“The passage in Jeremiah dealing with circumcision (9:24-25) has puzzled students of the book for a long time” (Richard C. For all these nations are uncircumcised, but all the House of Israel are uncircumcised of heart.” (Jeremiah 9:24-25, New Jewish Publication Society version) “Lo, days are coming-declares the Lord-when I will take note of everyone circumcised in the foreskin: of Egypt, Judah, Edom, the Ammonites, Moab, and all the desert dwellers who have the hair of their temples clipped.
But this is an odd translation of the preposition be. Most modern translation read differently, and see 25 and 26 as indicating that this list of peoples are all physically circumcised. This is based on a translation of kol mul be-orlah as “circumcised with the uncircumsed.” The implication then is that the surrounding nations are uncircumcised. If you are reading along in a KJV, Jeremiah 9:25-26 indicates that Egypt, Edom,, the Ammonites, and Moab did not practice circumcision.
Jeremiah complains that people are physically circumcised but not circumcised “in their heart.”
Moving further back, Jeremiah provides some evidence that circumcision was not a uniquely Jewish practice in his time (Jeremiah dates to about 587, the time of the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians). But the Greeks are not very relevant to the history of the Jews before about 333 BCE. It is well known that the Greeks did not practice circumcision, and in the conflict over how far Jews should Hellenize, circumcision featured prominently because it was important to Jews but strange to Greeks.