Stephen Puts the Accusation Back Into Israel’s History

The question is the formal opening of a hearing: do you admit the charges? The high priest is probably still Caiaphas, in office until AD 36. What follows is the longest speech in the Book of Acts, and it takes the question far more broadly than it was asked.

“Men, brethren, and fathers” is the opening Paul will use to a Jerusalem crowd in 22:1. “The God of glory” is a phrase from Psalm 29:3. Genesis tells of the call at Haran, but Genesis 15:7 and Nehemiah 9:7 say God brought Abram out of Ur, and Philo and Josephus also place a first call there.

The words are Genesis 12:1, quoted nearly exactly, but without “and from thy father’s house”. The omission suits the account Stephen gives, in which Abraham leaves his country first and parts from his father only later, at Haran.

Haran lay on the upper Euphrates, in what is now south-eastern Turkey, a centre of the moon god’s worship. The Samaritan Pentateuch gives Terah’s age at death as 145 rather than 205, which would put his death before Abram left, and some think Stephen follows a reading of that kind. “Wherein ye now dwell” addresses the council directly.

“Not so much as to set his foot on” borrows the phrase of Deuteronomy 2:5, where Israel is told not to take the land of Edom, “no, not so much as a foot breadth”. The only ground Abraham ever owned in Canaan was a burial cave, bought from the sons of Heth (Genesis 23).

Genesis 15:13 gives four hundred years; Exodus 12:40 says the stay in Egypt was 430, and Paul counts 430 from the promise to the Law (Galatians 3:17). Stephen uses the round figure. “Sojourn” is the adjective paroikos, a resident alien, living in a land without citizen’s rights.

Genesis 15:14 ends “they shall come out with great substance”. Stephen closes instead with words from Exodus 3:12, “ye shall serve God upon this mountain”, and makes the mountain “this place”, the very word the witnesses used of the temple in 6:13-14.

“And so” means in this way, within the covenant: Isaac is born and circumcised under the promise, not before it. “Patriarchs” is used here of Jacob’s twelve sons, as in the Jewish work called the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs; in 2:29 Peter gave the same title to David.

“Moved with envy” is zeloo, from the same root as the “indignation”, zelos, that moved the high priest against the apostles in 5:17. Stephen’s selection lets the council hear its own motive in the patriarchs. “God was with him” is the refrain of Genesis 39:2 and 39:21.

“Favour and wisdom”, charis and sophia, are the two qualities the Book of Acts has just given Stephen himself: “full of grace”, in the oldest manuscripts, and a wisdom his opponents could not resist (6:8, 10). The accused man describes Joseph in the terms used of himself.

“Sustenance” is chortasmata, fodder or provisions, the word the Greek of Genesis uses for the provender carried for animals (Genesis 24:25; 42:27). A pastoral family needed food for its flocks as well as its people. “Chanaan” is the Greek spelling of Canaan.

“Corn” in 1611 English meant grain of any kind, not maize; the Greek is sitia, grain or wheat. The first journey is told in Genesis 42, when ten brothers go down and Benjamin stays at home.

“Was made known” is anagnorizomai, the verb the Greek of Genesis 45:1 uses when Joseph “made himself known unto his brethren”. In Greek drama the same word family named the moment of recognition that turns a plot.

A Hebrew manuscript of Exodus from Qumran also reads seventy-five for the family of Jacob at Exodus 1:5, so the larger number was not only a Greek variant but existed in Hebrew texts of Stephen’s day.

Egypt lies below the hill country of Canaan, so going there is always “going down” in the Hebrew Bible. Jacob made Joseph swear not to bury him in Egypt (Genesis 47:29-30), and that oath is why the next verse carries the bodies back.

Sychem is Shechem, near the “parcel of ground that Jacob gave to his son Joseph” (John 4:5). By Stephen’s day it was Samaritan country. That the patriarchs lie buried in land now held by Samaritans is a point a Jerusalem audience would not have enjoyed; whether Stephen meant it so is an inference.

The oldest manuscripts read “the promise which God had declared”, homologeo, rather than “sworn”. “Grew and multiplied” is the language of Exodus 1:7, where the fulfilment of the promise to Abraham is already under way in a foreign land.

Exodus 1:8 is quoted exactly, and the oldest manuscripts add “over Egypt”. “Another” is heteros, a king of a different kind, perhaps a new dynasty. With Joseph forgotten, the family’s protection in Egypt ends.

“Dealt subtilly” is katasophizomai, to outwit by cunning, the verb Pharaoh uses in the Greek of Exodus 1:10: “let us deal wisely with them”. “Cast out” suggests exposure, the Greco-Roman practice of abandoning unwanted infants, though Pharaoh’s order was to throw the boys into the Nile (Exodus 1:22).

“Exceeding fair” is literally “fair to God”, a Hebrew way of forming a superlative, or else “beautiful in God’s sight”. Exodus 2:2 calls him “a goodly child” and Hebrews 11:23 “a proper child”, fine in appearance. Three months is as long as his mother could hide him.

“Took him up” is anaireo, which in Greek papyri can mean lifting up an exposed child and adopting it. Exodus says “he became her son” (Exodus 2:10). Josephus gives the princess a name, Thermuthis; the Book of Jubilees calls her Tharmuth.

Exodus says nothing of Moses’ education. Philo describes Egyptian tutors teaching him arithmetic, geometry, music and the hieroglyphs. “Mighty in words” sits oddly beside Moses’ own protest that he was “slow of speech, and of a slow tongue” (Exodus 4:10); Stephen may mean his writings.

Exodus gives no age here. Dividing Moses’ 120 years (Deuteronomy 34:7) into three forties, in Egypt, in Midian and in the wilderness, is found in later Jewish tradition too. “Visit” is episkeptomai, the verb of God visiting his people (Luke 1:68; 7:16).

“Avenged” is literally “did justice for”. Exodus 2:12 adds that Moses “looked this way and that way” and hid the body in the sand. Stephen leaves out the furtiveness and tells only the defence of the oppressed.

Nothing in Exodus says what Moses supposed; this sentence is Stephen’s own reading of the event. “By his hand” is a Hebrew way of speaking of agency, and it returns in verse 35, where God sends Moses “by the hand of the angel”.

“Set them at one again” is how the King James renders synallasso, to reconcile. The English phrase “at one” is the root of the word “atonement”, at-one-ment. Stephen also gives Moses words not in Exodus 2:13: “Sirs, ye are brethren.”

“Thrust him away” is aposato, and the same verb returns in verse 39 for the whole people: “our fathers... thrust him from them”. The one man who shoved Moses aside in a quarrel becomes a picture of the nation.

The question is quoted word for word from the Greek of Exodus 2:14. It tells Moses that what he did in secret is known, and Exodus adds the consequence: “Moses feared, and said, Surely this thing is known.” “Diddest” is an old form of “didst”.

“Stranger” is paroikos, the resident alien, the word of verse 6 for Abraham’s seed in a foreign land. Moses named his first son Gershom, saying “I have been a stranger in a strange land” (Exodus 2:22). The two sons are Gershom and Eliezer (Exodus 18:3-4).

Exodus 3:1 calls the mountain Horeb; Stephen uses Sinai, the name of the mountain of the Law, as Exodus itself does later. “An angel of the Lord in a flame of fire in a bush” follows the Greek of Exodus 3:2 closely.

“Sight” is horama, the word the Book of Acts later uses for the visions of Peter and Paul (10:17; 16:9). “Drew near to behold” is katanoeo, to look closely and study, the look of a man inspecting something strange. Only then does the voice come.

“Trembled” is entromos, the word used later of the jailer at Philippi who came in “trembling” (16:29). In Exodus the command to take off his shoes comes before God names himself (Exodus 3:5-6); Stephen reverses the order, putting the name of the fathers’ God first.

Joshua receives the same command from the captain of the LORD’s host outside Jericho (Joshua 5:15). Jewish tradition held that the priests ministered barefoot in the temple. Stephen, accused of speaking against the holy place, uses the word “holy” first of a patch of desert.

“I have seen, I have seen” imitates a Hebrew idiom, the verb doubled for emphasis, “seeing I have seen” (Exodus 3:7). “Am come down” is the language of God coming down at Babel (Genesis 11:5) and at Sinai (Exodus 19:20).

“Deliverer” is lytrotes, redeemer, one who pays a ransom, a word used nowhere else in the New Testament. The Greek Psalter uses it of God, “my strength, and my redeemer” (Psalm 19:14). On the Emmaus road the disciples had said “we trusted that it had been he which should have redeemed Israel” (Luke 24:21).

The “Red sea” is the Greek name; the Hebrew is yam suph, sea of reeds. The wonders and signs of Moses answer the “miracles and wonders and signs” Peter ascribed to Jesus (2:22) and the wonders Stephen himself was doing (6:8).

The oldest manuscripts end the quotation at “like unto me” and lack “him shall ye hear”. The Greek repeats houtos, “this one”, at the head of verses 35, 36, 37 and 38, a hammering rhetorical pattern: this Moses, this man, this is he.

“Lively” in 1611 meant living, as in the “lively stones” of 1 Peter 2:5; the Greek is logia zonta, living oracles. Paul says the Jews were entrusted with “the oracles of God” (Romans 3:2). Stephen speaks of the Law with high honour, answering the charge that he blasphemed it.

At Kadesh the people said “let us make a captain, and let us return into Egypt” (Numbers 14:4). Stephen places the turn in their hearts, before any journey; Egypt stands for a return to what they knew. “Would not obey” is literally “would not become obedient”.

The words are Exodus 32:1. Aaron made one calf, yet the people ask for “gods”, plural; the Hebrew elohim can be either, and the Greek chooses the plural. When Nehemiah retells the moment the people say “This is thy God” (Nehemiah 9:18). “This Moses” is contemptuous.

“Made a calf” is a single Greek verb, moschopoieo, calf-making, a word not found in any earlier Greek writing, perhaps coined for this sentence. The idol and the festivity are one action in Exodus 32:6: “they sat down to eat and to drink, and rose up to play.”

“Gave them up” is paradidomi, the verb of Paul’s refrain in Romans 1:24-28, “God gave them up”. Worship of “the host of heaven”, the stars, was forbidden in Deuteronomy 4:19 and practised under Manasseh (2 Kings 21:3). “The book of the prophets” is the scroll of the Twelve minor prophets, counted as one book.

In Amos 5:26 the Hebrew names are Sikkuth and Kiyyun, the second probably Kaiwan, an Assyrian name for the planet Saturn. The Greek translation turned them into “Moloch” and “Rephan”, and Stephen quotes the Greek. Amos says “beyond Damascus”; the speech has “beyond Babylon”, looking to the later exile.

“Tabernacle of witness” is skene tou martyriou, the Greek Old Testament’s name for the tent of meeting, and it puts “witness” at the centre of Israel’s worship in a book about witnesses (1:8). “Fashion” is typos, the pattern shown on the mountain (Exodus 25:40), which Hebrews 8:5 also quotes.

“That came after” is diadexamenoi, having received it in succession, the tent handed down from the wilderness generation to the next like an heirloom. “The Gentiles” are the nations of Canaan. The tabernacle travelled for centuries; it was never a fixed address for God.

The wording comes from Psalm 132:5, David’s vow “until I find out a place for the LORD, an habitation for the mighty God of Jacob”. The oldest manuscripts read “a dwelling for the house of Jacob”, a harder reading that scribes seem to have smoothed into “the God of Jacob”.

The shortest line of the speech, six words. At the dedication of this same house Solomon himself prayed: “the heaven and heaven of heavens cannot contain thee; how much less this house that I have builded?” (1 Kings 8:27). Stephen’s point had been made first by the builder.

“Made with hands”, cheiropoietos, is almost a technical word for idols in the Greek Old Testament (Leviticus 26:1; Isaiah 46:6). At Jesus’ trial false witnesses accused him of threatening “this temple that is made with hands” (Mark 14:58). Paul will say the same to the Athenians in 17:24.

Isaiah 66:1 comes from the last chapter of Isaiah, spoken to people rebuilding after the exile. “The place of my rest” pushes against Psalm 132:14, which says of Zion, “This is my rest for ever.” The prophet and the psalm stand in tension, and Stephen quotes the prophet.

Isaiah 66:2 states it: “all those things hath mine hand made.” Stephen turns it into a question, “Hath not my hand made all these things?” The speech has now set God’s one hand, which made everything, against human hands, which made the calf (verse 41) and the house (verse 48).

“Stiffnecked” is the word God used of Israel at the golden calf: “thou art a stiffnecked people” (Exodus 33:5), so it follows the calf of verse 41 exactly. “Uncircumcised... ears” comes from Jeremiah 6:10: “their ear is uncircumcised, and they cannot hearken.”

Jewish tradition held that Isaiah was sawn in two under Manasseh (compare Hebrews 11:37), and 2 Chronicles 24:21 tells of Zechariah son of Jehoiada stoned in the court of the temple, a precedent pointed enough here. “Betrayers” is prodotai, the word Luke 6:16 uses of Judas, “which also was the traitor”.

The belief that angels mediated the Law at Sinai rests on texts like Deuteronomy 33:2, where the Greek has angels at God’s right hand, and it appears in Galatians 3:19 and Hebrews 2:2. “Disposition” means arrangement or ordinance, the Law as delivered through intermediaries.

Gnashing teeth is the posture of the wicked against the righteous in the Psalms: “they gnashed upon me with their teeth” (Psalm 35:16; compare 37:12 and Job 16:9). The Greek imperfect pictures a continued grinding, rage that has lost the power of speech.

The speech opened with “the God of glory” appearing to Abraham (verse 2), and it ends with Stephen seeing “the glory of God”. The first and last things in his account are God’s glory showing itself outside the temple, first in Mesopotamia and now in a council chamber.

Outside the Gospels, this is the only place in the New Testament where Jesus is called “the Son of man” with the definite article, and the only time anyone but Jesus himself uses the full title of him. Before this same council Jesus had said, “Hereafter shall the Son of man sit on the right hand of the power of God” (Luke 22:69). The heavens also opened at Jesus’ baptism (Luke 3:21).

“With one accord” is homothymadon, the word the Book of Acts has used for the believers’ unity in prayer (1:14; 2:46; 4:24). Here the same unanimity drives a mob. Both sides cry “with a loud voice”: the council here, Stephen in verse 60.

The Law required the condemned to be taken outside the camp (Leviticus 24:14), and the witnesses’ hands were to be the first against him (Deuteronomy 17:7); they strip off their outer cloaks to throw. “Young man” is neanias, used of men up to about forty, so Saul could be anywhere from his twenties upward.

In the King James “God” is printed in italics: the Greek says only that Stephen was “calling upon and saying”, and the one he calls on is “Lord Jesus”. Peter quoted Joel at Pentecost, “whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved” (2:21), and Stephen dies doing exactly that.

Jewish prayer was normally made standing; Luke notes kneeling at moments of great urgency (Luke 22:41; Acts 9:40; 20:36). “Lay not this sin to their charge” is literally “do not make this sin stand against them”, the verb histemi, as a debt entered in a ledger.