[They] are handed down (v. 3 & 7) [as] circumcised by Joshua. But, first: how could Joshua alone be enough for circumcising so many — especially in so brief a time, as will appear below? Secondly: [was it] not [necessary] that the circumcisers be either priests or Levites? But Joshua was of the tribe of Ephraim (above, bk. 1, q. 1). Someone might answer [that] he undertook the office of circumciser itself by dispensation, because the Lord had expressly commanded [it]. But here [there] is no need of a dispensation. For not only the Priests and Levites performed this office — as, against Calvin and some [Priest-]authors, I said [in] Gen. 17. Then, whether he were present or absent (as indeed he was absent) — [as for] a dispensation, [I ask]: how could Joshua alone — although he had been more than hundred-handed [Briareus] — circumcise so vast a multitude of men, in so brief a time, in that manner?
(col. 514 — right column; printed “521”)
[It] is therefore to be said, first, [that] all these [were] circumcised by Joshua not as regards his [own] hand, but as regards [his] command, admonition, and exhortation. For thus also above (ch. 4 v. 9) the same Joshua “set up” the stones in the middle of the Jordan’s channel, and (v. 20) the others at Gilgal. And therefore that voice of the Lord to him (v. 2) — “Circumcise the sons of Israel a second time” — means “take care that they be circumcised; order, admonish, exhort.” And that he did (v. 3). [It] is to be said, secondly, [that] he [circumcised] some also with his own hand — such as his own household, and perhaps some chiefs of the other tribes. For if Abraham, having received the precept of circumcision divinely, immediately “took Ishmael his son, and all the home-born of his house, and all whom he had bought, all the males of all the men of his house, and circumcised the flesh of their foreskin at once on the same day, as God had commanded him” (Gen. 17 v. 23) — is Joshua to be thought slower and more hesitant in the same ceremony of religion? [It] is to be said, thirdly, [that] Caleb did likewise, as regards his own household too, and any others he could; and much more Eleazar the High Priest himself. [It] is to be said, fourthly, [that] circumcisers were all — as many as had of old been circumcised in Egypt [and] were still surviving — namely, all who were advanced beyond the 40th year up to the completed 60th; for example, those of 41, 42, 43 years and onward. And their number we conjectured above, by a certain analogy, to have been 200,576 of the warriors. Therefore if each of them circumcised two other warriors, the whole sum of the warriors then circumcised would be 401,154. But of those who had not yet completed the 20th year, and had not yet given [their] names into the census tables, let each of them [the circumcisers] circumcise still one more; and both the warriors, and those who were under the warriors’ age, would all have been circumcised. And the like reckoning [holds] in the Levites; nay, even in the Egyptians who followed the sons of Israel, as [was] said [at] Exod. 12. [It] is to be said, fifthly and lastly, [that] it could also happen that the women and mothers themselves circumcised their little ones. For what Sephora, Moses’s wife, did on the way (Exod. 4 v. 25), these too could do here. And perhaps, that some likeness of that deed might now be recalled, [there] is made mention of the stone knives, of which below. For such [a knife] Moses’s spouse once used, in the same place.