He that is wounded in the stones, or hath his privy member cut off, shall not enter into the congregation of the LORD.
He that is wounded ... shall not enter into the congregation of the Lord. To "enter into the congregation of the Lord" means either admission to public honours and offices in the Church and State of Israel, or, in the case of foreigners, incorporation with that nation by circumcision or by marriage. The rule was, that strangers and foreigners, for fear of friendship or marriage connections with them leading the people into idolatry, were not admissible until their conversion to the Jewish faith.
But this passage describes certain limitations of the general rule. The following parties were excluded from the full rights and privileges of citizenship:
1st. Eunuchs. It was a very ancient practice for the priests of many pagan deities, particularly those of the Syrian goddess, to be eunuchs, and for parents in the East, by various arts, to mutilate their children, with a view of training them for service in the houses of the great. Since no animal but one entirely free from defect or blemish was fit for sacrifice, so no individual was qualified for associating with the people of God in whom the divine image was willfully mutilated. And hence, this law was the means of interdicting among the Jews that practice of eunuchism, of old so extensively prevalent in the East.
2nd. Bastards, mamzeer (H4464) - a word of uncertain etymology [Gesenius derives it from the root maazar, to be corrupt], and found only in one other passage (Zechariah 9:6) - is supposed by some to denote a stranger [as composed, according to Lee, of min (H4480), also `am (H5971), people, and zaar (H2114), a foreigner; one from a foreign nation. The Septuagint has in this passage: ek pornees; Vulgate, de scorto natus-one born of fornication; but in that of Zechariah referred to, the Greek version has: allogenees-a stranger or foreigner, one of a different nation, which, as being pagan, is frequently called by the Hebrew bards a harlot (Isaiah 23:17-18).] It is evident that it cannot mean one born of parents before being united in lawful wedlock, for such a case is remedied by the statute recorded, Deuteronomy 22:29; and therefore, in the opinion of Jewish writers generally, it must denote one whose father, from the mother's loose conduct, was unknown.
A stigma being attached to a person of such a disreputable origin, Selden, following the Jewish rabbis, thinks that this law was designed solely to prohibit "a bastard" from forming a matrimonial connection with a Hebrew woman; for it would seem an act of the greatest cruelty to prevent an individual who professed his faith in the Jewish religion from 'entering into the congregation of the Lord.'
The other signification of the word, namely, a stranger or foreigner, is preferred by many eminent scholars, not only because it suits both the passages in which the term occurs, but because, if that interpretation be rejected, there is really no express rule prescribed by Moses respecting the admission of foreigners to the community of Israel; and by this restrictive law they were declared generally excluded, as incapable, from the special tenor of the divine covenant, of fully participating, by naturalization, in the privileges of Israelites.