And the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles through faith, preached before the gospel unto Abraham, saying,
In you shall all nations be blessed.
All Commentaries on Galatians 3:8 Go To Galatians 3
Jerome
AD 420
God, providing that the descendants of Abraham should not be mixed with the other nations … marked off the Israelite people by a particular rite: circumcision. … After that for forty years no one was circumcised in the wilderness. They were living without any intermixing with other nations. … As soon as the people crossed the river Jordan and the host poured out onto the territory of Judea in Palestine, he made provision by a necessary circumcision against the future error from miscegenation with the Gentiles. But the fact that the people are said to have been circumcised a second time by their leader Joshua signifies that circumcision had ceased in the wilderness, though practiced in Egypt for a good reason. Believers now are cleansed by our Lord Jesus Christ through a spiritual circumcision.
