Acts 7:51

“You stiffnecked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, you do always resist the Holy Spirit. As your fathers did, so do you.”

Their attitude towards the Temple, exalting what God had not exalted, and turning from what God had provided, epitomised their whole attitude towards all that was of God. They altered what God had given. They altered His house, they changed His word, they resisted the Holy Spirit in every way, just as their fathers had before them (compare Isaiah 63:10). They were stiffnecked and their hearts were wrong (Deuteronomy 10:16) and their ears were deaf (Jeremiah 6:10). And even now they were refusing to hear the Holy Spirit as He made His new approach to men.

The rebuke might seem extreme but these were precisely the words in which the Law had addressed the people (he could not be accused of speaking against the Law here). ‘Stiffnecked' was a favourite description by God when speaking in the Law concerning the people (Exodus 32:9; Exodus 33:3; Exodus 33:5; Exodus 34:9; Deuteronomy 9:6; Deuteronomy 9:13; Deuteronomy 10:16). It was thus an ‘in' word expressing their unwillingness to listen and bend their necks to it. And the idea of being uncircumcised in heart was also Mosaic (Leviticus 26:41; Deuteronomy 10:16, compare Jeremiah 9:26), indicating hardened and blinded hearts. In fact it was language they themselves would quite willingly have used of the people whom they taught for that reason. But it was not something they were likely to accept from Stephen. It was one thing for them to pray humbly before God of themselves in this way, and address the people in this way, but it was quite another to be told it by this Hellenistic Jewish Christian.