Acts 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.

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!