After reading chapter 17:
*This chapter takes place 13 years after chapter 16, when Abram is 99 and Sarai is 90, or approximately 1953 B.C.E.
*Abram has another personal revelation from the lord (Yaweh) who says he is the almighty God (El ). God renews his covenant with Abram. He changes Abram's name to Abraham and Sarai's name to Sarah.
* The terms of the covenant:
~Abraham will be given the whole land of Canaan
~He will be the father of many nations
~Every male in his entourage, slave and free, must be circumcised as an everlasting sign of the covenant, whether they wanted to be or not. That was at least a few hundreds of men( Gen. 14:14), not to mention the billions of descendants to follow. Any uncircumcised male will be cut off from the the rest of the family.
~Abraham and Sarah will have a son and will call him Isaac. He will be the heir of the covenant even though he is technically the Younger Brother.
~Ishmael will be blessed and will be the father of twelve rulers.
* What does Abraham have to do for all this? Just be God's man and blameless. One wonders what blameless means, since Abraham has lied, traded his wife for riches to save his own neck, treated a woman with contempt, and is the owner of many slaves.
*Abraham laughed at the thought if having a son at his age, but he went ahead and circumcised every male in his clan on that very day. Nobody would be doing any baby making quite yet.
*The earliest record of circumcision is from about 2,400 B.C.E. in Egypt. It had probably been practiced for hundreds of years before that. Ra the sun god was said to have circumcised himself. Check out he Wikipedia article on circumcision for more info.
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