The Circumcised Circumcise — Covenant as Chain Mitzvah

Midrash Aggadah Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Genesis 17:13 View source

Curated by The Jewish Mythology Team · Published January 12, 2025

Genesis 17:13 in Targum Pseudo-Jonathan turns a one-way sacrament into a chain. He who is circumcised shall circumcise him — the one already inside the covenant brings the next one in. The home-born, the purchased, the foreign servant: all of them, once they have received the mark, can pass it on.

And this, says the Targum, shall be My covenant in your flesh, for a covenant for ever.

The phrasing matters. Jewish covenant is not a one-way broadcast from heaven. It is a relay. Abraham is circumcised. He then circumcises his household (Genesis 17:23). Each man circumcised becomes an authorized agent of the next circumcision. The sign is not the property of priests. It is not locked inside one family line. It moves along the household like a lit candle being passed hand to hand.

The Maggid hears, in this one verse, a whole philosophy of Jewish life. Rituals are designed to reproduce. A mitzvah received is a mitzvah that should, in time, be performed by the receiver for someone else. That is what in your flesh means — the covenant lives in bodies, not in archives. As long as human beings keep cutting the sign into other human beings, generation after generation, the covenant stays forever in exactly the way the Targum says (Genesis 17:13): not because paper preserves it, but because people keep doing it.

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