This is the cause why Joshua did circumcise: all the people who came forth out of Egypt, who were males, even all the men of war, died in the wilderness by the way, after they came forth out of Egypt.
The Israelites seem to have regarded the rolling away of the foreskins in the circumcision operation as having a double symbolic meaning. It represented God’s removal of their reproach as well as their renunciation of the flesh (cf. Genesis 17).