Albert Barnes Commentary Joshua 5

The Amorites were the principal of those nations that occupied the hill country of Judea (see note on Genesis 10:16); the Canaanites of those that dwelt on the coast and low lands. These words are therefore equivalent to “all the kings of the highlanders, and all the kings of the lowlanders”: that is, the kings of all the tribes of the country.

Until we were passed over - The use of the first person has been noted here, and in Joshua 5:6 , as suggesting the hand of one who himself shared in what he describes. But the text as read (though not written) by the Jewish authorities here, has the third person, as have some manuscripts, Septuagint, Vulgate, etc.; and a change of person like this in Hebrew, even if the text stands, does not of itself warrant the inference. (Compare Psalm 66:6.)

Make you sharp knives – Translate this instead as in the margin, and compare the marginal reference and note. Knives of flint or stone were in fact used for circumcision and retained for that and other sacred purposes, even after iron had come into common use.

This translation from the margin is adopted by almost all ancient versions, by most commentators, and by the Church Fathers generally. They naturally regarded circumcision performed by Joshua with knives of stone or rock as symbolic of the true circumcision performed by Christ, who is more than once spoken of as the Rock (compare to 1 Corinthians 10:4; Romans 2:29; Colossians 2:11). See Joshua 21:42.

Circumcise again ... – That is, make a people who were once circumcised, but are not so now, a circumcised people once more. .

The hill of the foreskins — that is, the hill where the foreskins, the emblem of all worldly and carnal affections, were buried. (Colossians 3:1–6.)

Of the whole nation, only those were already circumcised at the time of the passage of the Jordan who had been under twenty years of age at the time of the complaining and consequent rejection at Kadesh. These would have been circumcised before they left Egypt, and more than a quarter of a million of them, thirty-eight years old and older, would still have survived.

The statements of these verses are of a general kind. The “forty years” from Joshua 5:6 is a round number, and the statement in the latter part of Joshua 5:5 cannot be strictly accurate. For male children must have been born in the wilderness during the first year after the Exodus, and these must have been circumcised before the celebration of the Passover at Sinai in the first month of the second year (Compare Numbers 9:1-5 and Exodus 12:48). The statements of the verses are, however, sufficiently close to the facts for the present purpose, namely, to provide a reason for the general circumcision which is recorded here.

The reason circumcision was omitted in the wilderness was that the sentence of Numbers 14:28 and following placed the whole nation for that time under a ban. The discontinuance of circumcision, and the consequent omission of the Passover, was a consequence and a token of that ban.

This rejection was not, indeed, total, for the children of the complainers were to enter into the rest. Nor was it final, for when the children had borne the punishment of their fathers’ sins for the appointed years, and the complainers were dead, then the ban was to be removed, as it was now by Joshua.

But for that time the covenant was abrogated, though God’s purpose to restore it was made known from the first and confirmed by the visible marks of His favor, which He still graciously bestowed during the wandering.

The years of rejection were indeed exhausted before the death of Moses . However, God would not call upon the people to renew their engagement to Him until He had first given them glorious proof of His will and power to fulfill His engagements to them.

So He gave them the first fruits of the promised inheritance—the kingdoms of Sihon and Og—and through a miracle, planted their feet on the very soil that still remained to be conquered. Then He recalled them to His covenant.

It is to be noted, too, that they were just about to go to war against foes mightier than themselves. Their only hope of success lay in the help of God. At such a crisis, the need for full communion with God would indeed be felt, and the blessing and strength of it were accordingly granted.

The revival of the two great ordinances—circumcision and the Passover—after such a long intermission certainly awakened the zeal and invigorated the faith and fortitude of the people. Both as seals and as means of grace and God’s good purpose toward them at that time, the general circumcision of the people, followed by the solemn celebration of the Passover—the one formally restoring the covenant and reconciling them nationally to God, the other ratifying and confirming all that circumcision intended—were at this critical moment most opportune.

The circumcision must have taken place on the day after the passage of the Jordan, that is, the 11th Nisan, and the Passover was kept on the 14th of the same month. For at least that long, those who had been circumcised would be disabled from war (compare the marginal reference), though they would not necessarily be debarred from keeping the feast. The submission of the people to the rite was a proof of faith, even though we remember that the panic of the Canaanites (Joshua 5:1) would render any immediate attack from them unlikely, and that there must have been a large number of “men of war” who would not need to be circumcised at all (see the note at Joshua 5:4).