needed to be taken away before man could enter into covenant with God.

It was through the flesh that man first sinned, and it is also in the flesh, its functions, lusts, etc., that man’s rebellion against God chiefly manifests itself still. Therefore, it was fitting that the symbol denoting the removal of this estrangement from God should be performed on the body.

Moses then appropriately follows up the command “to circumcise the heart” with the warning “to be no more stiff-necked.” His meaning is that they should lay aside that obduracy and perverseness towards God for which he had been reproving them. This disposition had led them into so many transgressions of the covenant and revolts from God, and was especially the very contrary of the love and fear of God required by the first two of the Ten Commandments.

The language associated with circumcision in the Bible distinguishes its use in the Jewish religion from that found among certain pagan nations. While some of these nations practiced circumcision as a religious rite—designed, for example, to appease a deity of death who was thought to delight in human suffering—none of them, with the probable exception of the Egyptians, practiced it at all in the Jewish sense and meaning.

The grounds on which circumcision was imposed as essential by the Law are the same as those on which Baptism is required in the Gospel. The latter in the New Testament is strictly analogous to the former under the Old .