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Acts 7:1-60 Bible in Basic English (BBE)

1 Then the high priest said, Are these things true?

2 And he said, My brothers and fathers, give hearing. The God of glory came to our father Abraham, when he was in Mesopotamia, before he was living in Haran,

3 And said to him, Go out of your land, and away from your family, and come into the land to which I will be your guide.

4 Then he came out of the land of the Chaldaeans, and went into Haran; and from there, when his father was dead, he was guided by God into this land, where you are living now:

5 And God gave him no heritage in it, not even enough to put his foot on: but he gave him an undertaking that he would give it to him and to his children after him, though he had no child at that time.

6 And God said that his seed would be living in a strange land, and that they would make them servants, and be cruel to them for four hundred years.

7 And I will be the judge, said God, of that nation which made them servants: and after that, they will come out and give me worship in this place.

8 And he made with him the agreement of which circumcision was the sign. And so Abraham had a son, Isaac, and gave him circumcision on the eighth day; and Isaac had a son, Jacob, and Jacob was the father of the twelve heads of the families of Israel.

9 And the brothers, moved with envy against Joseph, gave him to the Egyptians for money: but God was with him,

10 And made him free from all his troubles, and gave him wisdom and the approval of Pharaoh, king of Egypt, who made him ruler over Egypt and all his house.

11 Now there was no food to be had in all Egypt and Canaan, and there was great trouble: and our fathers were not able to get food.

12 But Jacob, hearing that there was grain in Egypt, sent out our fathers the first time.

13 And the second time his brothers had a meeting with Joseph, and Pharaoh had knowledge of Joseph's family.

14 Then Joseph sent for Jacob his father and all his family, seventy-five persons.

15 And Jacob went down to Egypt, and came to his end there, and so did our fathers;

16 And they were taken over to Shechem, and put to rest in the place which Abraham got for a price in silver from the sons of Hamor in Shechem.

17 But when the time was near for putting into effect the undertaking which God had given to Abraham, the people were increasing in Egypt,

18 Till another king came to power, who had no knowledge of Joseph.

19 He, having evil designs against our nation, was cruel to our fathers, and they were forced to put out their young children, so that they might not go on living.

20 At which time Moses came to birth, and he was very beautiful; and he was kept for three months in his father's house:

21 And when he was put out, Pharaoh's daughter took him and kept him as her son.

22 And Moses was trained in all the wisdom of Egypt, and was great in his words and works.

23 But when he was almost forty years old, it came into his heart to go and see his brothers, the children of Israel.

24 And seeing one of them being attacked, he went to his help and gave the Egyptian a death-blow:

25 And he was hoping that his brothers would see that God had sent him to be their saviour; but they did not see.

26 And the day after, he came to them, while they were having a fight, and would have made peace between them, saying, Sirs, you are brothers; why do you do wrong to one another?

27 But the man who was doing wrong to his neighbour, pushing him away, said, Who made you a ruler and a judge over us?

28 Will you put me to death as you did the Egyptian yesterday?

29 And at these words, Moses went in flight to the land of Midian, and was living there for a time, and had two sons.

30 At the end of forty years, an angel came to him in the waste land of Sinai, in the flame of a burning thorn-tree.

31 And Moses, seeing it, was full of wonder, and when he came up to have a nearer view of it, the voice of the Lord came to him, saying,

32 I am the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham and of Isaac and of Jacob. And Moses, shaking with fear, kept his eyes from looking at it.

33 And the Lord said, Take off the shoes from your feet, for the place where you are is holy.

34 Truly, I have seen the sorrows of my people in Egypt, and their cries have come to my ears, and I have come down to make them free: and now, come, I will send you to Egypt.

35 This Moses, whom they would not have, saying, Who made you a ruler and a judge? him God sent to be a ruler and a saviour, by the hand of the angel whom he saw in the thorn-tree.

36 This man took them out, having done wonders and signs in Egypt and in the Red Sea and in the waste land, for forty years.

37 This is the same Moses, who said to the children of Israel, God will give you a prophet from among your brothers, like me.

38 This is the man who was in the church in the waste land with the angel who was talking to him in Sinai, and with our fathers; and to him were given the living words of God, so that he might give them to you.

39 By whom our fathers would not be controlled; but they put him on one side, turning back in their hearts to Egypt,

40 And saying to Aaron, Make us gods to go before us: as for this Moses, who took us out of the land of Egypt, we have no idea what has become of him.

41 And they made the image of a young ox in those days, and made an offering to it, and had joy in the work of their hands.

42 But God was turned from them and let them give worship to the stars of heaven, as it says in the book of the prophets, Did you make offerings to me of sheep and oxen for forty years in the waste land, O house of Israel?

43 And you took up the tent of Moloch and the star of the god Rephan, images which you made to give worship to them: and I will take you away, farther than Babylon.

44 Our fathers had the Tent of witness in the waste land, as God gave orders to Moses to make it after the design which he had seen.

45 Which our fathers, in their turn, took with them when, with Joshua, they came into the heritage of the nations whom God was driving out before the face of our fathers, till the time of David,

46 Who was pleasing to God; and he had a desire to make a holy tent for the God of Jacob.

47 But Solomon was the builder of his house.

48 But still, the Most High has not his resting-place in houses made with hands, as the prophet says,

49 Heaven is the seat of my power, and earth is a resting-place for my feet: what sort of house will you make for me, says the Lord, or what is my place of rest?

50 Did not my hand make all these things?

51 You whose hearts are hard and whose ears are shut to me; you are ever working against the Holy Spirit; as your fathers did, so do you.

52 Which of the prophets was not cruelly attacked by your fathers? and they put to death those who gave them the news of the coming of the Upright One; whom you have now given up and put to death;

53 You, to whom the law was given as it was ordered by angels, and who have not kept it.

54 Hearing these things, they were cut to the heart and moved with wrath against him.

55 But he was full of the Holy Spirit, and looking up to heaven, he saw the glory of God and Jesus at the right hand of God.

56 And he said, Now I see heaven open, and the Son of man at the right hand of God.

57 But with loud cries, and stopping their ears, they made an attack on him all together,

58 Driving him out of the town and stoning him: and the witnesses put their clothing at the feet of a young man named Saul.

59 And Stephen, while he was being stoned, made prayer to God, saying, Lord Jesus, take my spirit.

60 And going down on his knees, he said in a loud voice, Lord, do not make them responsible for this sin. And when he had said this, he went to his rest.

Commentary on Acts 7 Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible


CHAPTER 7

Ac 7:1-60. Defense and Martyrdom of Stephen.

In this long defense Stephen takes a much wider range, and goes less directly into the point raised by his accusers, than we should have expected. His object seems to have been to show (1) that so far from disparaging, he deeply reverenced, and was intimately conversant with, the whole history of the ancient economy; and (2) that in resisting the erection of the Gospel kingdom they were but treading in their fathers' footsteps, the whole history of their nation being little else than one continued misapprehension of God's high designs towards fallen man and rebellion against them.

2-5. The God of glory—A magnificent appellation, fitted at the very outset to rivet the devout attention of his audience; denoting not that visible glory which attended many of the divine manifestations, but the glory of those manifestations themselves, of which this was regarded by every Jew as the fundamental one. It is the glory of absolutely free grace.

appeared unto our father Abraham before he dwelt in Charran, and said, &c.—Though this first call is not expressly recorded in Genesis, it is clearly implied in Ge 15:7 and Ne 9:7; and the Jewish writers speak the same language.

4. when his father was dead, he removed into this land—Though Abraham was in Canaan before Terah's death, his settlement in it as the land of promise is here said to be after it, as being in no way dependent on the family movement, but a transaction purely between Jehovah and Abraham himself.

6-8. four hundred years—using round numbers, as in Ge 15:13, 16 (see on Ga 3:17).

7. after that shall they come forth, and serve me in this place—Here the promise to Abraham (Ge 15:16), and that to Moses (Ex 3:12), are combined; Stephen's object being merely to give a rapid summary of the leading facts.

8. the covenant of circumcision—that is, the covenant of which circumcision was the token.

and so—that is, according to the terms of this covenant, on which Paul reasons (Ga 3:1-26).

the twelve patriarchs—so called as the founders of the twelve tribes of Israel.

9-16. the patriarchs, moved with envy, sold Joseph into Egypt, but God was with him—Here Stephen gives his first example of Israel's opposition to God's purposes, in spite of which and by means of which those purposes were accomplished.

14. threescore and fifteen souls—according to the Septuagint version of Ge 46:27, which Stephen follows, including the five children and grandchildren of Joseph's two sons.

17. But when—rather, "as."

the time of the promise—that is, for its fulfilment.

the people grew and multiplied in Egypt—For more than two hundred years they amounted to no more than seventy-five souls; how prodigious, then, must have been their multiplication during the latter two centuries, when six hundred thousand men, fit for war, besides women and children, left Egypt!

20-22. In which time—of deepest depression.

Moses was born—the destined deliverer.

exceeding fair—literally, "fair to God" (Margin), or, perhaps, divinely "fair" (see on Heb 11:23).

22. mighty in words—Though defective in utterance (Ex 4:10); his recorded speeches fully bear out what is here said.

and deeds—referring probably to unrecorded circumstances in his early life. If we are to believe Josephus, his ability was acknowledged ere he left Egypt.

23-27. In Ac 7:23, 30, 36, the life of Moses is represented as embracing three periods, of forty years each; the Jewish writers say the same; and though this is not expressly stated in the Old Testament, his age at death, one hundred twenty years (De 34:7), agrees with it.

it came into his heart to visit his brethren—his heart yearning with love to them as God's chosen people, and heaving with the consciousness of a divine vocation to set them free.

24. avenged him that was oppressed, and smote the Egyptian—going farther in the heat of his indignation than he probably intended.

25. For he supposed his brethren would have understood, &c.—and perhaps imagined this a suitable occasion for rousing and rallying them under him as their leader; thus anticipating his work, and so running unsent.

but they understood not—Reckoning on a spirit in them congenial with his own, he had the mortification to find it far otherwise. This furnishes to Stephen another example of Israel's slowness to apprehend and fall in with the divine purposes of love.

26. next day he showed himself unto them as they strove—Here, not an Israelite and an Egyptian, but two parties in Israel itself, are in collision with each other; Moses, grieved at the spectacle, interposes as a mediator; but his interference, as unauthorized, is resented by the party in the wrong, whom Stephen identifies with the mass of the nation (Ac 7:35), just as Messiah's own interposition had been spurned.

28, 29. Wilt thou kill me, as thou didst the Egyptian yesterday?—Moses had thought the deed unseen (Ex 2:12), but it now appeared he was mistaken.

29. Then fled Moses, &c.—for "when Pharaoh heard this thing, he sought to slay Moses" (Ex 2:15).

30-34. an angel of the Lord—rather, "the Angel of the Covenant," who immediately calls Himself Jehovah (Compare Ac 7:38).

35-41. This Moses whom they refused, saying, Who made thee a ruler and a judge, &c.—Here, again, "the stone which the builders refused is made the head of the corner" (Ps 118:22).

37. This is that Moses which said … A prophet … him shall ye hear—This is quoted to remind his Moses-worshipping audience of the grand testimony of their faithful lawgiver, that he himself was not the last and proper object of the Church's faith, but only a humble precursor and small model of Him to whom their absolute submission was due.

38. in the church—the collective body of God's chosen people; hence used to denote the whole body of the faithful under the Gospel, or particular sections of them.

This is he that was in the church in the wilderness, with the angel … and with our fathers—alike near to the Angel of the Covenant, from whom he received all the institutions of the ancient economy, and to the people, to whom he faithfully reported the living oracles and among whom he set up the prescribed institutions. By this high testimony to Moses, Stephen rebuts the main charge for which he was on trial.

39. To whom our fathers would not obey, &c.—Here he shows that the deepest dishonor done to Moses came from the nation that now professed the greatest jealousy for his honor.

in their hearts turned back … into Egypt—"In this Stephen would have his hearers read the downward career on which they were themselves entering."

42-50. gave them up—judicially.

as … written in the book of the prophets—the twelve minor prophets, reckoned as one: the passage is from Am 5:25.

have ye offered to me … sacrifices?—The answer is, Yes, but as if ye did it not; for "neither did ye offer to Me only, nor always, nor with a perfect and willing heart" [Bengel].

43. Yea, ye took up the tabernacle of Molech, &c.—Two kinds of idolatry are charged upon the Israelites: that of the golden calf and that of the heavenly bodies; Molech and Remphan being deities, representing apparently the divine powers ascribed to nature, under different aspects.

carry you beyond Babylon—the well-known region of the captivity of Judah; while "Damascus" is used by the prophet (Am 5:27), whither the ten tribes were carried.

44. Our fathers had the tabernacle of witness in the wilderness—which aggravated the guilt of that idolatry in which they indulged, with the tokens of the divine presence constantly in the midst of them.

45. which … our fathers that came after—rather, "having received it by succession" (Margin), that is, the custody of the tabernacle from their ancestors.

brought in with Jesus—or Joshua.

into the possession—rather, "at the taking possession of [the territory of] the Gentiles."

unto the days of David—for till then Jerusalem continued in the hands of the Jebusites. But Stephen's object in mentioning David is to hasten from the tabernacle which he set up, to the temple which his son built, in Jerusalem; and this only to show, from their own Scripture (Isa 66:1, 2), that even that temple, magnificent though it was, was not the proper resting-place of Jehovah upon earth; as his audience and the nations had all along been prone to imagine. (What that resting-place was, even "the contrite heart, that trembleth at God's word," he leaves to be gathered from the prophet referred to).

51-53. Ye stiffnecked … ye do always resist the Holy Ghost, &c.—It has been thought that symptoms of impatience and irritation in the audience induced Stephen to cut short his historical sketch. But as little farther light could have been thrown upon Israel's obstinacy from subsequent periods of the national history on the testimony of their own Scriptures, we should view this as the summing up, the brief import of the whole Israelitish history—grossness of heart, spiritual deafness, continuous resistance of the Holy Ghost, down to the very council before whom Stephen was pleading.

52. Which of, &c.—Deadly hostility to the messengers of God, whose high office it was to tell of "the Righteous One," that well-known prophetic title of Messiah (Isa 53:11; Jer 23:6, &c.), and this consummated by the betrayal and murder of Messiah Himself, on the part of those now sitting in judgment on the speaker, are the still darker features of the national character depicted in these withering words.

53. Who have received the law by the disposition—"at the appointment" or "ordination," that is, by the ministry.

of angels, and have not kept it—This closing word is designed to shut up those idolizers of the law under the guilt of high disobedience to it, aggravated by the august manner in which they had received it.

54-56. When they heard these things they were cut to the heart, &c.—If they could have answered him, how different would have been their temper of mind!

55. But he, being full of the Holy Ghost, looked up steadfastly into heaven, and saw the glory of God—You who can transfer to canvas such scenes as these, in which the rage of hell grins horribly from men, as they sit condemned by a frail prisoner of their own, and see heaven beaming from his countenance and opening full upon his view—I envy you, for I find no words to paint what, in the majesty of the divine text, is here so simply told. "But how could Stephen, in the council-chamber, see heaven at all? I suppose this question never occurred but to critics of narrow soul, one of whom [Meyer] conjectures that he saw it through the window! and another, of better mould, that the scene lay in one of the courts of the temple" [Alford]. As the sight was witnessed by Stephen alone, the opened heavens are to be viewed as revealed to his bright beaming spirit.

and Jesus standing on the right hand of God—Why "standing," and not sitting, the posture in which the glorified Saviour is elsewhere represented? Clearly, to express the eager interest with which He watched from the skies the scene in that council chamber, and the full tide of His Spirit which He was at that moment engaged in pouring into the heart of His heroical witness, till it beamed in radiance from his very countenance.

56. I see … the Son of man standing, &c.—This is the only time that our Lord is by human lips called THE Son of Man after His ascension (Re 1:13; 14:14 are not instances). And why here? Stephen, full of the Holy Ghost, speaking now not of himself at all (Ac 7:55), but entirely by the Spirit, is led to repeat the very words in which Jesus Himself, before this same council, had foretold His glorification (Mt 26:64), assuring them that that exaltation of the Son of Man which they should hereafter witness to their dismay, was already begun and actual [Alford].

57, 58. Then they cried out … and ran upon him with one accord—To men of their mould and in their temper, Stephen's last seraphic words could but bring matters to extremities, though that only revealed the diabolical spirit which they breathed.

58. cast him out of the city—according to Le 24:14; Nu 15:35; 1Ki 21:13; and see Heb 13:12.

and stoned—"proceeded to stone" him. The actual stoning is recorded in Ac 7:59.

and the witnesses—whose hands were to be first upon the criminal (De 17:7).

laid down their clothes—their loose outer garments, to have them taken charge of.

at a young man's feet whose name was Saul—How thrilling is this our first introduction to one to whom Christianity—whether as developed in the New Testament or as established in the world—owes more perhaps than to all the other apostles together! Here he is, having perhaps already a seat in the Sanhedrim, some thirty years of age, in the thick of this tumultuous murder of a distinguished witness for Christ, not only "consenting unto his death" (Ac 8:1), but doing his own part of the dark deed.

59, 60. calling upon God and saying, Lord Jesus, &c.—An unhappy supplement of our translators is the word "God" here; as if, while addressing the Son, he was really calling upon the Father. The sense is perfectly clear without any supplement at all—"calling upon [invoking] and saying, Lord Jesus"; Christ being the Person directly invoked and addressed by name (compare Ac 9:14). Even Grotius, De Wette, Meyer, &c., admit this, adding several other examples of direct prayer to Christ; and Pliny, in his well-known letter to the Emperor Trajan (A.D. 110 or 111), says it was part of the regular Christian service to sing, in alternate strains, a hymn to Christ as God.

Lord Jesus, receive my spirit—In presenting to Jesus the identical prayer which He Himself had on the cross offered to His Father, Stephen renders to his glorified Lord absolute divine worship, in the most sublime form, and at the most solemn moment of his life. In this commitment of his spirit to Jesus, Paul afterwards followed his footsteps with a calm, exultant confidence that with Him it was safe for eternity (2Ti 1:12).

60. cried with a loud voice—with something of the gathered energy of his dying Lord (see on Joh 19:16-30).

Lord—that is, Jesus, beyond doubt, whom he had just before addressed as Lord.

lay not this sin to their charge—Comparing this with nearly the same prayer of his dying Lord, it will be seen how very richly this martyr of Jesus had drunk into his Master's spirit, in its divinest form.

he fell asleep—never said of the death of Christ. (See on 1Th 4:14). How bright the record of this first martyrdom for Christ, amidst all the darkness of its perpetrators; and how many have been cheered by it to like faithfulness even unto death!