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God makes a covenant with Abraham and the sign of that solemn agreement is nothing less than the cutting off and removal of a piece of flesh from an intimate place. More details is added here in Verse 12.

“For the generations to come every male among you who is eight days old must be circumcised, including those born in your household or bought with money from a foreigner—those who are not your offspring”.

(Gen 17: 12)

Why 8 days, what's the significance of that. This is one of those fascinating things in the Bible that you can miss very easily. Let me explain to you what happens to a baby on day 8.  I’ll read what one Christian Doctor I read, said about this. Dr. A J Quick, who served for years as the head of the Department of Biochemistry at Marquette University in Wisconsin, specialized in blood research, said this. 

It is really intriguing designating the 8th day after birth because it is one of the most remarkable specifications in the Bible from a medical point of view. On the 8th day at birth of baby has nutrients antibodies another substance from his mother’s blood including her blood clotting factors which is dependent on vitamin K for its production. Vitamin K is produced by intestinal bacteria which is not present in a newborn baby. By the 3rd day it is only 30% of normal. Therefore, circumcision before the 3rd day would have resulted in devastating hemorrhage. After 3 days the internal bacteria finally start their task of manufacturing vitamin K and the level of clotting factor subsequently begins to climb. On the 8th day it actually overshoots the normal before leveling off at the normal level around day ten. Remaining there for the rest of a person's natural healthy life.

Apparently prior to 1953 Pediatric textbook guidelines in the U.S. recommended that the best day for circumcision or any minor surgical procedure of newborns were routinely delayed until the child was 8 days old. It was only later with the development of clotting agents in the 1950’s were surgeries able to be carried out earlier. Isn’t that fascinating. Let’s pick up story 

“Whether born in your household or bought with your money, they must be circumcised. My covenant in your flesh is to be an everlasting covenant”.  Any uncircumcised male, who has not been circumcised in the flesh, will be cut off from his people; he has broken my covenant.”

(Gen 17: 13-14)

Let me make a couple of observations. There is a play on words going on here in the original language of the text. Apparently, it is saying something like “cut off, or be cut off”. God says remove the foreskin and if you don't you are going to be cut off from him. 

When you set a goal for yourself in your life it's like setting a mark upon your life, and when you achieve that goal then that’s the point when you should regroup and reorient yourself once again. That's also a good time to mark that point in some way. Because as you move through your life you should shed that which is no longer necessary because otherwise it holds you back or even drags you down. If you don't draw a line under things, you never dispense with your excess baggage. If you don’t mark the past, before you move on, then the stress of all that undone business and all those unmade decisions turns into a kind of miry clay that can bog you down. Leaving you stuck, and more importantly, chronically unprepared to move forward. You will notice as we press on through these stories in Genesis they will be punctuated with pauses where breaks are taken and sacrifices are made. I think it is necessary in some sense to stay light on your feet and to regularly renew your commitment to the Lord.

Maybe that’s what you need to do in your life, right now. Pause for a moment and give thanks for where you have got to and remind yourself that you have let go of and stop focusing on some of those things you needed to put behind you. I believe that this is what the sacrificial pauses in the Abrahamic stories tells us to do. So, God has spoken to Abraham, but next he will speak to Sarah, and we will find out what He to her says next time.