Faith #54
54. We can see from the following passages that circumcision represented purification from evils that are caused by strictly earthly love:
Circumcise your heart and take away the foreskin of your heart, so that my wrath will not break forth because of the ill will of your deeds. (Jeremiah 4:4)
Circumcise the foreskin of your heart and no longer stiffen your neck. (Deuteronomy 10:16)
To circumcise the heart or the foreskin of the heart is to purify ourselves from evils.
Conversely, then, being uncircumcised or having a foreskin refers to people who have not been purified from evils caused by strictly earthly love and who are therefore not devoted to caring, and since having a foreskin means being unclean at heart, it says that no one who is uncircumcised at heart or uncircumcised in the flesh is to enter the sanctuary (Ezekiel 44:9); that no uncircumcised person is to eat the Passover meal (Exodus 12:48); and that the uncircumcised are damned (Ezekiel 28:10; 31:18; 32:19).
Ezekiel 31:18
18
To whom are you thus like in glory and in greatness among the trees of Eden? yet you will be brought down with the trees of Eden to the lower parts of the earth: you shall lie in the midst of the uncircumcised, with those who are slain by the sword. This is Pharaoh and all his multitude, says the Lord Yahweh.
