Acts 7:17-44

CRITICAL REMARKS

Acts 7:18. Another king which knew not Joseph.—This was Aahmes, the first monarch of the eighteenth dynasty, “a prince of great force of character, brave, active, energetic, liberal, beloved by his subjects” (Rawlinson, The Story of the Nations—Egypt, p. 152).

Acts 7:19. Dealt subtilly with our kindred, or race.—With Aahmes the new policy towards the Israelites may have begun, but the author of the cruel decree appears to have been Seti I., while Rameses II. was the Pharaoh of the Oppression, and Menephtah II. the Pharaoh of the Exodus. They cast out.—Pharaoh’s object in the oppression appears to have been to render the lives of the Israelites so miserable that they would rather cast out their offspring than see them grow up to experience such woe as themselves endured. If he be read instead of they, then the well-known decree (Exodus 1:16) is that to which Stephen alludes.

Acts 7:22. Learned.—Better, trained or instructed.

Acts 7:24. Suffer wrong, injured, by beating (Exodus 2:11). The wrongdoer may have been one of Pharaoh’s taskmasters. A bas-relief recovered from the Nile Valley exhibits one of these standing over a gang of slaves, whip in hand, and saying as he lashes them, “To your work, O slaves: ye are idle!”

Acts 7:25. He supposed should be he was supposing, meaning that was his habitual mood of mind at this period. Would deliver them should be gives them deliverance or salvation; the present tense signifying either that the deliverance was at hand or was beginning with the blow then struck.

Acts 7:29. Madian, or Midian.—In the south-east of the Sinaitic peninsula.

Acts 7:30. Mount Sinai.—Exodus (Exodus 3:1) gives, as the scene of this Divine manifestation, Horeb, which was probably the name of the range, Sinai being the designation of the particular peak (Robinson, Eadie), though others regard Sinai as the range and Horeb as the peak. Whether Sinai, the mountain of the Law, was Jebel Serbal (Burckhardt, Lepsius, and Ebers), or Ras-es-Sufsafeh (Robinson, Stanley, Porter), or Jebel Musa (Wilson, Sandie), travellers are not decided. Josephus (Ant., II. xi. 1) and Paul (Galatians 4:25) locate it in Arabia, which Sayce thinks to a writer of the first century would mean Arabia Petræa. Wherefore he looks for Sinai not in the peninsula, but among the ranges of Mount Seir in the neighbourhood of Kadesh Barnea (see The Higher Criticism and the Monuments, pp. 263–373).

In Acts 7:32 the order of the Hebrew text is transposed.

Acts 7:35. A deliverer, or redeemer, λυτρωτήν.—A latent allusion to the work of Christ.

Acts 7:36. After that he had showed should be having done or wrought.

Acts 7:37. The Lord your are omitted in best MSS. Like unto me might be rendered as he raised up me.

Acts 7:38. The Church.—The use of ἐκκλησία—a term employed by the LXX. (Deuteronomy 18:16; Deuteronomy 23:1; Psalms 26:12)—for the congregation of Israel warrants the inference that Stephen at least regarded the Hebrew nation as a church and the new assembly of believers as its representative under the Christian dispensation.

Acts 7:41. They made a calf is one word in the original. The calf, or bullock, was selected in imitation of the Egyptians, who worshipped an ox, Apis at Memphis and Mnevis at Heliopolis.

Acts 7:42. In the book of the prophets.—The quotation is from Amos 5:25. The interrogation, Have ye offered unto Me? etc., is much used by the higher criticism to prove that the sacrificial system of the so-styled priest code had no existence in the time of Moses; but the prophet’s meaning is not that the Israelites did not offer sacrifices to Jehovah in the wilderness, but that, though they did, their hearts ran after their idolatries—the worship of Moloch and the Star Rephan—so that Jehovah rejected their insincere service.

Acts 7:43. The tabernacle of Moloch and the star of your god Remphan.—The Hebrew might be rendered Siccuth your king and Chiun (or the shrine of) your images, the star of your god (R.V.), Siccuth being in this case the name of one idol which the Hebrews worshipped as their king, and Chiun the name of another, believed to have been the planet Saturn, of which the name among the Syrians and Arabians was Kçwân. Stephen, however, followed the LXX., who understood Siccuth as equivalent to “tabernacle”—i.e., the portable tent in which the idol’s image was carried—and for “your king” substituted, with some ancient MSS., Moloch, the idol meant; while for “Chiun your images” they read “the star of your god Rephan,” which Kircher believes to be Koptic for Saturn, and Schrader regards as a corruption from Kewan. That the LXX. failed to intelligibly translate the second Hebrew clause was of small moment to Stephen. The words, “the star of the god,” showed that God had given the Israelites up to worship the host of heaven. The substitution of Babylon for Damascus in the Hebrew and the LXX. is explainable by the fact that Babylon had long been associated in Jewish history with the exile.

Acts 7:44. The tabernacle of the testimony in the wilderness was so called because it contained the Ark in which the two tables of the Decalogue were kept (Numbers 11:15; Numbers 17:13).

HOMILETICAL ANALYSIS.—Acts 7:17

The Founder of the Nation; or, the Biography of Moses in Three Chapter s

I. From one to forty (Acts 7:20).—

1. Born in an evil time. When the oppression of his countrymen was so cruel that either Hebrew parents cast out their children to perish rather than see them live to experience the bitter servitude under which themselves had groaned, or Hebrew children were cast out by Pharaoh’s order to the end that they might not live. This latter interpretation accords best with the Old Testament narrative (Exodus 1:22).

2. Exposed to a cruel fate. Brought forth in an hour of sorrow, with no better prospect before him than either to be strangled by a midwife’s cord or thrown into the river, Moses was for three months, on account of his extreme beauty, secretly nourished in the house of his father Amram; but at length, when concealment was no longer possible, in an ark of bulrushes, daubed with slime and pitch, he was laid by his mother in the flags by the Nile side (Exodus 2:3). The writer to the Hebrews cites the conduct of Moses’ parents as an instance of faith (Hebrews 11:23).

3. Rescued by a strange providence. By accident it seemed, though in fact by the overruling hand of God, the daughter of Pharaoh—the very king whose decree had caused his exposure—having with her maidens come to the river side to wash, found him, “took him up” out of the water, and “nourished him as her own son”—i.e., adopted him. (See Exodus 2:5.) Josephus says this daughter of Pharaoh was named Thermuthis. She was the sister of Rameses II. or daughter of Seti I. (See “Critical Remarks.”)

4. Educated in a king’s court. Probably like Rameses himself, Moses was for some years “left in the house of the women and of the royal concubines, after the manner of the maidens of the palace” (Brugsch, Egypt under the Pharaohs, Acts 2:39), where he received the nurture and training requisite to fit him for the higher studies and more arduous exercises of youth and manhood. Tradition speaks of him as having studied “mathematics, natural philosophy, engineering, warfare, grammar, and medicine,” while Josephus (Ant., II. x. 1) places to his credit a successfully conducted campaign against the Ethiopians. With this accords Stephen’s statement that Moses “was instructed in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and was mighty in his words and works” (Acts 7:22).

II. From forty to eighty (Acts 7:23).—

1. A patriotic inspiration. “To visit his brethren, the children of Israel”—to visit in the sense of sympathising with and succouring them (compare Luke 1:68; Luke 7:16; Acts 15:14). Whether special means were taken under God by Moses or his mother to keep alive the knowledge of his kinship with the down-trodden Hebrews is not recorded, but, on reaching man’s estate, the sense of that kinship having asserted itself, he refused any longer to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter (Hebrews 11:24).

2. A chivalrous interference. Having paid a visit to the brickfields, with which up to this time he may have been comparatively unacquainted, he beheld what the monuments tell us was a frequent scene—one of his brethren suffering wrong or enduring blows at the taskmaster’s hand; and, his patriotic blood leaping within his veins, he warded off the blows, laid the ruthless slave-driver lifeless at his feet, and, thinking that nobody saw, buried him in the sand (Exodus 2:12).

3. A mistaken supposition. He imagined his countrymen would have understood how God had called him to deliver them, but they did not. The blow that day struck was premature. The people were not ready to rise, and he was not yet qualified to lead. Forty years more of suffering for them, and of discipline for him, were needed before the great bell of liberty would ring in Egypt’s land. Men are often in a hurry; God never is. Men often strike before the iron is hot; God never does.

4. An angry response. The day after, when he would have parted two of his quarrelling countrymen, saying, “Sirs, ye are brethren; why do ye wrong one to another?” (compare Genesis 13:8), he that did the wrong thrust him away, saying, “Who made thee a ruler and a judge over us? wouldst thou kill me as thou didst the Egyptian yesterday?” Wrongdoers always resent the interference of third parties—a clear proof they are in the wrong.

5. A precipitate flight. Having discovered through the choleric questions of his countrymen that his offer of himself as a deliverer was premature, and that his deed of yesterday was known, he saw that thenceforward Egypt would be no place of safety for him, and accordingly betook himself to Midian (see “Critical Remarks”).

6. An obscure life. There, having met with Jethro the shepherd priest of the land, who granted him Zipporah to wife, he forgot his early patriotic ambitions in the humdrum occupation of feeding sheep, and in conjugal felicity (Exodus 2:16; Exodus 2:22).

III. From eighty to one hundred and twenty (Acts 7:30).—

1. A great sight.

(1) When? At the close of the second period of forty years, on the death of Rameses II. (Exodus 2:23). At the opening of the third. At the beginning of the reign of Menephtah II. When the oppression of the people had become intolerable (Exodus 2:23). When God’s time, as distinguished from Moses’, had arrived.

(2) Where? In the wilderness of Mount Sinai (see “Critical Remarks”), at the back side of the desert, at the mountain of God, even Horeb (Exodus 3:1). God delights to reveal Himself to His people in solitudes.

(3) What? “An angel”—the angel of the Lord, or Jehovah” (Exodus 3:2)—“appeared to him in a flame of fire in a bush,” which burned and yet was not consumed.

(4) How? Wherein lay the greatness of the sight? In its unexpectedness, in its supernaturalness, in its impressiveness.
2. A heavenly voice. That of Jehovah, who

(1) revealed His own character as the covenant God of the Hebrew fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (Acts 7:32);

(2) cautioned Moses against irreverence before the Holy One, whose presence consecrated the very ground whereon He stood (Acts 7:33);

(3) announced that He (Jehovah) had beheld and sympathised with the sufferings and heard the groanings of His people in Egypt (Acts 7:34); and

(4) intimated His intention to deliver them and to despatch Moses into Egypt for that purpose (Acts 7:34).

3. An exalted commission. Considering

(1) by whom it was issued—God, the God of glory (Acts 7:2) and the God of the fathers (Acts 7:32);

(2) to whom it was entrusted—the man whom his countrymen had refused, but whom God had chosen;
(3) through whose hand it was to be executed, that of the angel who had appeared to him; and
(4) for what it was appointed—that Moses should be to Israel, who had rejected him, both a ruler and a deliverer, or redeemer, and in both (according to Stephen) a type of Christ.
4. A splendid achievement.

(1) As a liberator he (Moses) brought out the children of Israel from Egypt, having wrought, in his work of emancipation, which began with the Exodus and ended (so far as Moses was concerned) with the forty years of wandering, signs, and wonders (compare Acts 2:22), first in Egypt (Exodus 7-12), next at the Red Sea (Exodus 14), and after that in the wilderness (Exodus 15; Exodus 16; Exodus 17; etc.).

(2) As a prophet he foretold to them the coming, in after years, of a prophet like unto, but greater than, himself, even their Messiah, whom in the person of Jesus they had refused to hear.

(3) As a lawgiver he conferred upon them “living oracles” received by himself from Jehovah—viz., the whole system of moral and ceremonial precepts composing the law of Moses, here characterised as “living” to describe not their effect, which was not always life-giving because of the corruption of men’s hearts (Romans 8:3), but their design, which was to impart life to all by whom they should be obeyed (Leviticus 18:5; Romans 7:10).

(4) As an architect he gave them the tabernacle of the testimony in the wilderness, which he made according to the pattern he had seen—in the mount of Sinai (Exodus 25:9; Exodus 25:40).

5. A disgraceful requital. As at the commencement of his illustrious career, so at its close, his countrymen “thrust him from them,” declined to obey his instructions, but turned back into Egypt, and (Acts 7:39) yet Moses, towards the termination of his leadership, thought less of his people’s thankfulness to himself than of their deplorable ingratitude to God (Deuteronomy 32:6).

See in Moses:

1. A pattern of true greatness.
2. An example of life’s vicissitudes.
3. A type of Jesus Christ.

HINTS AND SUGGESTIONS

Acts 7:17. The Time of the Promise.

I. Fixed by God, as all times are.

II. Remembered by God, who forgets none of His sovereign and gracious appointments.

III. Honoured by God, who never fails to implement a promise He has made, when the time for its fulfilment has arrived.

The Increase of Nations.—Occurs as in Israel.

I. Always in accordance with Divine providential arrangements (Job 12:23; Psalms 107:38).

II. Often in spite of the most adverse circumstances (Exodus 1:12).

III. Never beyond the limits prescribed by God (Acts 17:26).

Acts 7:20. The Story of Moses.

I. The son of a Hebrew mother.—No imaginary or legendary character but a real historical personage. Distinguished in infancy by remarkable beauty, which His parents regarded as an omen of future greatness (Exodus 2:2; Hebrews 11:23). Exposed to a cruel fate—cast out into the Nile, placed in an ark of bulrushes by the river’s brink. Compare the story of Sargina I. of Babylon. See below.

II. The foundling of an Egyptian princess.—In the providence of God this led to the preservation of Moses’ life and his education in such a way as to fit him for his subsequent calling and career. The All-wise knows the best schools in which to train those whom He intends afterwards to employ as His instruments.

III. The kinsman of slaves.—The feeling of nationality cannot easily be eradicated from the human heart. Out of this rises love of country, patriotism, sense of brotherhood. When it first began to stir in Moses cannot be told; at the age of forty it was too strong to be suppressed (Hebrews 11:24).

IV. The liberator of his people.—Though not exactly in his time, yet in God’s time, he was honoured to lead his down-trodden countrymen from the house of bondage (Hebrews 11:27).

V. The founder of a nation.—Having conducted his followers to Sinai, he there formed them into a people, with a regularly organised community, with laws and statutes for the regulation of their civil and religious affairs.

VI. The prophet of a new religion.—He imparted to them the terms on which alone they could be regarded as Jehovah’s people, or Jehovah could consider Himself their God—gave them the ten commandments and the multifarious ordinances of the ceremonial or Levitical law.

NOTE—Legend of the infancy of Sargina I., of Babylon, who lived about fifteen or sixteen centuries before the Christian era—i.e., not long before the birth of Moses.

1. I am Sargina, the great king; the king of Agani.
2. My mother knew not my father: my family were the rulers of the land.
3. My city was the city of Atzu-pirani, which is on the banks of the river Euphrates.
4. My mother conceived me: in a secret place she brought me forth.
5. She placed me in an ark of bulrushes: with bitumen she closed me up.
6. She threw me into the river, which did not enter into the ark to me.
7. The river carried me: to the dwelling of Akki, the water-carrier, it brought me.
8. Akki, the water-carrier, in his goodness of heart lifted me up from the river.
9. Akki, the water-carrier, brought me up as his own son.
10. Akki, the water-carrier, placed me with a tribe of Foresters.
11. Of this tribe of Foresters, Ishtar made me king.
12. And for … years I reigned over them.—Records of the Past, Acts 7:3, first series.

Acts 7:31. The Burning Bush (Exodus 3:2).

I. A supernatural phenomenon.—Revealed by two things:

(1) the fact that the bush, though burning, was not consumed; and
(2) the voice which proceeded from its midst.

II. An impressive spectacle.—It caused Moses to tremble. Chiefly

(1) Before the Divine presence (Acts 7:32) and

(2) At the Divine communications (Acts 7:33).

III. A suggestive symbol.—

(1) Of the holiness of God, which burns against every manifestation of sin; (Hebrews 12:29) (the flame).

(2) Of the imperishability of the Church of God which may be cast into the fire but cannot be destroyed (Isaiah 43:2) (the bush).

Acts 7:33. Holy Ground.

I. Where God manifests His presence.
II. Where God reveals His character.
III. Where God makes known His will.
IV. Where God communes with His people.
V. Where God is worshipped by believing hearts.

Acts 7:35. The Angel in the Bush.—That this was no created spirit but the angel of Jehovah, or Jehovah Himself, is clearly taught by Stephen, who besides calling Him the Lord (Acts 7:31) represents Him as—

I. Assuming the Divine name.—“I am the God of thy fathers” (Acts 7:32).

II. Claiming Divine worship.—“Loose the shoes from thy feet” (Acts 7:33).

III. Exercising Divine attributes.—“I have seen,” “I have heard” (Omniscience); “I have come down,” “I will send” (Omnipotence) (Acts 7:34).

IV. Speaking Divine words.—Imparting living oracles unto Moses (Acts 7:38).

Acts 7:37. A Prophet like unto Moses.—See on Acts 3:22.

Acts 7:38. The Church in the Wilderness: a Type of The Christian Church on Earth.—In respect of—

I. Its origin.—Called out of Egypt, the then symbol of the world; redeemed from the house of bondage which was emblematical of man’s natural condition.

II. Its position.—In the wilderness; a fitting picture of the spiritually barren world through which the Church of Christ has to journey.

III. In its privileges.—Manifold and high.

1. The divine presence. The angel of the Lord—which also the Church of the New Testament enjoys (Matthew 18:20; Matthew 28:20).

2. A divinely qualified teacher. Moses with whom the angel spake at Mount Sinai—which, too, the Christian Church has in the indwelling Holy Spirit (John 16:13; 1 John 2:20; 1 John 2:27), and in the apostles and prophets, pastors and teachers (1 Corinthians 12:28; Ephesians 4:11), bestowed upon it by its exalted Head.

3. A divine revelation. The “living oracles” delivered to Moses—which again the gospel Church possesses in the words of Christ and His apostles preserved in the New Testament records (Hebrews 5:12).

4. A divine institution.—The tabernacle—which once more has its counterpart in the Christian sanctuary, congregation, or Church.

IV. In its business.—Which was twofold.

1. To witness for Jehovah in the then world. Israel Jehovah’s witnesses (Isaiah 43:10); the apostles Christ’s witnesses (Acts 5:32); and Christians generally expected to be living epistles of Christ (2 Corinthians 3:3).

2. To overcome its adversaries on the way to Canaan. So Christians have a constant warfare to maintain against innumerable foes (Ephesians 6:10; 1 Timothy 6:12; 2 Timothy 2:3).

V. In its imperfection.—The Church in the wilderness was guilty of not a few heinous sins—disobedience to its leader, Moses, hankering after Egypt, apostasy from Jehovah; all which have their equivalents in the faults of the people of Christ.

VI. In its discipline.—The Church in the wilderness was chastised for its sins, first by judicial visitations, such as the fiery serpents, next by powerful adversaries like the Moabites and Midianites, which were raised up against them, after that by spiritual hardening, so that they plunged into deeper idolatry, and lastly by exile and captivity in Babylon. So the Church of to-day, either as a whole or in its individual members, is not left without chastisement for its shortcomings and backslidings, its transgressions and iniquities. It, too, has its providential visitations by which its numbers are reduced, its open and secret opponents by which its progress is hindered, its seasons of spiritual decline, in which it lapses from the faith, its removals into exile and captivity, where it sighs and cries for the liberty it once enjoyed.

VII. In its goal.—Canaan, which in a heavenly form is the destination of the New Testament Church.

Acts 7:39. The Apostasy of Israel.

I. Its occasion.—The absence of Moses. When the Christian Church reposes with too much dependence on its visible leaders it is prone to withdraw its confidence from its invisible Head.

II. Its form.—A lapsing into the idolatry of Egypt, which led to the people’s making, or Aaron making at their request, an image of the famous calf or bull worshipped in Egypt, either the bull Apis at Memphis, or the bull Mnevis at Heliopolis. How deeply ingrained in them this calf or bull worship had been appears from the circumstance that centuries after their settlement in Canaan they, in times of spiritual declension, reverted to it (1 Kings 12:28; 2 Kings 11:12). So when the New Testament Israel loses sight of its invisible Head it is prone to revert to its old sins (2 Peter 1:9).

III. Its punishment.—

1. Withdrawal of Divine restraint. Joined to their idols they were left alone (Hosea 4:17). Forsaken by them, God in turn forsook them (2 Chronicles 15:2). Having given up Jehovah He gave up them, so that they sank into deeper and more shameless idolatries. Instead of offering unto Jehovah slain beasts and sacrifices during the forty years of wilderness wandering as they should have done, they carried about the tabernacle of Moloch, a small portable tent in which was enshrined the image of the idol and a model of the planet Saturn, to which, according to Diodorus Siculus, horrid child sacrifices were offered at Carthage. So when God, in punishment for sin, withdraws restraining grace from His people, they commonly plunge into viler and more heinous wickedness than they had before committed, sin being thus avenged by liberty to sin.

2. Infliction of positive pains. The Israelites, through that very tendency to apostatise so early manifested by them, were ultimately driven into exile beyond Babylon; and so will they who persevere in forsaking the living God be eventually punished with perpetual banishment from His holy presence (Romans 2:8; 2 Thessalonians 1:9).

Acts 7:44. The Tabernacle of the Testimony in the Wilderness.

I. An actual historic building.—Necessary now to insist on this since the higher critics have imagined and keep on asserting that the Mosaic tabernacle never had a veritable existence at all, but was only a fictional structure, fashioned after the model of the temple but on a smaller scale, and projected into the prehistoric wilderness as a convenient free space on which it might be fictionally erected without risk of colliding with historical and well-authenticated facts—which might be troublesome. But in addition to the theory of a fictional tabernacle being attended with numberless insuperable difficulties—such as, the unlikelihood of a post-exilic fiction-monger entering into minute details of construction like those given in Exodus; the improbability of a late author, who had never himself been in the wilderness, furnishing so accurate a representation of the geographical situation as archæological research shows the Mosaic account to be; the inconceivability of any honest writer stating that the tabernacle had been made by Moses after a pattern shown to him by Jehovah in the Mount, when in point of fact it was never made at all, but only imagined by the writer himself, who took the first or second temple for his model; the falsification of Pentateuchal history which must ensue if the tabernacle of Moses never was an actual building; the contradiction to statements in the historical and prophetical books which must be made if the fiction theory is correct; in addition to these the actual historic character of the tabernacle is vouched for by both Stephen and the writer to the Hebrews (Acts 8:2; Acts 8:5; Acts 9:2; Acts 9:6; Acts 9:8; Acts 9:11; Acts 9:21; Acts 13:10). See an article by the present writer, entitled “The Tabernacle and the Temple” in The Theological Monthly, April 1891.

II. A divinely sketched building.—If Moses was the constructor of the tabernacle (and in this sense may be styled its architect) its true designer was God. This introduces into the religion of ancient Israel that which is so keenly objected to, but without which no religion can be of permanent value or saving power—viz., the supernatural element. If Christianity is not “of God” in the highest sense of that expression, it will not succeed permanently in binding the consciences of men.

III. A provisional building.—It was intended for the temporary accommodation of the Ark during the period of the wilderness wanderings, and until a permanent habitation could be secured for it in the place which Jehovah should choose. Hence it was in due course superseded by the Temple of Solomon, which in turn has been displaced by the Christian Church.

IV. A symbolic building.—

1. Of the Divine fellowship with Israel.

(1) The Holy of Holies with its Ark of the Covenant, its Glory burning between the cherubim, its mercy seat, its tables of testimony, etc. (Hebrews 9:2), was an emblem of the divine presence, the divine majesty, the divine character, and the divine conditions of fellowship between Jehovah and Israel.

(2) The holy place, with its altar of incense, its seven-branched candlestick, and its tables of shew bread, was an emblem of what that fellowship consisted in—spiritual acceptance, spiritual illumination, and spiritual nourishment of the believing worshipper by Jehovah on the one side, and on the other spiritual adoration of God (the incense), spiritual shining for God (the lamps), and spiritual consecration to God (the loaves).
(3) The outer court, with its altar of burnt offering and laver, was an emblem of the only way in which such fellowship with Jehovah could be reached—viz., by atonement (the altar) and regeneration (the laver).
2. Of the Divine fellowship with believers in the Christian Church. This thought is elaborated and fully wrought out in the Epistle to the Hebrews (Acts 9:10).