4.-Gilgal

"And the LORD said unto Joshua, This day have I rolled away the reproach of Egypt from off you. Wherefore the name of the place is called Gilgal unto this day."-Josh. 5:9.
Circumcision began not with Moses, but with the fathers. ‘Twas their mark in their pilgrim course, of separation unto God and of a blessing from Him; a blessing, however, according to promise.
Their descendants observed it while in Egypt; but it seemed to have lost its tone and power on their souls, for they all that came out of Egypt were circumcised, yet they perished in the wilderness, and they neglected to circumcise their children, so verse 9 is introduced.
All the males took upon themselves the marks of separation unto the Lord, each one separately and as an individual. They thus owned their connection with the whole line that had preceded them, up to the fathers. In an especial way they admitted the evil of the Egyptian generations, and of their own wilderness-wanderings, but declared thus that though Satan might have been acting against, and man might have forgotten Jehovah as the God of holiness, they did not; but amid all the evil before and around them, they confessed to it; and confessed too, to all their own disorderliness; but they would give to the Lord honor amid all the failure, commit them- selves individually to Him, and receive His mark upon them. And thus the marks of their being one body together were renewed. For the question here, was not that which came out afterward, viz., the power to trace the pedigree (Ezra 2:59-63), but whether the people carried the marks of separation to God upon the ground of a hope according to promise given to the fathers.
The Lord was at Gilgal before they were; it was He who ordained Gilgal.
Who gets to Gilgal now? If any has, he has found God there with the sharp knives, that self may be mutilated, if so be -that I may be connected with God’s house, as set up at Pentecost, and may know how to walk as a pilgrim-conqueror before the Lord until He come.
Later in Israel’s history, the "Angel of the LORD came up from Gilgal to Bochim" (Judg. 2:1-5). To humble and break down the people came He thither; and to recall-to them their misdeeds, and to warn them of the consequences. Yet was there a door of hope for the weepers. And he who goes to Bochim now cannot forget the coming up out of Egypt (ver. 1), or the ground of the LORD’S complaint against them which revived the past and their fellowship with it.