Bible Studies: Essays on Phallic Worship and Other Curious Rites and Customs

Adam Clarke says the meaning is that the son of Moses had not been circumcised, and therefore Jehovah was about to have slain the child because not in covenant with him by circumcision, and thus he intended [after his usual brutal fashion] to punish the disobedience of the father by the death of the son. Zip-porah getting acquainted with the nature of the case, and the danger to which her firstborn was exposed, took a sharp stone and cut off the foreskin of her son. By this act the displeasure of the Lord was turned aside, and Zipporah considered herself as now allied to God because of this circumcision. Old Adam tries to gloss over the attempted assassination of Moses by pretending it was only a child's life that was in danger. But we beg the reader to notice that no child is mentioned, but only a son whose age is unspecified. Dr. Clarke can hardly have read the treatise of John Frischl, De Circumcisione Zipporo, or he would surely have admitted that the person menaced with death was Moses, and not his son.

Other commentators say that Zipporah did not like the snipping business (although she seems to have understood it at once), and therefore addressed her husband opprobriously. Circumcision, we may remark, was anciently performed with stone. The Septuagint version records how the flints with which Joshua circumcised the people at Gilgal were buried in his grave.

A nice specimen of the modern Christian method of semi-rationalising may be found in Dr. Smith's Bible Dictionary, to which the clergy usually turn for help in regard to any difficulties in connection with the sacred fetish they call the word of God. Smith says:

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1

The Contemporary Review for June 1888, says (p. 804) "when Lord Dalhousie passed an Act intended to repress obscenity (in India), a special clause in it exempted all temples and religious emblems from its operation."

2

See Gougenot des Mousseaux's curious work Dieu et les Dieux, Paris, 1854. When the Luxor monument was erected in Rome, Pope Sixtus V. deliberately exorcised the devils out of possession of it.

3

"Apology for Smectymnus," Works, p.84.

4

So Baaljadah [1 Chron. xiv. 7] is Eliada [2 Sam. v. 161.] In 1 Chron. xii. 6, we have the curious combination, Baaljah, i.e. Baal is Jah, as the name of one of David's heroes.

5

The "Baal" was afterwards taken out of all such names of places, and instead of Baal Peor, Baal Meon, Baal Tamar, Baal Shalisha, etc., we find Beth Peor, Beth Meon, Beth Tamar, etc.

6

Verse vii. says, "he brake down the houses of the sodomites that were by the house of the Lord, where the women wove hangings for the grove." A reference to the Revised Version shows that it was "in the house of the Lord, where the women wove hangings [or tents] for the Asherah." See also Ezek. xvi. 16.

7

Asher was the tutelary god of Assyria. His emblem was the winged circle.

8

Symposiacs, bk. iv., queat. 6, p. 310, vol. iii., Plutarch's Morals, 1870.

9

Leviticus, p. 364.

10

That even more shameful practices were once common is evident from the narratives in Genesis xix. and Judges xix.

11

Religion of Israel chap. ix., p. 71.

12

Larousse, in his Grande Dictionnaire Universelle, says: "Le phallos hébraique fut pedant neuf cent ans le rival souvent victorieux de Jéhovah."

13

Encyclopaedia Britannica, article "Circumcision."

14

What Tacitus says is, "They do not eat with strangers or make marriages with them, and this nation, otherwise most prone to debauchery, abstains from all strange women. They have introduced circumcision in order to distinguish themselves thereby."