Acts 7:35

Acts 7:35. This Moses. Very impressively and with marked emphasis, Stephen, in Acts 7:35-38, four times repeats the demonstrative pronoun thus: ‘This Moses,' ‘This is that Moses,' ‘This is he,' etc., whom the children of Israel refused, but whom God marked with such distinguished honour. By men rejected, but by God exalted to be ruler and deliverer; the miracle - worker in Egypt, in the Red Sea, in the desert; the one among men whom the great Prophet (the Messiah) afterwards to be raised up, should resemble; the friend of the ‘Angel' of the wilderness from whom he received the sacred law: this was he whom our fathers chose to thrust from them! [Might not those judges of the Sanhedrim conclude from this awful lesson of the past, that it does not follow that God rejects him whom they had rejected?]

The parallel between the great Hebrew lawgiver and his own crucified Master, scarcely veiled at first, except by the studied concealment of the name of Jesus Christ, as the argument proceeds, becomes closer and more marked. The choice of the titles which Stephen gives to Moses is evidently suggested by the striking parallel ever in his mind. They rejected Moses as ruler and judge; but God sent him to be their ruler, and designing him for an office far higher than that of judge, caused him to become ‘redeemer' of the whole nation.