Joshua 5:5 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

The people born in the wilderness they had not circumcised What occasioned this omission is not said, nor is it easy to determine whether it arose from negligence, or from God's dispensing, for a time, with his ordinance, on account of the unsettledness of their state, and their frequent removes while they were in the wilderness, it being necessary for children, after they were circumcised, and thereby made sore, to rest some time. This latter reason has generally been acquiesced in by commentators. But some have not judged it satisfactory, because sometimes the Israelites continued a year in a place, (Numbers 9:22,) if not much longer; and in their removes, their little children, though sore, might have been kept so warm, and carried so easy, as to receive no damage; and might certainly have been much better accommodated than the mothers in travail, or in lying-in. They have therefore thought that God's not expressly and particularly enjoining them (for it does not appear that he did so enjoin them) to circumcise their children while they were in the wilderness, was a continued token of his displeasure against them for their unbelief and murmuring, and a token that they should never have the benefit of that promise of Canaan, whereof circumcision was the seal, Genesis 17:8. But whatsoever the reason was, it seems this great ordinance was intermitted in Israel for almost forty years together; a plain indication that it was not of absolute necessity to men's eternal salvation, nor to be of perpetual obligation, but should, in the fulness of time, be abolished, as now it was for a long time suspended.