Acts 7:22

Acts 7:22. And Moses was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians. Egypt was even at that early period famed for her learning, for her proficiency in art and science. We find the wisest of the Greeks visiting this land in search of wisdom. It is reasonable to suppose that ‘the adopted' of Pharaoh's daughter was instructed in all the varied branches of learning cultivated and prized in the country. The writings of Philo, which fairly represent the Jewish traditions which were of authority in the days of Stephen, enter into minute details concerning this ‘wisdom ‘of Egypt in which Moses was learned. Philo also relates how this adopted son of the Pharaohs was further instructed by Grecian, Assyrian, and Chaldean teachers.

The statement of Stephen respecting the learning of Moses is not derived from any Old Testament source, but solely from those Jewish traditions we have so often alluded to as used in this speech, and which were evidently authoritative in their time.

Wordsworth quotes here the quaint but beautiful words of Augustine on this passage, in which he argues for the consecration of heathen literature to the service of Christianity. ‘Do not we see,' he writes, ‘how Cyprian came laden out of Egypt with much gold and silver and raiment Cyprian, that most persuasive of teachers, that most blessed martyr; how, too, similarly laden, came out Lactantius, Victorinus, Optatus, Hilarius, not to speak of living men?' Augustine, by his mention thus of these famous Christian teachers, all deeply learned, shows how highly he estimates what is termed profane learning in the training of the teachers of the Gospel.

Mighty in words. By nature Moses seems to have been ‘slow of speech' (Exodus 4:10). He was evidently distrustful of his own powers, but God turned this slowness of speech into the most fervid eloquence, of which we possess many instances in his great and stirring life. Josephus preserves the tradition current among the Jews, that Moses was very able to persuade the people by his speaking (see Ant. iii. I. 4).

And in deeds. Stephen does not here allude to his later works in Egypt and in the wilderness, but to the deeds of his early life. The Old Testament is silent here, but Josephus mentions one of these, ‘How, when the Ethiopians invaded Egypt, Moses was the general of the army which defeated them' (Ant. ii. 10. 1).