Joshua 5:2-3: “At that time the LORD said to Joshua, “Make flint knives and circumcise the sons of Israel a second time.” (3) So Joshua made flint knives and circumcised the sons of Israel at Gibeath-haaraloth.”
Today, we will be looking at a rather cool foreshadow of the gospel, in a place that you would not expect it to be.
Now you would think that the circumcision of the Israelites at Gibeath-haaraloth wouldn’t really hold any significance for believers of today. But if you look a bit more closely at both the place and at what the action really meant for the Israelites, you will start to see how it points forward to Jesus. Let me show you how:
The Lord told Joshua to take the Israelites and circumcise all of the males, this was to symbolize God removing all of the reproach or shame of Egypt. This action took place on a hill know as Gibeath-haaraloth, which means the hill of foreskins. However, the name of this hill was eventually changed to Gilgal. Now this event, while it might seem rather gross to consider, it is still quite an important event for the Israelites. The Lord gave them a physical example of what He had done for them, and gave them a reminder that their shame had been rolled away and left behind. And while this is great for them, it does not seem to hold any importance for modern believers. So the question we could ask is: “What does this mean for me?” And the answer to that question is: This event serves as a reminder to us; a reminder to look to the one who removed our shame on a hill, and rolled it away from us to be lost forever. I am speaking, of course, of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
Just as the Israelites had their shame rolled away by the Lord at Gilgal, all believers in the Lord have had their shame rolled away by Jesus as He hung on the cross, which was also on a hill; Golgotha. And that is not all, believers have not only been delivered of our shame, but also our sin and guilt. We have also had the wrath of God removed from us, as well as the punishment of sin.
Psalms 103:12: “as far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us.”
2nd Corinthians 5:17: “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.”
1st John 1:9: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
So we have seen one way that Gilgal and Golgotha are linked, but there is another thing that links the two hills: The root of their names. Here is a quote from Pisteos International Daily, who, I think, explains this rather well:
“Another word that is closely related to Gilgal is “Golgotha.” This is because of a shared root word. Golgotha, of course, was the place where Jesus was crucified. In Aramaic, the word is “Gulgoltha,” which becomes “Golgotha” in Greek. The sharing of the root word “galal” occurs because of the occurrence of galal in the Hebrew word for “skull,” which is “gulgoluth.” The “galal” in “gulgoluth,” presumably, is connected to the roundness of the human skull. “
So we can see that even in their names those two hills are connected, however, one gives us only a shadow of the things that would happen on the other. And the other served as the ground where the most important event that ever happened to the human race took place; the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
If you are a believer in the Lord, I hope that this post was a encouraging reminder of your own rolling away at Calvary. And I encourage you to remind believers around you of their own removal of shame at the cross.
And if you are not a believer in the Lord I hope that you will be called to the Lord soon, so that you, too, might have all of your sin, shame, guilt, and even the wrath of God almighty removed from you. So that you might be truly free, forgiven, and burdenless.
Heavenly Father, I thank You for giving us Your Son so that we might be delivered from our own sin and shame. And Jesus, I thank You for bearing such great suffering for us, so that we might be saved from destruction and forgiven of all of our sin. And Holy Spirit, I ask You to please keep us from forgetting that we have been forgiven and given great blessings through the death and resurrection of Jesus, in Jesus’ name, amen.
Standing on the Word of God 