his loins, and let his mother
be glad in the fruit of her womb, as it is written: "Thy father and
mother shall rejoice, and they that begat thee shall be glad."' The
father of the child then says the following grace: 'Blessed art Thou, O
Lord our God, King of the Universe! who hath sanctified us with His
commandments, and commanded us to enter into the covenant of our holy
father, Abraham.' The congregation answer: 'As he hath entered into the
law, the canopy, and the good and virtuous deeds.'"[59]

CHAPTER XIII.

MEZIZAH, THE FOURTH OR OBJECTIONABLE ACT OF SUCTION.

Biblical and rabbinical traditions throw no light on the origin of the
details of the operation as now performed. That it was anciently
performed with a knife of stone is certain; an event common in its
general observance, and which seems to have pervaded all nations or
races, howsoever remote or scattered, that it has induced Tylor[60] to
ascribe the origin of the rite to the stone age. We are told that when
Moses was returning to the land of Egypt he had neglected circumcising
his son, and that because of that neglect he nearly lost his son's life;
his wife, Zipporah, the daughter of the Midian king and priest, Jethro,
seeing the danger and knowing its cause, took her little son Gershom and
circumcised him with a stone knife, and offered the foreskin to God as a
peace-offering. Just where the wine was first used we are not told.
Wine, however, was an emblem of thanksgiving, and, being one of the
fruits of the earth, was considered an acceptable offering to God. It
has since, in some form or other, either as wine or as the
representative of either divine or human blood, been used in both the
Catholic and Protestant Churches in their ceremonials or vicarious
sacrifices, or imitations of old customs. Circumcision was by many
connected with a blood sacrifice; it was so suggested by the words of
Zipporah at the circumcision of Gershom: "And Zipporah, his Midianitish
wife, took up a sharp stone and cut off the foreskin of her son, and
cast it at his feet and said, 'Surely a _Khathan_ of blood art thou to
me.'" Much speculation has followed the use of this word _Khathan_,
which, in the ordinary Arabian, may mean either husband or son-in-law;
it also means a newly-admitted member of a family; a similar word means
"to provide a wedding feast," and one other word from the same root and
branch means "to give or receive a daughter in marriage." In our own