OUCH! A SORE POINT

We can guess what these guys are doing and we can be sure that little baby is an 8 day old boy.
Let’s hope the mohel and his assistant washed their hands thoroughly, that his instruments are sterile for this brit milah and ….that he hasn’t got ‘the shakes’!

Here is what the Jewish Torah claims God said to Abraham:

"This is my covenant, which ye shall keep, between me and you and thy seed after thee; every man child among you shall be circumcised. And ye shall circumcise the flesh of your foreskin; and it shall be a token of the covenant betwixt me and you. And he that is eight days old shall be circumcised among you, every man child in your generations, he that is born in the house, or bought with money of any stranger…."                      Genesis 17

So why at eight days old??                                                        

Let’s give the cultural, ethical and religious arguments a miss and just look at the medical aspect…
Vitamin K was not identified until 1929 when Danish scientist Henrik Dam named it Koagulationsvitamin. Together with calcium, Vitamin K is used to convert the blood-clotting protein prothrombin to thrombin but the low level of Vitamin K at birth can lead to the rare ‘Haemorrhagic Disease of the Newborn’ (HDN) in 0.25% to 1.7% of births.

Prothrombin levels reach normal level in 5-7 days but then….           

increase on Day 8 to 110% of normal – the highest level that will ever be reached in the life of this child!                                       

(Just by the way, it is claimed that the dosage of Vitamin K now administered to newborns as a standard procedure is 20,000 times that required and has been implicated as a cause of child leukaemia.)       

Okay, we might think circumcision is a barbaric relic of superstition. Other nations like Egypt used this procedure as a rite of passage to puberty, adulthood or marriage BUT… a Jewish male is reminded several times each day that Israel is meant to be ‘a cut above the others’- even if it is a sore point!

Could there be a Creator God who might have had a clue or two about what He was doing?                               

 

Acknowledgements: 
mercola.com
lastrow.wordpress.com
apologeticspress.org
Photo credits: 
bethaderech.com 
blog.practicalethics.ox.ac.uk