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וירא אליו ה' באלוני ממרא, because this was where Avraham had circumcised himself at that time. His whole household had been circumcised with him at the time. This is where G’d manifested Himself as a sign that He stood by the covenant, similar to the verse at the beginning of Deuteronomy 29,9-11, commencing with the words אתם נצבים היום, and to Kings II 23,3 ויכרות לפני ה'. He appeared to Avraham seeing he was the individual most deserving to be the recipient of such a vision. We have a similar occurrence in Exodus 4,24 ויפגשהו ה', where G’d “met” with Moses without delivering an oral message. At that time G’d’s purpose was to ensure that Moses would circumcise his son, to maintain the covenant which was to be an eternal covenant with the descendants of Avraham as spelled out in Genesis 17,11-12. Perhaps this is the reason why a chair is prepared at the occasion of the circumcision (Pirkey de Rabbi Eliezer 29, as well as Zohar Bereshit 13,10) This chair alludes to the fact that hopefully, the presence of G’d will attend this marking of the sign of the covenant by a new member of the Jewish people.

וביום השמיני, and on the eighth day, etc. Why did the Torah have to instruct us to circumcise a male baby on the eighth day, something that has been legislated already in Genesis 17,12 prior to the birth of Isaac, even? If all the Torah wanted was to tell us that the rite of circumcision must be performed by day and not by night, or that the importance of circumcising the baby on the eighth day is so important that the Sabbath may be violated in order to fulfil this commandment on time (compare Shabbat 132), why did G'd not include this information in Genesis?

Perhaps the reason G'd did not mention all this to Abraham at the time was so that people should not think that only the patriarchs were allowed to violate the Sabbath in order to circumcise the baby on the eighth day, seeing they had not yet been commanded to observe the Sabbath as a day of rest and that therefore the observance of the Sabbath was not so important. However, the Israelites, who were warned in Exodus 31,14 not to violate the Sabbath on pain of execution, were not expected to circumcise their babies on the Sabbath. The Torah repeated the legislation here in order to include the detail that the Sabbath was not to take precedence over circumcision on the eighth day. While it is true that the Talmud in Chulin 101 states that the legislation about גיד הנשה was legislated at Mount Sinai, the Torah decided to record it in Genesis 32,33 to inform us of the reason for this legislation. Similar considerations may have motivated the Torah in recording the legislation about circumcision already in Genesis 17,12 though it was commanded to the Jewish people collectively at Mount Sinai. All of this still enables those who want to, to argue that there is reason to be more lenient about the date of the circumcision prior to the revelation at Mount Sinai than afterwards.

ונמלתם AND YE SHALL CIRCUMCISE — This word, in spite of the נ in it, is not Niphal but the same as ומלתם and the נ in it is an addition to the root, which only sometimes appears in it, as, for example, the נ of נושך and of ונמלתם ;(נושא is Kal like ונשאתם “and ye shall carry” (Genesis 45:19), but יִמּוֹל (Genesis 17:12 and Genesis 17:13) is a Niphal form — “shall be circumcised” — like יֵעָשֶׂה “it shall be done”, and יֵאָכֵל “it shall be eaten”.