Acts 7:43

The answer of God to His own question: καί should be explained “ye actually took up” (“yea,” R.V., in Amos 5:26); ἀνελάβετε, “ye took up,” i.e., to carry in procession from one halting place to another. τὴν σκηνὴν, properly σκηνή = סִכּוּת, which has sometimes been explained as the tent or tabernacle made by the idolatrous Israelites in honour of an idol, like the tabernacle of the covenant in honour of Jehovah, but R.V. renders “Siccuth your king” (margin, “the tabernacle of your king”), Amos 5:26, see below. τοῦ Μολόχ : s in LXX, but in Hebrew, מַלְכְּכֶם, i.e., your king (as A.V. in margin, Amos 5:26). The LXX, either as explanatory, or perhaps through another reading מִלְכֹּם, 2 Kings 23:13, here render by the name of the idol. Sayce also (Patriarchal Palestine, p. 258) renders “Sikkuth your Malik,” i.e., the Babylonian god Sikkuth also represents “Malik,” the king, another Babylonian deity (= Moloch of the O.T.). Most commentators maintain that Acts 7:26 (Amos 5) is not in the original connected with Acts 7:25 as the LXX render, referring the latter verse back to Mosaic times. The LXX may have followed some tradition, but not only does the fact that the worship of Moloch was forbidden in the wilderness seem to indicate that its practice was a possibility, but there is also evidence that long before the Exodus Babylonian influence had made itself felt in the West, and the statement of Amos may therefore mean that the Babylonian god was actually worshipped by the Israelites in the wilderness (Sayce, u. s., p. 259). In margin of R.V. we have “shall take up,” i.e., carry away with you into exile (as a threat), while others take the verb not in a future but in a perfect sense, as referring to the practice of the contemporaries of the prophet: “de suo tempore hæc dicit Amos” (Blass). Siccuth or rather Saccuth is probably a proper name (a name given to Nin-ip, the warlike sun-god of Babylonia (Sayce)), and both it and Kewan (Kaivan), כִּיּוּן, represent Babylono-Assyrian deities (or a deity), see Schrader, Cun. Inscript. and the O. T., ii., 141, 142, E.T.; Sayce, u. s., Art [209] “Chiun” in Hastings' B.D., and Felten and Wendt, in loco. For the thought expressed here that their gods should go into captivity with the people, cf. Isaiah 46:2. καὶ τὸ ἄστρον … Ῥεμφάν, T.R. but R.V. Ῥεφάν, on the reading see critical notes, and Wendt, p. 177. For the Hebrew (Amos 5:26) כִּיּוּן Chiun, the LXX has Ῥαιφάν. How can we account for this? Probably LXX read the word not Chiun but Kewan כֵּיוָן (so in Syr. Pesh., Kewan = Saturn your idol), of which Ῥαιφάν is a corruption through Καιφάν (cf. similar change of כ into ר in Nahum 1:6, כאש in LXX ἀρχάς as if ראש, Robinson's Gesenius, p. 463). Kewan = Ka-ai-va-nu, an Assyrian name for the planet Saturn, called by the same name in Arabic and Persian (Hamburger, Real-Encyclopädie des Judentums, i., 2, 216, and Art [210] “Chiun,” u. s.); and this falls in perfectly with the Hebrew, “the star of your god” (your star-god) אֱלֹהֵיכֶם כּוֹכַב, the previous word, צַלְמֵיכֶם, “your images,” being placed after the two Hebrew words just quoted, cf. LXX (but see also Sayce, u. s., who renders “Chiun, your Zelem,” Zelem denoting another Babylonian deity = the image or disc of the sun). It seems plain at all events that both in the Hebrew and in the LXX reference is made to the divine honours paid to the god Saturn. In the words “ye took up the star,” etc., the meaning is that they took up the star or image which represented the god Saturn your god with some authorities (so in LXX, see Blass, in loco). ὑμῶν, i.e., the deity whom these Israelites thus placed on a level with Jehovah. If we take כִּיּוּן Chiun = the litter, or pedestal, of your gods, i.e., on which they were carried in procession, as if from כּוּן (a meaning advocated by Dr. Robertson Smith), and not as a proper name at all: “the shrines of your images, the star of your God,” R.V. margin, Amos 5:26, we may still infer from the mention of a star that the reference is to the debasement of planet worship (so Jerome conjectured Venus or Lucifer). It is to be noted that the vocalisation of Siccuth and Chiun is the same, and it has been recently suggested that for the form of these two names in our present text we are indebted to the misplaced zeal of the Massoretes, by the familiar trick of fitting the pointing of one word to the consonant skeleton of another here the pointing is taken from the word שִׁקּוּצ, “abomination,” see Art [211], “Chiun,” u. s. τοὺς τύπους, simulacra : in LXX, in opposition to σκηνή and ἄστρον. If the σκηνή is to be taken as meaning the tent or tabernacle containing the image of the god, it might be so described. τύποι is used, Jos., Ant., i., 19, 11; xv. 9, 5, of the images of Laban stolen by Rachel. προσκυνεῖν αὐτοῖς : not in LXX, where we read τοὺς τύπους αὐτῶν οὓς ἐποιήσατε ἑαυτοῖς. ἐπέκεινα βαβυλῶνος : in LXX and Hebrew “Damascus” ἐπέκ. only here in N.T., but in classical authors, and in LXX, Genesis 35:16 (21), Jeremiah 22:19 (and Aquila on passage in Genesis). “Babylon” may have been due to a slip, but more probably spoken designedly: “interpretatur vaticinium Stephanus ex eventu” (as the Rabbis often interpreted passages), see Wendt, in loco, and Light-foot. It may be that St. Stephen thus closes one part of his speech, that which shows how Israel, all through their history, had been rebellious, and how punishment had followed. If this conjecture is correct, we pass now to the way in which Stephen deals with the charge of blasphemy against the temple.

[209] grammatical article.

[210] grammatical article.

[211] grammatical article.