Genesis 17:14 - Ellicott's Commentary On The Whole Bible

Shall be cut off from his people. — Jewish commentators generally consider that this penalty consisted in the offender being left to the direct interposition of God, who would punish him with childlessness and premature death (Talmud: Tract Yebam, 55). Most Christian commentators suppose that the offender was to be put to death by the civil magistrate; but this view is untenable. For a distinction is constantly drawn between the penalty of death, and the being “cut off from among the people,” as, for instance, in Leviticus 20. So, too, the killing of a clean beast anywhere, except at the door of the tabernacle (Leviticus 17:4), and the eating of blood (Leviticus 17:9; Leviticus 17:14), are to be thus dealt with, while blasphemy and murder are to be punished with death (Leviticus 24:16-17). Now it became very common to kill clean beasts in all parts of the land, and the eating of blood, though regarded with horror (1 Samuel 14:32-34), apparently had no penalty attached to it. The Jewish commentators seem to err only in being too special, and in defining the method in which God would punish. The punishment really seems to have been that of excommunication or outlawry, to which other penalties might have been attached by custom: but the main point was that one uncircumcised (as subsequently one who violated the principles of the Mosaic law) forfeited his privileges as a member of the Jewish nation, could claim no protection from the elders for life and property, and could not take his place at the gate of the city.