John Calvin Commentary Genesis 17:14

"And the uncircumcised male who is not circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin, that soul shall be cut off from his people; he hath broken my covenant." — Genesis 17:14 (ASV)

And the uncircumcised man-child, so that circumcision might be more diligently observed, God denounces a severe punishment on anyone who neglects it.

And as this shows God’s great care for human salvation, so, on the other hand, it rebukes their negligence. For since God so graciously offers a pledge of His love and of eternal life, why does He add a threat except to rouse the sluggishness of those whose duty it is to run with diligence?

Therefore, this denunciation of punishment effectively charges people with foul ingratitude because they either reject or despise God's grace. The passage, however, teaches that such contempt will not go unpunished.

And since God threatens punishment only to despisers, we infer that the uncircumcision of children would do them no harm if they died before the eighth day.

For God's mere promise was effective for their salvation. He did not so confirm this salvation by external signs as to restrict His own effective working to those signs. Moses, indeed, settles all controversy on this subject by citing as a reason that they would make God's covenant void; for we know that the covenant was not violated when the ability to keep it was taken away.

Let us then consider that the salvation of Abraham's descendants was included in that expression, I will be a God to your seed. And although circumcision was added as a confirmation, it nevertheless did not deprive the word of its force and effectiveness. But because it is not in human power to separate what God has joined together, no one could despise or neglect the sign without both rejecting the word itself and depriving himself of the benefit offered in it.

And therefore the Lord punished mere neglect with such severity. But if any infants were deprived by death of the signs of salvation, He spared them, because they had done nothing to detract from God's covenant.

The same reasoning is in force today regarding baptism. Whoever, having neglected baptism, pretends to be content with the mere promise, tramples, as much as is in his power, upon the blood of Christ, or at least does not allow it to flow for the washing of his own children.

Therefore, just punishment follows the contempt of the sign, in the deprivation of grace, because, by an ungodly separation of the sign and the word—or rather by tearing them apart—God's covenant is violated. To consign to destruction those infants whom a sudden death has not allowed to be presented for baptism, before any parental neglect could intervene, is a cruelty originating in superstition.

But that the promise belongs to such children is not in the least doubtful. For what can be more absurd than that the symbol, which is added to confirm the promise, should actually weaken its force? Therefore, the common opinion by which baptism is supposed to be necessary for salvation ought to be so moderated that it does not bind God's grace or the Spirit's power to external symbols and bring a charge of falsehood against God.

He has broken My covenant. For God's covenant is ratified when by faith we embrace what He promises.

Should anyone object that infants were guiltless of this fault because they until now lacked reason, I answer: we ought not to press this divine declaration too closely, as if God held infants chargeable with a fault of their own. Instead, we must observe the antithesis: as God adopts the infant son in the person of his father, so when the father repudiates such a benefit, the infant is said to cut himself off from the Church.

For the meaning of the expression is this: He shall be blotted out from the people whom God had chosen for Himself. The explanation of some—that those who remained uncircumcised would not be Jews and would have no place in the census of that people—is too superficial. We must go further and say that God, indeed, will not acknowledge as among His people those who will not bear the mark and sign of adoption.