Acts Chapter 7

From The Open Bible Project

7:1 The high priest said, "Are these things so?"

• (1) Steven is allowed to plead his cause, but for this reason and purpose, that under a disguise and pretence of the Law he might be condemned.

7:2 He said, "Brothers and fathers, listen. The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham, when he was in Mesopotamia, before he lived in Haran,

• (2) Steven witnesses to the Jews that he acknowledges the true fathers, and the only true God, and more than this shows this that these are more ancient than the temple and all the temple service appointed by the Law, and therefore they ought to lay another foundation of true religion, that is to say, the free covenant that God made with the fathers.
• (a) The mighty God full of glory and majesty.
• (b) When he says afterwards in (Acts 7:4) that Abraham came out of Chaldea, it is evident that Mesopotamia contained Chaldea which was near to it, and bordered upon it; and so writes Plinius, book 6, chap. 27.

7:3 and said to him, 'Get out of your land, and from your relatives, and come into a land which I will show you.'[17]

7:4 Then he came out of the land of the Chaldaeans, and lived in Haran. From there, when his father was dead, God moved him into this land, where you are now living.

7:5 He gave him no inheritance in it, no, not so much as to set his foot on. He promised that he would give it to him for a possession, and to his seed after him, when he still had no child.

• (c) Not enough ground to even set his foot upon.
• (d) The promise of the possession was certain, and belonged to Abraham, though it was his posterity that enjoyed it a great while after his death: and this is the figure of speech synecdoche.

7:6 God spoke in this way: that his seed would live as aliens in a strange land, and that they would be enslaved and mistreated for four hundred years.

• (e) Four hundred years are counted from the beginning of Abraham’s progeny, which was at the birth of Isaac: and four hundred and thirty years which are spoken of by Paul in (Galatians 3:17), from the time that Abraham and his father departed together out of Ur of the Chaldeans.

7:7 'I will judge the nation to which they will be in bondage,' said God, 'and after that will they come out, and serve me in this place.'[18]

7:8 He gave him the covenant of circumcision. So Abraham became the father of Isaac, and circumcised him the eighth day. Isaac became the father of Jacob, and Jacob became the father of the twelve patriarchs.

7:9 "The patriarchs, moved with jealousy against Joseph, sold him into Egypt. God was with him,

• (3) Steven diligently recounts the horrible misdeeds of some of the fathers, to teach the Jews that they ought not rashly to rest in the authority or examples of the fathers.
• (f) By these words are meant the peculiar favour that God shows men: for he seems to be away from those whom he does not help: and on the other hand, he is with those whom he delivers out of troubles, no matter how great the troubles may be.

7:10 and delivered him out of all his afflictions, and gave him favor and wisdom before Pharaoh, king of Egypt. He made him governor over Egypt and all his house.

• (g) Gave him favour in Pharaoh’s sight because of his wisdom.

7:11 Now a famine came over all the land of Egypt and Canaan, and great affliction. Our fathers found no food.

7:12 But when Jacob heard that there was grain in Egypt, he sent out our fathers the first time.

7:13 On the second time Joseph was made known to his brothers, and Joseph's race was revealed to Pharaoh.

7:14 Joseph sent, and summoned Jacob, his father, and all his relatives, seventy-five souls.

7:15 Jacob went down into Egypt, and he died, himself and our fathers,

7:16 and they were brought back to Shechem, and laid in the tomb that Abraham bought for a price in silver from the children of Hamor of Shechem.

• (h) The patriarchs who were the sons of Jacob, though only Joseph is mentioned; (Joshua 24:32).

7:17 "But as the time of the promise came close which God had sworn to Abraham, the people grew and multiplied in Egypt,

7:18 until there arose a different king, who didn't know Joseph.

7:19 The same took advantage of our race, and mistreated our fathers, and forced them to throw out their babies, so that they wouldn't stay alive.

• (i) He devised a subtle plan against our stock, in that he commanded all the males to be cast out.

7:20 At that time Moses was born, and was exceedingly handsome. He was nourished three months in his father's house.

• (k) This child was born through God’s merciful goodness and favour, to be of a lovely and fair countenance.

7:21 When he was thrown out, Pharaoh's daughter took him up, and reared him as her own son.

7:22 Moses was instructed in all the wisdom of the Egyptians. He was mighty in his words and works.

7:23 But when he was forty years old, it came into his heart to visit his [19] brothers [See Acts Footnotes 19], the children of Israel.

7:24 Seeing one of them suffer wrong, he defended him, and avenged him who was oppressed, striking the Egyptian.

7:25 He supposed that his brothers understood that God, by his hand, was giving them deliverance; but they didn't understand.

7:26 "The day following, he appeared to them as they fought, and urged them to be at peace again, saying, 'Sirs, you are brothers. Why do you wrong one another?'

7:27 But he who did his neighbor wrong pushed him away, saying, 'Who made you a ruler and a judge over us?

7:28 Do you want to kill me, as you killed the Egyptian yesterday?'[20]

7:29 Moses fled at this saying, and became a stranger in the land of Midian, where he became the father of two sons.

7:30 "When forty years were fulfilled, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in the wilderness of Mount Sinai, in a flame of fire in a bush.

• (l) Now, he calls the Son of God an angel, for he is the angel of great counsel, and therefore immediately after he describes him as saying to Moses, "I am the God of thy fathers, etc."

7:31 When Moses saw it, he wondered at the sight. As he came close to see, a voice of the Lord came to him,

7:32 'I am the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.'[21] Moses trembled, and dared not look.

7:33 The Lord said to him, 'Take your sandals off of your feet, for the place where you stand is holy ground.

7:34 I have surely seen the affliction of my people that is in Egypt, and have heard their groaning. I have come down to deliver them. Now come, I will send you into Egypt.'[22]

7:35 "This Moses, whom they refused, saying, 'Who made you a ruler and a judge?'--God has sent him as both a ruler and a deliverer by the hand of the angel who appeared to him in the bush.

• (m) By the power.

7:36 This man led them out, having worked wonders and signs in Egypt, in the Red Sea, and in the wilderness for forty years.

7:37 This is that Moses, who said to the children of Israel, 'The Lord our God will raise up a prophet for you from among your brothers, like me.[23]'[24]

• (4) He acknowledges Moses as the Lawgiver, but in such a way that he proves by his own witness that the Law had respect to a more perfect thing, that is to say, to the prophetical office which accompanied Christ, the head of all Prophets.

7:38 This is he who was in the assembly in the wilderness with the angel that spoke to him on Mount Sinai, and with our fathers, who received living oracles to give to us,

7:39 to whom our fathers wouldn't be obedient, but rejected him, and turned back in their hearts to Egypt,

7:40 saying to Aaron, 'Make us gods that will go before us, for as for this Moses, who led us out of the land of Egypt, we don't know what has become of him.'[25]

7:41 They made a calf in those days, and brought a sacrifice to the idol, and rejoiced in the works of their hands.

• (n) This was the superstition of the Egyptian’s idolatry: for they worshipped Apis, a strange and marvellous looking calf, and made beautiful images of cows.

7:42 But God turned, and gave them up to serve the [26] army of the sky, [See Acts Footnotes 26] as it is written in the book of the prophets, 'Did you offer to me slain animals and sacrifices forty years in the wilderness, O house of Israel?

• (o) Being destitute and void of his Spirit, he gave them up to Satan, and wicked lusts, to worship stars.
• (p) By "the host of heaven" here he does not mean the angels, but the moon, and sun, and other stars.

7:43 You took up the tabernacle of Moloch, the star of your god Rephan, the figures which you made to worship. I will carry you away[27] beyond Babylon.'

• (q) You took it upon your shoulders and carried it.

7:44 "Our fathers had the tabernacle of the testimony in the wilderness, even as he who spoke to Moses commanded him to make it according to the pattern that he had seen;

• (5) Moses indeed erected a tabernacle, but that was to call them back to the one whom he had seen on the mountain.
• (r) That is, of the covenant.

7:45 which also our fathers, in their turn, brought in with Joshua when they entered into the possession of the nations, whom God drove out before the face of our fathers, to the days of David,

• (s) Delivered from hand to hand.
• (t) This is said using the figure of speech metonymy, and refers to the countries which the Gentiles possessed.
• (u) God drove them out that they should yield up the possession of those countries to our fathers when they entered into the land.

7:46 who found favor in the sight of God, and asked to find a habitation for the God of Jacob.

7:47 But Solomon built him a house.

• (6) Solomon built a temple according to God’s commandment, but not under any condition that the majesty of God should be enclosed within it.

7:48 However, the Most High doesn't dwell in temples made with hands, as the prophet says,

7:49 'heaven is my throne, and the earth a footstool for my feet. What kind of house will you build me?' says the Lord; 'or what is the place of my rest?

7:50 Didn't my hand make all these things?'[28]

7:51 "You stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, you always resist the Holy Spirit! As your fathers did, so you do.

• (7) Steven, moved with the zeal of God, at length judges his own judges.
• (x) They are of uncircumcised hearts who still lie drowned in the sins of nature, and are stuck fast in them: for otherwise all the Jews were circumcised with regard to the flesh, and therefore there are two kinds of circumcision; (Romans 2:28-29).

7:52 Which of the prophets didn't your fathers persecute? They killed those who foretold the coming of the Righteous One, of whom you have now become betrayers and murderers.

7:53 You received the law as it was ordained by angels, and didn't keep it!"

• (y) By the ministry of angels.

7:54 Now when they heard these things, they were cut to the heart, and they gnashed at him with their teeth.

• (8) The more Satan is pressed, the more he breaks out into an open rage.

7:55 But he, being full of the Holy Spirit, looked up steadfastly into heaven, and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing on the right hand of God,

• (9) The nearer that martyrs approach to death, the nearer that they rise up, even into heaven, as they behold Christ.
• (z) Ready to affirm him in the confession of the truth, and to receive him unto himself.

7:56 and said, "Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God!"

7:57 But they cried out with a loud voice, and stopped their ears, and rushed at him with one accord.

• (10) The zeal of hypocrites and superstitious people eventually breaks out into a most open madness.
• (a) This was done in a rage and fury, for at that time the Jews could put no man to death by law, as they confessed before Pilate saying that it was no lawful for them to put any man to death, and therefore it is reported by Josephus that Ananus, a Sadducee, slew James the brother of the Lord, and for so doing was accused before Albinus, the president of the country; lib. 20.

7:58 They threw him out of the city, and stoned him. The witnesses placed their garments at the feet of a young man named Saul.

• (b) It was appointed by the Law that the witnesses should cast the first stones; (Deuteronomy 17:7).

7:59 They stoned Stephen as he called out, saying, "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit!"

7:60 He kneeled down, and cried with a loud voice, "Lord, don't hold this sin against them!" When he had said this, he fell asleep.

• (11) Faith and charity never forsake the true servants of God, even to the last breath.
• (c) The word which he uses here refers to a type of imputing or laying to one’s charge that remains firm and steady forever, never to be remitted.
• (d) See (1 Thessalonians 4:13).