Among the regulations of purity is reckoned the custom of circumcision, which was practised among the Israelites, and retained by the law. Yet the reason for this peculiar custom, which according to the regulations of the priests was performed on the eighth day after birth, the first day of the second week of life,[399] seems to lie in other motives rather than in the desire to remove a certain part of the male body which was regarded as unclean. We saw above that according to the old conception of the Israelites the firstborn must be ransomed from Jehovah, that the life of all boys, if it was to be secured, must be purchased from Jehovah (I. 414, 448). Hence, if we may follow the hint of an obscure narrative, it is not improbable that circumcision of the reproductive member was a vicarious blood-sacrifice for the life of the boy. When Moses returned from the land of Midian to Egypt--so we learn from the Ephraimitic text--"Jehovah met him in the inn, and sought to kill him. Then Zipporah took a sharp stone, and cut off the foreskin of her son, and cast it at his feet, and he departed from him."[400] To the Israelites circumcision was a symbol of their connection with the nation, of their covenant with Jehovah and selection by him. The most important part of the purity of the people of Jehovah was their maintenance of his worship, the strict severance of Israel from the religion of their neighbours and community with them. It was now seen what influence living and mingling with the Canaanites had exercised in the national worship, and it was perceived what an attraction the Syrian rites had presented for centuries to the nation, and what a power they still had upon them. Hence even Moses was said to have given the command to destroy the altars and images of the Canaanites, to drive out all the Canaanites, and make neither covenant nor marriage with them.[401] The law forbade sacrifices to Moloch under penalty of death; any one who did so was to be stoned. Those who made offerings to other gods than Jehovah were to be "accursed" (I. 499). Wizards were also to be stoned.[402] "Ye shall not round the corners of your heads, neither shalt thou mar the corners of thy beard. Ye shall not make any cuttings in your flesh for the dead, nor print any mark upon you. Do not prostitute thy daughter to cause her to play the harlot."[403] All these are commands directed against the manners, funeral customs, and religious worship of the Canaanites. Strangers were not to be received into the community and people of Israel; nor could Israelites contract marriage with women who were not Israelites; it is only the later law which allows women captured in war to be taken into the marriage bed.[404] These are the "misanthropical" laws of the Jews of which Tacitus speaks with such deep aversion.