Chapter Seven

The speech of Archdeacon Stephen (1–56). His martyrdom (54–60)

Acts 7:1. Then the high priest said: is this so? “Is this so?” — that is, did you actually say what you are accused of (Acts 6:11)?

Acts 7:2. And he said: brothers and fathers! listen. The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia, before he moved to Haran, “But he said” — instead of a direct answer to the high priest’s question, Stephen delivered a long speech, which in the end refutes the accusation and turns it against his very accusers, whose resistance to God had brought Stephen before the Sanhedrin. The essence of the speech consists properly of verses Acts 7-53, for the sake of which — or from the perspective of which — the entire preceding survey of Jewish history is made. The content and line of thought of the speech may be expressed as follows: I stand here not as a blasphemer of God, the law, and the temple — accused and persecuted, a victim of your resistance to God and His Messiah, a resistance that, as the whole of history testifies, you inherited from your fathers and are displaying now. It is not my fault that I am being judged here, but yours — not your reverence for God, but your constant resistance to Him, as in the present case, when you judge and accuse a true worshiper of Him. All this Stephen skillfully and at length lets history itself declare on his behalf, dwelling especially and in detail on the history of Moses, when the people’s resistance brought upon themselves the rebuke of that greatest of lawgivers and mediators between God and the people. After a more or less calm flow of thought, following the mention of the building of the temple and the confirmation of his view of it by a prophetic saying, the speech breaks off into a direct and bold attack and denunciation of the unjust judges for the gravest sin against the Messiah and God. — Since after this magnificent speech Stephen did not return to the Christian community, it is evident that it was reproduced by some adherent of Christianity present there (someone like Nicodemus, Joseph of Arimathea, or Gamaliel), from whom it subsequently became known to the whole Christian community and entered into the work of the historian. “Men, brothers and fathers” — a respectful address to those present: the first and second terms are addressed to all present, the third in particular to the members of the Sanhedrin and the elders. “Listen” — a preface and request indicating that the speech will not be brief. “The God of glory appeared.” God, to whom glory is due — who is the very embodiment of glory. By this exalted opening of his speech, Stephen directly showed how unjust was the accusation against him as a blasphemer (Acts 6:11). By the same opening he dealt the first heavy blow to the vain notions of the Jews about the significance of the outward temple for the glorification of God. “If He is the ‘God of glory,’ He evidently has no need to be glorified by us or through a temple, for He Himself is the source of glory. Therefore, do not suppose you can glorify Him in that way” (Chrysostom). “Appeared” — ώφθη — points to an outward appearance of the God of glory as the radiant brightness in which the Lord revealed Himself (cf. vv. Acts 7:55; Exod 24:16; Isa 6:3; Ps 23:7). “In Mesopotamia, before his migration to Haran.” Haran — Χαρράν — one of the most ancient cities in Mesopotamia, on the ancient caravan road. There appears to be a contradiction here with the account in Genesis. The further words of God that Stephen cites as spoken at this appearance (Acts 7:3) were spoken, according to Moses’ account (Gen 12:1), to Abraham at God’s appearance to him in Haran, and not before his migration to Haran. According to Genesis, Terah, the father of Abraham, set out from Ur of the Chaldeans with his entire family — which included Abraham — for the land of Canaan, and when he had reached Haran he stopped there and died (Gen 11:29-32); and it was here in Haran that the revelation was given to Abraham at which the words transmitted by both Stephen and Moses were spoken — not in Ur of the Chaldeans (Acts 7:4), as Stephen says. This is explained by the fact that, according to Philo and Josephus, the Jews of that time — especially the Alexandrian Jews — believed on the basis of tradition that God’s first appearance to Abraham was not in Haran but precisely in Ur of the Chaldeans (of which Moses does not explicitly speak), and that it was because of this appearance that Terah set out with his whole family from Ur to Canaan, but died on the road in Haran, and that after Terah’s death God appeared to Abraham again and repeated the command to continue the journey. This tradition finds some confirmation in — and perhaps its very basis from — the narrative of Moses itself. In one of the subsequent appearances, already after the appearance in Haran, God says to Abraham (Gen 15:7): “I am the Lord, who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans, to give you this land as a possession.” From this it follows that Abraham must have already received from God in Ur the command to leave that land and go to Canaan. The same conclusion follows from the book of Nehemiah, where these prayerful words are put in the mouth of Ezra: “You are the Lord God, You chose Abraham and brought him out of the land of the Chaldeans” — that is, from Ur of the Chaldeans (Nehem 9:7). All this evidently reconciles and clarifies the apparent inaccuracy of Stephen’s expression when compared with the Bible, and points to his full agreement with the tradition of the Jews, which in this case finds corroboration both in the narrative of Moses and in the book of Nehemiah. “Go out from your land.” Stephen cites the words of God spoken to Abraham at the appearance in Haran as though spoken in Ur, undoubtedly because the meaning of God’s command was the same on both occasions, even though Moses does not transmit the words spoken by God in Ur. Chrysostom speaks well about the significance of this reference to Abraham: “There was as yet neither temple nor sacrifices, and yet Abraham was counted worthy of a divine vision... Notice how he (Stephen) draws their thoughts away from the material, having begun with a locality, since the discussion was also about a place...”

Acts 7:4. Then he went out from the land of the Chaldeans and settled in Haran; and from there, after his father died, God brought him into this land in which you now live. “He went out from the land of the Chaldeans” — from the city of Ur, in Mesopotamia, to the north of Haran. “From there” (that is, from Haran) “after the death of his father” (that is, Terah) “He moved him.” According to Genesis, Terah lived 70 years before the birth of Abraham, Nahor, and Haran, and the total number of his years was 205 (Gen 11:26). Abraham was 75 years old when he left Haran, where Terah had died (Gen 12:4). It would therefore appear that Terah was still far from death (70+75=145, not 205), and that he should have lived 60 more years after Abraham’s departure from Haran. This apparent discrepancy is explained by the fact that Terah did not live 70 years before the birth of Abraham but before the birth of his eldest son Haran, who was followed by Nahor and then Abraham; Abraham is named first by Moses not by order of birth but by order of election. The proper explanation of Moses’ statement is therefore: Terah lived 70 years before the beginning of the birth of his children, the first of whom was Haran. How many years after Haran Abraham was born, Moses does not mention. Stephen’s words that Abraham left Haran after Terah’s death indicate that Abraham was born in the 130th year of Terah’s life (205–75), which is entirely plausible for that era. The view that Abraham left Haran after Terah’s death is also confirmed by Philo. “The land in which you now dwell” — that is, Palestine, the land of Canaan, toward which Terah, Abraham, and the rest of the family had set out from Ur of the Chaldeans.

Acts 7:5. And he did not give him an inheritance in it, not even a foot’s length of ground, but he promised to give it as a possession to him and to his offspring after him, when as yet he had no child. “And he gave him no inheritance” — Slavonic: “inheritance” — κληρονομίαν — He did not make it his inheritance, his property, in the sense in which it later became the inheritance of his descendants. And not only in this broad sense, but also in a narrower sense — “not even a foot of ground” — the Lord did not yet give Abraham even a small parcel of the land promised to his descendants. This is not contradicted by the account in Genesis that Abraham bought a field and a cave from Ephron the Hittite as his own property (Gen 23). On the contrary, the very fact that Abraham had to buy land from the native inhabitants shows that God had not given him any land of his own in that country, otherwise he would have had no reason to buy. Moreover, the text here speaks of the first period of Abraham’s stay in that land, before the time of his circumcision (Acts 7:8), when Abraham genuinely had no land of his own there, not even a foot of ground. “To him and to his descendants” — to him in the person of his descendants. “When he had no child” — it is thus implied that both the granting of the promised land as an inheritance to his descendants and the granting of that very posterity depended wholly and solely on the free will of God, and is properly God’s own gift. Here again there is a most significant indication that “the promise was given before the place, before circumcision, before sacrifice, before the temple” (Chrysostom).

Acts 7:6. And God spoke to this effect, that his offspring would be sojourners in a foreign land and would be enslaved and oppressed for four hundred years. “And God spoke” — ελάλησε δε ούτως ο Θείς, Slavonic: “God spoke thus” — that is, in His promise referred to above — “He promised to give...” The words cited here are taken from Gen 15:13-14. “In a foreign land” — that is, in Egypt. “Four hundred years” — according to Moses’ precise statement, 430 years; here, as in the divine promise cited by Stephen almost verbatim from the LXX, a round number is given.

Acts 7:7. But I will judge, said God, the nation to which they will be in bondage; and after that they will come out and worship me in this place. “I will judge” (κρινῶ) “that nation” — judgment in the sense of retribution and punishment for the oppression and enslavement of Abraham’s descendants. By divine decree, Abraham’s descendants became aliens in a foreign land — among the Egyptians. But this did not exonerate the Egyptians, who were liable to punishment for oppressing the aliens — an act of their own freedom and cruelty. God’s judgment for this was expressed in what are known as the plagues of Egypt, after which the Hebrew people came out of Egypt. “They will worship Me in this place” — words borrowed by Stephen from God’s revelation to Moses on Mount Horeb (Exod 3:12) and placed in God’s mouth at the time of the revelation to Abraham. In his brief and rapid survey of the history of the people, Stephen could undoubtedly allow himself to omit mentioning that these words were spoken to Moses, and, by association of ideas, cite them when mentioning the judgment upon the Egyptians that took place under Moses and the exodus of the people under his leadership. To accuse Stephen here of inaccuracy is something only a literalist could do — one who values the letter more than the meaning of divine revelations.

Acts 7:8. And he gave him the covenant of circumcision. And so he fathered Isaac and circumcised him on the eighth day; and Isaac fathered Jacob, and Jacob fathered the twelve patriarchs. “The covenant of circumcision” — the covenant whose outward sign (seal) was the circumcision established at the same time, as an essential part of the covenant itself (Gen 17:10). The expression that this covenant was given by God is meant to convey that it is a free and gracious gift of God to Abraham and his descendants, and that in this gift-covenant the Lord gives far more to man than He receives from him. “And so” — καί ούτως, Slavonic: “and thus” — that is, standing in this relationship to God, in the relationship of the covenant made with Him, “Abraham fathered Isaac...” “Twelve patriarchs.” This is what the children of Jacob are called, as the founders of the twelve tribes of Israel descended from them.

Acts 7:9. The patriarchs, acting out of jealousy, sold Joseph into Egypt; but God was with him, “Moved by envy they sold” (Gen 37). Stephen mentions this envy not without a special purpose, but clearly to point to the same feeling on the part of the judges toward the Lord Jesus, whose historical prefigurements were both Joseph and Moses — the deliverers of the people from calamity and hardship — mentioned further on. Stephen’s account of Joseph is entirely accurate and consistent with the Bible.

Acts 7:10. and delivered him from all his afflictions, and granted him favor and wisdom before Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, who appointed him as ruler over Egypt and over his whole household. Acts 7:11. And a famine came and great suffering over all the land of Egypt and Canaan, and our fathers could not find food. Acts 7:12. But Jacob, having heard that there was grain in Egypt, sent our fathers there the first time. Acts 7:13. And when they came the second time, Joseph made himself known to his brothers, and Joseph’s family became known to Pharaoh. Acts 7:14. Joseph sent word and called his father Jacob and all his relatives, seventy-five persons in all. “Seventy-five persons” — in agreement with the LXX, though the original Hebrew text counts only 70, a number also followed by Josephus (Antiq. II, 7, 4; VI, 5, 6). This figure of 70 in the Hebrew text is arrived at after adding to the 66 persons who came with Jacob into Egypt (Gen 46:26) Joseph with his two sons and Jacob himself (Gen 46:27). The LXX translation, however, probably includes among them the grandsons and great-grandsons of Joseph mentioned in XLVI:20 — numbering 5 — counting not only the members of Jacob’s family who migrated but also those already in Egypt, that is, the entire family of Jacob — “all his relatives” — apart from the female members.

Acts 7:15. Jacob went down to Egypt, and he died there, as did our fathers; “And our fathers” — that is, the patriarchs mentioned as the founders of the twelve tribes of Israel.

Acts 7:16. and they were brought to Shechem and laid in the tomb that Abraham had purchased for a sum of silver from the sons of Hamor in Shechem. “And they were carried back to Shechem.” From the book of Joshua it is known that only the bones of Joseph were brought out of Egypt when the Jews departed, and were buried in Shechem (Josh 24:32). But the ancient Jewish tradition held that the bones of Joseph’s brothers were also not left in Egypt and, taken together with the bones of Joseph, were likewise buried in Shechem. This tradition is undoubtedly reproduced by St. Stephen. Regarding Jacob, the book of Gen 50:13; cf. Gen 23 states that he was buried by Joseph himself and his brothers near Hebron, in the cave that Abraham had purchased there together with the field for the burial of Sarah. “In the tomb that Abraham bought for a sum of silver from the sons of Hamor of Shechem.” Here there is an inaccuracy — a conflation of two different passages of Scripture. The tomb that Abraham bought was purchased not from the sons of Hamor of Shechem, but “from Ephron the Hittite, before Mamre” (Gen 50:13; cf. Gen 23). And conversely, the tomb purchased from the sons of Hamor of Shechem was purchased not by Abraham but by his grandson Jacob (Gen 33:19). Here, therefore, there is either a small lapse of memory, or simply a figurative expression attributing the deed of a grandson to his grandfather as the progenitor of the entire Jewish people.

Acts 7:17. But as the time drew near for the fulfillment of the promise that God had solemnly sworn to Abraham, the people grew and multiplied in Egypt, “The time” for the “promise” to be fulfilled — that is, the promise mentioned above, that Abraham’s descendants would come out of Egypt (Gen 15:13-14).

Acts 7:18. until there arose another king who did not know Joseph. “A different king arose” — that is, from a new dynasty — “who did not know” Joseph. About four centuries had passed since the death of Joseph; the king was from a different dynasty, apparently even a non-native one; and it is no wonder that with the then-limited means of historical knowledge he had no information whatever about Joseph and his services to Egypt.

Acts 7:19. This king, dealing craftily with our people, oppressed our fathers, forcing them to expose their infants so that they would not remain alive. “Forcing them to expose their infants” — τοῦ ποιεῖν έλθετα τά βρέφη αυτῶν εις το μή ζωογονεῖσθαι, Slavonic: “to put their infants out to die and not keep them alive.” Literally — to make their infants exposed, so that they would not live (Exod 1:16-22).

Acts 7:20. At this time Moses was born, and he was beautiful before God. For three months he was nursed in his father’s house. “He was beautiful before God” — ῆν αστεῖος τῶ Θεῶ, more precisely in Slavonic: “he was pleasing to God.” This refers to the extraordinary beauty of the infant Moses.

Acts 7:22. And Moses was educated in all the wisdom of Egypt, and he was mighty in his words and deeds. “He was educated in all the wisdom of the Egyptians.” This is not mentioned in the Pentateuch or in any other books of the Old Testament. It was evidently a most ancient tradition, also recorded by Philo (in his “Life of Moses”). And there is nothing improbable in the fact that Moses — a Hebrew adopted as a son by the Pharaoh’s daughter — received the highest education then available to Egyptians. This Egyptian education consisted chiefly of the study of the natural sciences — astronomy, medicine, and mathematics — as well as magic. The chief representatives of this education were the priests. In Moses’ great ministry for the truth of God, this outward wisdom was to become one of the instruments contributing to his success. “He was mighty in his words and deeds.” The expression about Moses’ strength in words does not contradict what Moses himself says about himself, that he is not eloquent and is slow of speech (Exod 4:10); the latter refers to deficiencies in his manner of speaking, but these did not prevent his speech from being powerful by virtue of that inner strength that expresses a powerful spirit. One may also note here that the mouth of Moses, who was the mouthpiece of God, was relayed through the mouth of Aaron, and the strength of Aaron’s mouth could fully be regarded as the strength of the mouth of Moses — a spiritual power which he possessed to the highest degree.

Acts 7:23. But when he had reached the age of forty years, it came into his heart to visit his brothers, the sons of Israel. “When he was about forty years old.” The book of Exodus does not specify Moses’ age at that time, but simply says: “after a long time had passed, when he had grown up” (Exod 2:11). Here again Stephen draws on the tradition that divided the entire 120 years of Moses’ life (Deut 34:7) into three periods of 40 years each: the first 40 years he lived at Pharaoh’s court, the second in the land of Midian (Exod 7:7), and the last he led the Jews in the wilderness (Exod 16:35; Num 14 and following Num 33:38) until their arrival at the promised land.

Acts 7:24. And seeing one of them being wronged, he came to his defense and avenged the oppressed man by striking down the Egyptian. “Striking down the Egyptian” — πατάζας τόν Αιγύπτιον. As Theophylact explains here: “he killed him not in a frenzy or in anger, but out of zeal for God.”

Acts 7:25. He supposed that his brothers would understand that God was giving them salvation through his hand; but they did not understand. “He supposed that his brothers would understand.” This is Stephen’s own remark about the meaning and significance of Moses’ striking down the Egyptian, on which there is no indication or even hint in the Pentateuch. Stephen presents this act of Moses as a foreshadowing of the deliverance of the entire Hebrew people from Egyptian slavery by the hand of Moses. The people should have understood it in this way; but they did not — not so much because the people were incapable of understanding it as because of a lack of faith in God and hope in Him, which is apparently what St. Stephen intends to point out here.

Acts 7:26. On the following day, when some of them were fighting, he appeared and was urging them toward peace, saying: you are brothers; why do you wrong one another? “When some of them were quarreling, he appeared” — ωφθη αυτοῖς μαχόμενοις, Slavonic: “he appeared to those quarreling” — more precisely: he appeared to them (to certain of them) while they were arguing. The Greek ώφθη — “appeared” — ordinarily used to describe appearances of God, points to the sudden appearance of Moses and, in particular, his appearance as a messenger or emissary of God, endowed on this occasion with special authority.

Acts 7:27. But the man who was wronging his neighbor pushed him away, saying: who made you a ruler and a judge over us? “Pushed him aside” — απώσατο, Slavonic: “repulsed him” — rejected his intervention, and perhaps even more literally “pushed him,” though the original text (Exod 2:14) does not mention this. In the latter case, the coarse behavior of the Hebrew offender toward the future liberator of the people from Egyptian bondage stands out all the more sharply.

Acts 7:29. At these words Moses fled and became an exile in the land of Midian, where two sons were born to him. “At this reply.” The matter is presented more fully in the book of Exod 2:14-15. The land of Midian — a land of undefined borders, in rocky Arabia, north of the Arabian Gulf. On Moses’ stay there, see Exod 2 and following.

Acts 7:30. When forty years had passed, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in the desert of Mount Sinai in the flame of a burning thornbush. See the note on Acts 7:23; for the event, see Exod 3. “In the wilderness of Mount Sinai” — in the desert in which Mount Sinai is located. According to the book of Exodus, the place of the event was specifically Mount Horeb, not Sinai; nevertheless, there is no great departure from the truth here. In this desert, two peaks rise above the others from the rocky and mountainous terrain, like the summits of one and the same mountain range — Sinai to the north (the highest of the surrounding mountains) and Horeb to the south; after the name of the first mountain — Sinai — the entire surrounding desert is named here, and consequently also the entire mountain range with Horeb among them. “The angel of the Lord” — the Angel of Jehovah. Since this Angel later calls Himself God and speaks in God’s name, it is right to see in Him the “Angel of the Great Council” (Isa 9:6) — the Word of God, the second Person of the Holy Trinity, who in the fullness of time was incarnate in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ, and before the Incarnation appeared at particularly important events in the form of an Angel, guiding toward the knowledge of Him as the true God of true God (Chrysostom and Theophylact). “In a flame of a burning thornbush” — εν φλογί πυρός βάτου, Slavonic: “in a flame of fire of the thornbush” — more precisely: in the flame of the fire of the thornbush. This God-sent fire did not consume the bush, signifying the Hebrew people, who were cruelly oppressed but not destroyed by oppression (cf. Exod 3:2).

Acts 7:31. Moses, seeing it, marveled at the vision; and as he drew near to look more closely, the voice of the Lord came to him: In the original text there is no direct mention of Moses’ wonder, though it is entirely natural given his situation.

Acts 7:32. I am the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. Moses, seized with trembling, did not dare to look. Acts 7:33. And the Lord said to him: remove the sandals from your feet, for the place where you are standing is holy ground. The command to remove the sandals from the feet, according to the book of Exodus (Exod 3:4-6), preceded the words of the Lord cited by Stephen about God being the God of the fathers, whereas in Stephen the command comes after those words are cited. This difference is not, however, essential. The naming of the Lord as “the God of the fathers” was meant to assure Moses that the One sending him was the same God who had so visibly guided the patriarchs of the Hebrew people. “Take off your sandals.” In the East, people still enter temples and other sacred places barefoot, as a sign of deep humility before God, and also to avoid bringing dust and impurity on one’s shoes into a holy place. According to the rabbis, the priests in the sanctuary of the Jerusalem Temple also performed their ministry barefoot. Chrysostom explains the purpose of this mention well: “there is no temple, and yet this place is holy from the appearance and action of Christ. It is even more wondrous than the place in the Holy of Holies, for there God never appeared in this way.”

Acts 7:34. I see the oppression of my people in Egypt and I hear their groaning, and I have come down to deliver them: and now come, I will send you to Egypt. “I have surely seen” — Greek ιδών εῖδον — seeing I have seen — an emphatic expression meaning God’s attentive and compassionate gaze upon the sufferings of His people, who — by God’s wise plans — could not be delivered from this oppression before the appointed time (cf. Gen 15:16). “I have come down” from heaven, where God’s throne is (Isa 66:1; Matt 5:34; Gen 11:7). “I will send you to Egypt” — to bring out from there the suffering people (Exod 3:10). “See how Stephen shows that God guided them both with blessings and with punishments and with miracles, and they remained the same... (Chrysostom).”

Acts 7:35. This Moses, whom they rejected, saying: who made you a ruler and a judge? — him God sent as both ruler and deliverer, through the Angel who appeared to him in the thornbush. Acts 7:36. He led them out, performing wonders and signs in the land of Egypt and in the Red Sea and in the desert for forty years. Exod 7:11. Acts 7:37. This is that Moses who said to the sons of Israel: the Lord your God will raise up for you a Prophet from among your brothers, like me; listen to him. “This Moses.” The false witnesses had said that Stephen was speaking blasphemous words against Moses (Acts 6:11). Completely dispelling this charge, Stephen then proceeds to depict in powerful strokes the greatness of this Moses as deliverer, wonder-worker, prophet, lawgiver, and mediator between God and the people, pointing at the same time to the striking marks of the people’s disobedience toward Moses and God despite his greatness. This intensification of the speech is indicated by the repeated expressions: “this Moses,” “this Moses...” (vv. 35, 36, 37, 38). “Whom they rejected” — that is, as ruler and judge, which he was for the entire people by virtue of the subsequent divine election. This fact of the crude rejection by one Hebrew of Moses, who had intervened in his affair, Stephen generalizes and applies to the whole people, in the sense that the words of one man were as it were the expression of the ungrateful and stiff-necked spirit of the whole people. “By the hand of the angel” — εν χειρί αγγέλου — by the hand of the Angel, that is, by the power of the Angel who strengthens, guards, and helps — by the power of the Son of God, prefigured by Moses (see on Acts 7:30).

Acts 7:38. This is the one who was in the assembly in the desert with the Angel who spoke to him on Mount Sinai, and with our fathers; and he received living words to pass on to us, Moses is presented here “in the assembly” — amid the assembly of the people — “in the wilderness,” at the foot of Mount Sinai, for the receiving of the Law of God, turning on the one hand “to the Angel” and receiving from him the words of life, and on the other hand “to the fathers,” that is, the entire Hebrew people of that time, to whom he then hands on those living words. “With the angel” — in the book of Exodus, the giving of the Law to Moses is attributed to the Lord Himself; Stephen, together with the LXX, attributes it to an Angel, meaning that God proclaimed and gave Moses the Law through the mediation of an Angel or angels (see note on Acts 7:53). The matter is presented in apparently the same way by the Apostle Paul (Gal 3:19; Heb 2:2), and among ancient secular interpreters by Josephus (Antiq. XV, 5, 3). It is possible that Stephen here names God Himself as the Angel, as he does above at the calling of Moses (Acts 7:30). “Living words” — a refutation of the slander against Stephen that he did not cease speaking blasphemous words against the Law (Acts 6:13). The expression signifies the great living power of the Law for the moral ordering of life, living also in the sense of the unfailing and timely fulfillment of both the promises and the threats contained in the declarations of the lawgiver (cf. 1 Pet 1:23; Heb 4:12; Deut 32:47; Rom 7:10; 1 Cor 15:56).

Acts 7:39. to whom our fathers did not wish to be obedient, but rejected him and in their hearts turned back toward Egypt, The rejection of Moses and the turning of hearts toward Egypt consisted in imitating Egyptian idolatry and an attachment to the sensual pleasures of Egypt (Num 11 and following; Num 14; Exod 32).

Acts 7:40. saying to Aaron: make us gods who will go before us; for as for this Moses who led us out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him. “For as for this Moses who led us out” — the Greek and Slavonic texts include at the word “Moses” a contemptuous expression “this”: ο γάρ Μωσῆς οτος, Slavonic: “for this Moses, who led us out... we do not know what has happened to him.”

Acts 7:41. And in those days they made a calf and offered sacrifice to the idol and were rejoicing in the works of their hands. “And they made a calf in those days” — that is, an image of a calf, undoubtedly under the influence of Egyptian idolatry — the worship of Apis. It is true that the people wished to see in the calf an image of the Lord God Himself (Exod 32:4-8), but that is precisely where the people’s disobedience to Moses and to God — who had just commanded the prohibition of all kinds of idols (Exod 20:4) — expressed itself. That is why Stephen calls this image an “idol,” the work of the people’s hands, before which the rejoicing could not but be sinful, equivalent to the rejection of both God and Moses.

Acts 7:42. But God turned away and gave them over to serve the host of heaven, as it is written in the book of the prophets: house of Israel! did you bring me slaughtered animals and sacrifices for forty years in the desert? “And gave them over” (Slavonic: “delivered them”) “to worship...” This is not merely God’s permissive will, but “a punishment to the Israelites for honoring the idol” (Chrysostom and Theophylact). For the sin of idolatry, God delivers the people to an even heavier idolatry, according to the law by which sin is punished through a greater sin (cf. Rom 1:24). “To worship” — that is, to render divine worship to — “the host of heaven,” that is, to the heavenly bodies, to deify them (Gen 2:1). This deification of the heavenly bodies was a very widespread form of idolatry in antiquity (Sabaism, astrolatry), especially in Egypt, Chaldea, and Phoenicia. In proof of the spread of this kind of idolatry among the Jews, Stephen cites a saying of the prophet Amos (V, 25–27). “In the book of the prophets” — in ancient times, the collection of prophetic books of all the minor prophets (twelve of them) was reckoned as a single book. The prophet’s expression, spoken from the perspective of God, that the Jews did not offer God sacrifices throughout the entire time of wandering in the wilderness, appears to contradict the statements of the Pentateuch, where mention is made more than once of sacrifices offered by the Jews in the wilderness (Exod 24 and following; Num 7:9 and following, etc.). Evidently the prophet uses at this point an intensification of speech characteristic of strong rebukes, which allows one to ignore or pass over the sacrifices to the true God, as if they lost their significance in the face of the allowance of idol worship.

Acts 7:43. You took up the tent of Moloch and the star of your god Rephan, the images that you made to bow down to them: and I will carry you away beyond Babylon. “You also took up” — that is, took with you for carrying — “the tent of Moloch,” that is, a portable tent dedicated to Moloch, in which the image of this false deity was presumably kept, and which, like the tent of the true God, was carried from camp to camp. “Moloch” — the Syrian and Canaanite idol (Baal-Bel), in which the sun was deified as the source of life on earth. The worship of this idol was especially abhorrent in the era of the Kings (2 Sam 16:3; 2 Chr 28:3). The idol was made of bronze with a calf’s head, crowned with a royal crown. Its arms were extended as if ready to receive someone. Children were sacrificed to it, and inside the idol a fire was kindled that consumed the victim. To drown out the screams of the children, a great noise and clamor was raised during these abhorrent scenes by means of various instruments. “The star of Rephan” — that is, an image of Saturn in the form of a star, corresponding to the outward appearance of that deified planet. In the Pentateuch of Moses itself there is no mention of the Jews’ worship of these idols in the form the prophet Amos describes. One may therefore think that the prophet speaks here from God’s perspective in accordance with the most ancient Jewish tradition. It is also noteworthy that in the book of Leviticus a prohibition against worshiping Moloch is expressed (Lev 18:21), which confirms the existence of worship of this false deity. This entire prophetic saying is cited almost exactly from the LXX translation, though not entirely in agreement with the original text in the names of the deities mentioned (instead of Moloch — in the original, “your king”; instead of Rephan — “Kiyyun”) and in the structure of the speech itself. The LXX did not translate this passage literally but with commentary, without however altering the essential substance of the matter. “I will relocate you beyond Babylon” — in the original and in the LXX translation of Amos, who lived before the Babylonian exile, it says “beyond Damascus.” Stephen replaces Damascus with Babylon, undoubtedly because the Babylonian captivity was better known to his listeners than the Syrian captivity, and it presented God’s threat against idolatry more strongly and forcefully, without altering the substance of the matter.

Acts 7:44. The tabernacle of testimony was among our fathers in the desert, just as the One who spoke to Moses had directed him to make it according to the pattern he had seen. Having sufficiently justified himself in the eyes of the judges regarding the charge of speaking blasphemous words against Moses — by confessing Moses’ greatness — and having pointed out that it was not he but the fathers of his judges who were disobedient to God and Moses, Stephen now proceeds to refute the other charge, that he had spoken blasphemous words “against this holy place,” that is, the Jerusalem Temple (Acts 6:13-14), supporting his defense in both cases by prophetic scripture (Acts 7:42-43 and Acts 7:49-50). The outward connection of the argument is as follows: the carrying of the tent of Moloch was permitted in the time of Moses at the very same time when the Hebrew people had the true tent of testimony, constructed after the pattern shown to Moses by God Himself on the mountain. This aggravated the guilt of the Jews, while weakening the reproach brought against Stephen, because this tent — like the temple that replaced it — had only a temporary significance, by virtue of the historical laws governing its existence. “The tent of testimony” — η σκηνή τοῦ μαρτυρίου — “the tent of testimony,” that is, the tent in which God bore witness about Himself above all, revealed Himself as the true God — the tent of God’s revelations (cf. Num 7:89; Exod 25:8). “According to the pattern that he had seen” (Exod 25:9; the description of the tent Exod 25-37). An indication of the preeminent holiness of this tent, in contrast to the tent of Moloch.

Acts 7:45. Our fathers with Joshua, having received it, brought it in when they took possession of the nations that God drove out before our fathers. And so it was until the days of David. “Having received it” — διαδεξάμενοι, Slavonic: “having received” — that is, having received it as an inheritance from the preceding generation of the fathers. “Brought it into the possessions of the nations” (pagan ones) — this refers to after their conquest and the taking possession of the promised land. “Driven out by God” — and not by the people’s own strength. By this “driving out” (cf. Exod 34:24; Deut 11:23) is meant in general the conquest of this land, in the course of which its inhabitants were partly exterminated, partly enslaved, and partly moved to other lands. “Until the days of David” — ἕως τῶν ἡμερῶν Δαυίδ, Slavonic: “even to the days of David.” The preceding words in the Russian translation — “so it was” — are not in either the Greek or the Slavonic text, though they are not superfluous for the sense.

Acts 7:46. He found favor before God and asked that he might find a dwelling place for the God of Jacob. “David found favor before God and asked” — more precisely and better in the Slavonic text: “petitioned to find,” that is: “David enjoyed a special favor of God, and this was expressed especially in the fact that at his desire God consented to the building of a temple and designated a place for it in Jerusalem” (Metropolitan Filaret, sermon at the consecration of the church in Kolomna). The very prayer by which David prayed to God for his consent to the building of a temple is contained in Psalm 131 (Ps 131:2-5). Stephen evidently has this in mind as well, having borrowed from it the name “dwelling place of the God of Jacob.” A special revelation to David through the prophet Nathan deferred the fulfillment of his intention to the time of Solomon, whom God deemed worthy to be the builder of His temple (2 Sam 7 and following).

Acts 7:48. But the Most High does not dwell in temples made with hands, as the prophet says: Acts 7:49. Heaven is my throne, and earth is the footstool of my feet. What kind of house will you build for me, says the Lord, or what place is there for my rest? Acts 7:50. Has not my hand made all these things? “Yet the Most High does not dwell in houses made by human hands.” The expression does not mean that God does not dwell in man-made temples (He did dwell in Solomon’s temple), but only that He is not confined to any one temple or temples, and that these temples are not a fully adequate and exclusive dwelling for Him, to which His presence and revelations would be exclusively bound. This is confirmed by the subsequent quotation (almost verbatim from the LXX) of the corresponding words of the prophet Isaiah (Isa 66:1-2). As the Creator of heaven and earth, the Lord has no need of anything made by human hands for His rest and dwelling. With this prophetic saying Stephen refutes the error of a dying Judaism — that the Jerusalem Temple is the necessary and sole place of true worship — and like the Savior (John 4:21) strives to raise his listeners to the true understanding of worship in spirit and in truth. This is properly where the defensive part of Stephen’s speech concludes.

Acts 7:51. Stiff-necked people! men with uncircumcised hearts and ears! you always resist the Holy Spirit, as your fathers did, so do you. The tone of the speech suddenly changes sharply. Hitherto calm and entirely suited to the historical content, it suddenly rises to the pitch of a stern and merciless denunciation of the contemporary Jewish leadership in the persons of its representatives — the members of the Sanhedrin, Stephen’s present judges. With the inspiration and majesty of a prophet, Stephen reveals in them also the spirit of God-resistance inherent in ancient Jewry, but with the immeasurable difference that this God-resistance now has not the slightest justification and has surpassed all measure by the killing of the Messiah Himself. “Stiff-necked” — people of extreme stubbornness, insensibility, and self-will. This epithet was applied to the Jewish people by many ancient prophets, beginning with Moses. “Uncircumcised in heart and ears” — which, even in the presence of bodily circumcision, placed the Jews on a level with pagans, ascribing to them a concept of insufficient purity and dignity before God — a reproach especially keenly felt by Jewish pride and vanity. “In heart and ears” — (τῆ καρδία καί τᾶς ωσίν) — the two chief organs of spiritual perception, inner and outer. The entire expression signifies people who are pagansishly coarse and undeveloped, incapable of rising to the perception and appropriation of all that is holy (cf. Lev 26:41; Deut 10:16; Jer 4:4; Rom 2 and others). “You always resist the Holy Spirit” — a characterization of the incurable stubbornness and hardening of the Jews, with a twofold generalization: first, resistance to the Holy Spirit is attributed to the entire people as a collective person, even if there were individual exceptions within it. This is something the Lord and the Apostles did frequently in their denunciatory speeches for the sake of emphasis. Second, resistance to the Holy Spirit is attributed not only to the contemporary generation but to all previous ones: always — “as your fathers, so also you.”

Acts 7:52. Which of the prophets did your fathers not persecute? They killed those who foretold the coming of the Righteous One, whose betrayers and murderers you have now become — In proof of the universal and constant God-resistance of the Jews, Stephen recalls the persecution and killing of the prophets who had foretold the coming of the Messiah, allowing here again, for the strengthening of the speech, a grandly beautiful generalization, at the close of which he brands his judges with the powerful and intolerable mark of “betrayers and murderers” of the Messiah-Righteous One Himself.

Acts 7:53. you who received the law through the ministration of angels and did not keep it. This already powerful denunciation Stephen further intensifies by recalling the special God-given means, under whose guidance they were above all prepared and called by God to the knowledge and reception of the Messiah — something of which they had every right to be proud before all other nations, and of which they knew so poorly how to make use: “You who received the law as ordained through angels and did not keep it!” “You” — that is, primarily the generation contemporary with Moses, and from them by succession also you, their descendants. “As delivered by angels” — εις διαταγάς αγγέλων, Slavonic: “by the ordination of angels.” In the description of the Sinai Legislation there is no mention of angels. Evidently we have here a popular or rabbinic tradition, some reflection of which is already visible in the LXX translation at Deut 33:2: “at His right hand angels with Him” — instead of the literal expression of the original — “at His right hand a fiery law for them.” The idea of angelic participation in the Legislation also appears in Psalm 67 (Ps 67:18), is clearly expressed in Josephus (Antiq. XV, 5, 3), and is finally confirmed by the great authority of the Apostle Paul (Gal 3:19; Heb 2:2). Thus brilliantly concluded Stephen’s reply to his judges and accusers. “They, pretending to defend the law, said: ‘he has spoken blasphemous words against Moses’ (Acts 6:11); but he shows that they themselves blaspheme even more — not only against Moses but against God as well — and that they have always done so; that they themselves violated the customs, which are no longer needed; that they, accusing and calling him an opponent of Moses, were themselves opposing the Spirit — and not simply, but while committing murder — and that from ancient times they waged war against God...” (Chrysostom). Thus “here he presents them as disobedient to God, to angels, to prophets, to the Spirit, and to all” (Chrysostom). Throughout all this one also heard Stephen’s calm conviction that “if your fathers killed the foretellers (of the Messiah), it is no wonder that I too, who preach this Foretold One, will be killed by you, who take too much pride in your ancestors” (Theophylact).

Acts 7:55. But Stephen, being full of the Holy Spirit, gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God, “He saw the glory of God.” The historian expresses himself thus, evidently at a loss to describe the invisible and indescribable thing that Stephen saw. He undoubtedly saw God the Father, at whose right hand Jesus stood in glorified God-manly flesh. Since God the Father does not have an appearance accessible to human sight like the form of Jesus, so familiar to us, it is said that he saw “the glory of God,” which presumably appeared to him as a special heavenly light or cloud. All this Stephen immediately professes, both as a bold confessor and simply as one who was captivated by the wondrous vision and could not but express his rapture at once.

Acts 7:56. and he said: behold, I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God. “The heavens opened” — the plural indicates the opening to the spiritual eye of Stephen of the innermost sanctuary of heaven, or the highest heaven (cf. 2 Cor 12:2). “The Son of Man standing.” Notable here is the designation of the Lord Jesus as the Son of Man. This is the name the Lord Himself so loved to use of Himself, and yet the apostles call Him by it nowhere else — neither in the Gospels, nor in Acts, nor in the Epistles. The use of this designation here by Stephen is explained, according to commentators, by the fact that in that moment the spiritual vision of the prophet Daniel was passing before his mind’s eye — Daniel who also saw one like the Son of Man (Dan 7 and following). The Son of Man appears to Stephen “standing” at the right hand of God, whereas in similar sayings of the Lord Himself (Matt 26:64) and of the apostles (Mark 16:19; Eph 1:20), He is presented as sitting at the right hand of God. St. Gregory the Great explains this peculiarity as follows: “sitting is the posture of one who commands and reigns, while standing is the posture of one who fights and helps. Stephen saw standing the One whom he had as his Helper” (Homily 29 on the Ascension). It is possible that this standing of the Lord expressed His readiness to receive the soul of His faithful witness (Acts 7:59).

Acts 7:57. But they, crying out with a loud voice, covered their ears and all at once rushed upon him, “Crying out with a loud voice, they stopped their ears.” Both were done so as not to hear the alleged blasphemy.

Acts 7:58. and driving him out of the city, they began to stone him. And the witnesses laid down their garments at the feet of a young man named Saul, “They began to stone him.” The right to inflict capital punishment had been taken from the Jewish Sanhedrin by the Romans (cf. Matt 27:2; John 18:31; Josephus, Antiq. XX, 9, 1). Evidently this stoning, not even formally decreed by the Sanhedrin, was an act of a spontaneous outburst of fanaticism — a mob lynching by individual fanatics who then unleashed a bloody persecution on the rest of the Christians as well. With the barely concealed sympathy and connivance of the enraged Sanhedrin and the initial lack, perhaps, of Roman garrison troops to contain the pogrom and restore order, it becomes readily understandable why this persecution reached such significant proportions. The killers had previously led the martyr outside the city... in a miserable attempt at compliance with the law concerning blasphemers, whom they had declared this courageous confessor of Christ to be (Lev 24:14-16: “bring the one who has cursed outside the camp, and... let the whole congregation stone him”). The witnesses of a crime subject to death by stoning were required by the law (Deut 17:7) to throw the first stones, after which all the congregation followed. For convenience here, these witnesses (Acts 6:11-13) remove their outer wide garments, laying them (cf. Acts 22:20 — for safekeeping) at the feet of Saul, the future great Paul, who at that time approved the killing of the First Martyr and took an active part in the subsequent pogrom against the Christians.

Acts 7:59. and they were stoning Stephen, who was praying and saying: Lord Jesus! receive my spirit. Acts 7:60. And kneeling down, he cried out with a loud voice: Lord! do not hold this sin against them. And having said this, he fell asleep. As he was being stoned, after uttering two touching prayers — one for himself, the other for his killers — the First Martyr “fell asleep,” as the historian puts it, presenting his death as the sleep of rest and peace.