And the high priest said, Are these things then so?
Stephen stands before the ruling council in Jerusalem, accused of speaking against Moses, the law and the temple. The high priest's short question opens his long reply — and Stephen answers with a history lesson instead of a denial.
The charges were heavy, yet the high priest opened the hearing gently. One writer ties that to the face the council had just been staring at.
It is striking how mild the high priest's challenge was. Like the rest, he seems for the moment overawed by the radiance that shone in Stephen's face. It could not help reminding them of Moses at a critical point in Israel's history, and in Moses' own life too. And now Stephen faced the charge of speaking against Moses, the sanctuary, and the law — even of threatening to destroy the temple.
That one question gave Stephen an open door. One commentator sets his freedom to speak beside the silence of Jesus at His own trial.
The high priest only asks the question, "Are these things so?" Then God provides room for Stephen to speak without interruption for some time. The Lord Jesus, by contrast, stayed mostly silent before His accusers. Stephen summarises the whole history of Israel in a masterful way. He tells it as the story of God's many visits to the nation, and of Israel's stubborn refusal of God's testimony every time, ending in their rejection of His Son.
His answer does two jobs at once. By the end, the roles in the courtroom have swapped.
Stephen's accusers charged him with speaking against Moses and against God, and also against the temple and the law. Now he must answer them. What he declared before the council shows plainly that the accusations are utterly false. So his speech is partly a defence. It is also teaching, because it draws out certain truths from the historical events he cites. And before he finishes his testimony, the accused becomes the accuser of the nation. The man on trial becomes the judge. As he moves quickly through their past in this great review, arranged by God, his whole testimony is a powerful witness to the nation as well as against the nation.
Stephen starts at the very beginning of the nation's story. That start touches what his accusers boasted of most.
Accused in this way, Stephen answers the high priest's appeal. In his wonderful speech (Acts 7) he sets before them the prominent facts of their history. Those facts bear on the issue between God and the Jews at this moment. God had brought out their forefather Abraham, but He never gave him possession of this land. Why, then, boast of it so much? They boasted loudly of Abraham and of God's dealings on the ground of natural descent. Clearly they were not in communion with God, or even with Abraham.
Commentators differ here. Another writer holds that Stephen is not making a defence at all.
Stephen is not defending himself. He is not answering for himself, nor pleading at all. He is the judge giving sentence. He is the still, small voice of the national conscience roused by the power of the Spirit of God. He is the memory of the people, sharpened as when called into the presence of God.
Some have dismissed the speech as weak or mistaken. Its place in the record, and its effect on the men who heard it, say otherwise.
Clearly the inspiring Spirit attached great importance to it. The book of Acts gives it more space than any other speech. It appealed with force to the conscience of the Jews gathered in council, and Stephen's blood sealed it. That is another proof of its power, terrible as that proof is. Some have dared to charge it with "demonstrable errors". If that were so, it would have collapsed at once through its own weakness, to the contempt of men. It was not so. It was the energy of undeniable truth that pierced through outward forms to their hard hearts. That truth roused their anger to white heat. Scripture proved that their own sad history of unbelief, disobedience and opposition to God fitted their present state as much as it fitted their forefathers long before.
- Question — The high priest asks only whether the charges are true. That mildness fits a court still shaken by the shining face of the man on trial.
- Room — Jesus stayed mostly silent before His accusers. Here God gives Stephen space to speak at length, with no interruption.
- Answer — The speech clears him of the charges and teaches at the same time. Its evidence is Israel's own history.
- Reversal — Before he finishes, the accused has become the accuser: the man on trial is the one passing sentence.
- Weight — Acts gives this speech more space than any other. Its power was undeniable truth cutting through outward forms to hard hearts.
And he said, Brethren and fathers, hearken. The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia, before he dwelt in Charran,
Stephen is on trial before the Jewish council, charged with speaking against the temple and the law. He answers by going back to Abraham — and to a God who appeared far outside the land, the law and the temple.
The council took pride in the land. Stephen's history undercuts that pride.
Accused in this way, Stephen answers the high priest's question, "Are these things so?" God had brought out their forefather Abraham, but He never actually gave him possession of this land. Why then boast of it so much? They boasted loudly of Abraham and of God's dealings in a merely natural way. Clearly they were not in communion with God, or even with Abraham.
The glory that reached Abraham was not housed in any building.
We know that he and his family were serving other gods in that land beyond the Euphrates (Joshua 24:2). They were caught up in the idolatry that had already swallowed the whole land, and there grace met him. He was not the heir of privilege. For him the glory did not live in any place made with hands. It was apart from the world — the world in which that revelation made him a pilgrim from then on. God called him out of the land of his birth and from his kindred, and the land He called him to was unknown. Faith was a necessity to him in every way — slow as he might be, and was, to cut the ties of nature, which were only a hindrance to him.
Stephen's title for God is doing real work.
"The God of glory" is no mere Hebrew idiom for "glorious God." From the very beginning it directs the heart to One altogether above the world. He is above it in Himself and in His purposes, whatever His ways may be meanwhile on the earth.
Abraham lived in a city with a glory of its own.
Abraham is living in great Ur of the Chaldees. Archaeological discoveries make it plain that this was a splendid city of wealth and learning in those far-off days. Men there were still making themselves "a name" and displaying their glory. In the middle of all this magnificence, the God of glory appears before him. God presented Himself to him marked by the glory that belongs to Him.
The where and the when carry Stephen's argument.
"The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia." What unanswerable evidence of sovereign grace! To overlook it springs from a wicked heart of unbelief that turns away from a living God. It hardens the soul in self-sufficiency, so that His voice becomes distasteful, disliked, and dreaded. Yet had they not often heard and read Joshua's testimony? … It was many centuries before the law and far away from Canaan. It was before he lived in Haran, in Mesopotamia — a place infamous as the mother of idolatries.
Stephen puts the cause before the effect.
His story in Genesis begins with God's word to him: "Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you" (Gen. 12:1). According to Acts 7, these were the words with which "the God of glory" appeared to him. The revelation and the renunciation were cause and effect. The second was possible in the strength and joy of the first. The glory of Ur of the Chaldees faded before the God of glory. In eagerly stretching out his hands towards the one, Abraham turned his back on the other. This was, as we may call it, Abraham's conversion. Abraham decisively "turned to God from idols," and there is no true conversion without this.
Why does a call like this carry authority?
Here then we discover what distinguishes this call from every other call: it comes from God — the God of glory. It is the glory of the One who appears to Abraham that gives such importance to the call, and gives faith its authority and power to answer it.
The time-marker exposes a gap between the call and full obedience.
Even Abraham, blessed as he was, moved slowly in the path of faith at first. He did not leave Mesopotamia to live in Canaan all at once. Before that he lived in Haran. He got out of his land, but not so quickly "out of his kindred." So there was a remarkable delay in coming into the land God was to show him.
- Glory appears. The words mean more than "a glorious God." They point to One above the world in Himself and in His purposes.
- Glory finds. He appeared to a man serving other gods, far from Canaan and centuries before the law. Grace met him there.
- Glory calls. The revelation came first; the leaving followed. Ur's splendour faded, and Abraham turned his back on it.
- Glory travels. It reached him with no temple and no law in sight. Boasting in the land missed the point of their own history.
- Glory waits. Abraham left his country, but not at once his kindred. He lived in Haran first. The call was complete long before his obedience was.
and said to him, Go out of thy land and out of thy kindred, and come into the land which I will shew thee.
Stephen answers his accusers by going back to the beginning. He starts with the day God first spoke to Abraham. The words he quotes raise three questions. Where was Abraham when the call came? What did God ask of him? And what did God promise?
Stephen has just said that "the God of glory appeared" to Abraham. The call did not find a good man in a good place.
"The God of glory" is not simply a Hebrew way of saying "glorious God." From the very start it turns the heart toward One who is entirely above the world. He is above it in Himself and in His purposes, whatever His ways on earth may be in the meantime. "Your fathers lived on the other side of the river long ago, Terah the father of Abraham and the father of Nahor, and they served other gods" (Joshua 24:2). It was in sovereign grace that God appeared like this. Even the line of Shem — Abraham's father and relatives — were idolaters. Grace gives what is good; it does not find it. And the God of glory did not only appear. He appeared to Abraham while he was in Mesopotamia. Abraham was then at the furthest point of distance from "the land," and in idolatrous company.
The verse has two halves: a world left behind, and a world entered.
There are two aspects of the call, both clearly set out in the history of Abraham. We read in Hebrews 11:8 that "he was called to go out," which refers to the world he was to leave behind. Then we read, "he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance." Here the new world he was called into is in view. Stephen also points to these two aspects of Abraham's call.
One writer draws attention to the second verb. Older translations read "come into the land" where the ESV reads "go."
From there God, in supreme grace, calls him to come into a land where He would guide him, welcome him and provide for him. Note the word "Come" in Acts 7:3, as in Genesis 7 — not "go."
What God asked for was not improvement but departure.
God's ties up to now had been made by natural order, by family blessings and inheritances. Abram is called out of all this — not only out of evil things. This was God's way of breaking the link with idolatry. The word is not, "Correct your ways in the country where you were born," but "Go out … to the land that I will show you."
For Abraham this meant packing up and moving. For those who read it now, the same claim presses on different ground.
In Abraham's case God called him literally to leave the country of his birth, his relatives and his father's house. For the Christian the call does not take this literal form, but we are no less called to be morally apart from country, relatives and father's house. And if we are morally apart, the political, social and even family circle may push the Christian out. That happened to the blind man in John 9. In any case, the moment comes in our history when we have to decide. Which comes first: the mighty call of God, or the pressing claims of country, relatives, and father's house?
God named what Abraham must leave, but not where he was going. That silence was deliberate.
The land to be shown in due time was as yet unknown, so that he was thrown back on simple-hearted confidence in God. He went out in submission to God's promise, not knowing where he was going. God would show the next step when Abraham took the first. He did not ask, "Where?" He trusted God completely. So his faith was unmixed with calculations of self, resting only but fully on the word of the One who loves and never deceives.
Abraham obeyed — but not all at once.
Even Abraham, blessed as he was, moved slowly on the path of faith at first. He did not leave Mesopotamia and settle in Canaan all at once. Before that he lived in Haran. He got out of his land, but not so quickly out of his kindred, so there was a striking delay in coming into the land God was going to show him.
- Glory appears. The God of glory came to Abraham in Mesopotamia. He was at the furthest point from the land and surrounded by idols. Grace gives what is good; it does not find it.
- Glory calls out. The word was not to reform Ur but to leave it; the ties broken were natural ones, not only evil ones.
- Glory calls in. Older wordings read "come into the land," not "go" — a land where God Himself would guide, welcome and provide.
- Glory withholds the map. God named the land only as the one He would show, so that Abraham would lean on Him. He showed the next step when Abraham took the first.
- Glory waits. Abraham left his land but lingered among his relatives in Haran, so he came into the land only later — faith can be slow at first and still arrive.
Then going out of the land of the Chaldeans he dwelt in Charran, and thence, after his father died, he removed him into this land in which *ye* now dwell.
Stephen is on trial. He answers the council by retelling Abraham's story: a call in Mesopotamia, a long pause in Haran, then arrival in the land his accusers were standing on. The verse turns on two things — why the delay, and who did the moving.
The stop between Ur and Canaan was a real city on a trade route, and it is named in both Testaments.
An ancient city in Mesopotamia. Terah and his family moved there from Ur of the Chaldees. Abraham stayed there on his way to the land of Canaan, until his father died... It appears in its Greek form as CHARRAN in Acts 7:2, 4... The name means 'road' in Accadian. It was probably so called because the caravan routes of Syria, Assyria, and Babylonia crossed there.
Abraham left his country but kept his father with him. The verse marks how long the delay lasted: until his father died.
He sets out, but he takes Terah, his father, with him, and goes and lodges in Haran (he could not carry Terah with him into the land of Canaan). Now God had called Abram, but not Terah. He left everything except Terah, and entered into possession of nothing. But he tried to carry something with him which was not of God, and he could not. It is not until after Terah's death that he removes into Canaan, to where God had called him.
The same writer turns this into a warning for anyone whose heart is divided.
Just so it happens to a heart which has not understood that it must give itself wholly to God. It gives up a great deal for duty, it receives nothing. When the question is of following God, it keeps something for itself. Still, grace acted towards Abraham.
Some say Stephen contradicts Genesis, which puts Terah's death before the command to leave Haran. One commentator answers that there was more than one call.
Stephen says that the God of glory appeared to Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia, before he lived in Haran... The effect of this was that he left his country, and possibly many of his relatives. But his father went with him, along with Sarah and Lot, and they settled in Haran... Then it seems God called him to get out from his country, kindred, and father's house, and come into a land that He would show him (Genesis 12:1). The effect of this call was that he departed out of Haran. Stephen confirms this when he says, "after his father died, God removed him from there into this land." This shows beyond question that God acted a second time.
Terah died at 205. Abraham left Haran at 75. One writer uses those numbers, with this verse, to work out when Abraham was born.
Genesis 11:32 states plainly that Terah died in Haran aged 205 years. Genesis 12:4 states just as plainly that Abram left Haran aged 75, with Terah already dead (see Acts 7:4) — not 135, as we should have expected. So Terah's family began when he was 70, but Abram was not born till Terah was 130. Abram is named first in Genesis 11:26 because Terah's other children mattered little compared with him. These things should teach us that God is concerned with moral and spiritual matters, not with dates.
The verse credits the move to God. Abraham had no inherited privilege and no sacred building — only the God who called him out and moved him on.
He was not the heir of privilege. For him the glory did not live in any place built by human hands. It was outside the world, and by that revelation he became a pilgrim in the world from then on. From the land of his birth God called him out, and from his kindred; and the land to which He called him was one unknown. Faith was a necessity for him at every point. He was slow to cut the ties of nature, but those ties were only a hindrance to him. After his father was dead, God removed him to the land which was to be his own.
Stephen ends the sentence with "in which you are now living" — addressed to men whose whole confidence rested on that ground.
For though he went out of his land, he did not get out of his kin, but dwelt with his father in Haran till Terah died. Then only God removed him into the land in which the Jews gloried as their dwelling.
The same writer notes what this does to their argument in the wider speech: the fathers they boasted of held the land only by promise, never by possession.
God had brought out their forefather Abraham, but He never actually gave him possession of this land. Why, then, boast of it so much? Those who, according to nature, boasted loudly of Abraham and of God's dealings were clearly not in communion with God, or even with Abraham.
- Called — God appeared to Abraham in Mesopotamia. He was not the heir of privilege; grace found him first.
- Delayed — He obeyed halfway. He left his country but took Terah with him, and he entered into possession of nothing.
- Freed — Only his father's death loosened the tie. A heart that keeps something back gives up much and receives nothing.
- Removed — God moved him; Abraham did not move himself. The second call came after the first was half obeyed.
- Rebuked — Abraham never possessed the land his accusers boasted of, so their boasting proved nothing.
And he did not give him an inheritance in it, not even what his foot could stand on; and promised to give it to him for a possession, and to his seed after him, when he had no child.
Stephen stands accused, and he answers by going back to Abraham. Every accuser in the room claimed Abraham as their father. His first point is that Abraham owned none of the land God promised him. So what is that promise worth, and when is it paid?
Stephen begins with a fact his hearers could not deny:
Accused in this way, Stephen answers the high priest's question, "Are these things so?" In his wonderful speech (Acts 7) he sets before them the main facts of their history. They bear on God's dispute with the Jews at that moment. God had brought out their forefather Abraham, but He never actually gave him possession of this land. Why then boast so much about it? By natural descent they boasted loudly of Abraham and of God's dealings. Yet they were clearly not in fellowship with God, or even with Abraham.
Abraham had no land in Canaan, and God planned it that way:
Abraham was a pilgrim and a stranger in Canaan, and this by divine design. The Jewish boast was far from the mind of God, which Abraham enjoyed by faith. Faith brought him out of the land of the Chaldeans; but what was he in Canaan? "By faith he went to live in the land of promise, as in a foreign land... For he was looking forward to the city that has foundations" (Heb. 11:8-10). The Jews, like unbelievers at all times, stand not on faith but on tradition and outward privilege. Abraham lived on promise and walked by faith, not by sight.
In Canaan he owned nothing, and enemies filled the land:
God then brings Abraham into Canaan. What is there for him there? Nothing yet to be possessed. The Canaanites are there, enemies all around in this land of promise. He has only his faith for his pains, not a place to set his foot on that properly belonged to him.
God gave this promise to a childless man, so nothing Abraham could see supported it.
Also, God gave him no actual possession in the land, though He promised it to him. He was a pilgrim — another healthy lesson for those who claim to be sons of Abraham. God's sovereign wisdom is impressed on us too in His promising the land to Abraham's offspring at a time when he had no child. So Abraham should not judge things by the narrow view of his present situation. Israel was failing in this too when Stephen spoke.
Then the law came. It changed nothing:
But what about the law? Did that make any difference? None whatever, as regards God's gift and promise. Four centuries before the law came, God Almighty settled and established the great transaction with Abraham His friend — settled and established forever. So nothing can touch it. God set no legal conditions for Abraham. All was pure and absolute grace. God gave the land to Abraham by promise, and not by law in any shape or form.
Some say Abraham did own land — the field he bought from Ephron for a grave. That purchase proves the opposite:
It is completely wrong to say that God did later give him a possession in Canaan — the piece of land he bought from Ephron as a burial place (Gen. 23:17). God's gift is absolute and future. Buying a burial place from the Hittite confirms this; it does not weaken it. For who that owned this land, or any land, would think of buying his own property? There he lays his dead in ground so plainly not his own that he has to buy it for the purpose — the pledge to faith that he will have it another day.
The promise still waits for its day, and Abraham himself will share in it:
Abram and his offspring will have the promise in the day when glory is to dwell in that land (Ps. 85)... Then the children of Abraham — not by nature only but by grace also — will enter on the promised inheritance. Abraham himself will be there in resurrection glory. This happens when Jesus is revealed from heaven, and there come the times of restoration of all things, which God spoke of through His holy prophets long ago.
Meanwhile the same pattern shapes anyone who believes now:
The true man of faith cannot find a home on earth because "the Canaanite" is there. By and by it will not be so, for "all that offends" will be gathered out of the kingdom, and the kingdoms of this world will become the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ (Rev. 11:15).
- Promise, not property. Abraham got not one foot of the land, only God's word about it. His descendants boasted of what he never held.
- Pilgrim by design. God planned it this way. It taught Abraham to live by faith and look for the city with foundations.
- Given before he had a son. God promised the land to his offspring while he was still childless. The promise stood on God's wisdom, not on what Abraham could see.
- Grace, not law. God settled the gift four centuries before the law, with no conditions. Nothing that came later can touch it.
- Payment at resurrection. The grave he bought was the pledge of a land still to come. He will enter it raised in glory, when all things are restored.
And God spoke thus His seed shall be a sojourner in a strange land, and they shall enslave them and evil entreat [them] four hundred years;
Stephen is on trial, accused of speaking against the temple and the law. He answers by going back to Abraham, and to God's warning of four hundred years of exile, slavery and hard treatment for Abraham's family.
Stephen is not inventing history. He quotes God's word to Abraham back to the men who claimed Abraham as their father. God spoke about His people long before there was a temple to speak in.
Stephen's words are a loose quotation of Genesis 15:13-14, with a few words more or less from Exodus 3:12 in place of the closing phrase. The God of glory thought of His people in Egypt and in the wilderness, before the holy place or even the law. He will never give Israel up until He has made good His promise, guaranteed when Abraham had no child... For as with the father, so with his seed. Abraham lived as a stranger in Palestine, and his descendants were first seen as slaves in a foreign land. This lasted no brief moment. In round numbers 400 years (strictly 405) passed from the birth of the child of promise until God judged the nation that held them in slavery.
The number raises a well-known puzzle, because other verses count four hundred and thirty years. One answer starts from what this verse does not say.
Genesis 15:13 and Acts 7:6 say nothing about Egypt: "Your offspring will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs." God said this to Abraham. It may cover the whole period from the birth of Isaac to the Exodus, which on this reckoning was four hundred and five years. That agrees with the round number of four hundred years. Exodus 12:40 is worded differently: it counts four hundred and thirty years for the time the children of Israel lived in Egypt. It is better to take those four hundred and thirty years as covering the stay of Abraham after the promise, and of Isaac, and of Jacob.
God announced the slavery before the family that would suffer it even existed. That timing shows who was in charge of it.
Their slavery was in no way accidental. God had foreseen it, and even foretold it to Abram while he still had no child (Genesis 15:13-16). God was training a people destined for a high position. Part of that training was to live in a foreign land and suffer there four hundred years. God rules everything so completely that Satan could not hold the people one day beyond the appointed time.
The suffering was not a detour from the promise. It was part of what God promised, and it had a purpose.
God promised Abraham this very furnace of affliction in the vision of Genesis 15. This iron furnace represents God, along with the lamp, as it passes between the pieces of the sacrifice. It was the necessary means to bring them out for the inheritance He promised them. It is His way to make them the people He wants them to be. God pledges to them that they shall have this fiery furnace, and Pharaoh was the instrument in God's hand for it.
For four hundred years God's people had no land and no temple. Stephen points his hearers to exactly those years.
At no time was there a clearer proof of God's interest in them than during those centuries, and during the deliverance that followed, filled with miracles and still more glowing prophecies. It was a time remarkable in every way, in Egypt and in the wilderness alike. Yet none of it happened while they were settled in the land of promise. Never was there a more awful display of His displeasure, or of the blows His wrath brought on their oppressors. Never was there a more wonderful witness in the past that He had taken Israel as His own people, redeemed from the world's slavery.
Israel expected greatness from the promise to Abraham. God put centuries of suffering first.
God did not promise immediate great blessing. He promised instead that Abraham's offspring would go into slavery and suffer oppression for four hundred years. So there would be long suffering before exaltation... Israel should never have forgotten what this meant, and we today should take its lessons to heart. We must expect suffering before exaltation.
- Foretold — God announced the slavery to a childless man, centuries before it began. It was His plan, not a breakdown of it.
- Fixed — the four hundred years is a round number, counted from Isaac's birth to the Exodus. No enemy could add a day to it.
- Furnace — the suffering was God's chosen means of bringing them out to their inheritance. It made them the people He wanted.
- Faithful — in those years Israel had no land and no temple, yet God's care for them was never clearer.
- First suffering, then glory — bondage came first, then God's judgment on the nation that enslaved them. Israel forgot that order, and we should expect it too.
and the nation to which they shall be in bondage will *I* judge, said God; and after these things they shall come forth and serve me in this place.
Commentary for this verse has not been generated yet.
And he gave to him [the] covenant of circumcision; and thus he begat Isaac and circumcised him the eighth day; and Isaac Jacob, and Jacob the twelve patriarchs.
Stephen stands accused of speaking against Moses and the law. His defence walks back through Israel's own history. Here God's promise to Abraham receives a sign, and the family line runs on to the twelve fathers of Israel's tribes.
The Greek word behind "covenant" can also mean a will. Some older translations chose that sense. So which meaning fits this verse?
The word itself can carry either sense. Between people it means an arrangement, especially of property by a will. In the things of God it means a covenant, and that is the usual sense in the Greek Old Testament and the New Testament. The context decides it with certainty… Acts 3:25 and Acts 7:8 are just as plain for "covenant," and there all the English versions are correct.
Stephen says God gave the covenant. That word matters, because this gift came from one side only.
God makes His covenants from Himself, without consulting man… Covenants like this take the form of an unconditional promise. God's covenant with Abraham was such a promise: first about his natural descendants, Genesis 15:4-6; then about his seed, Christ, Genesis 22:15-18. He also gave him the covenant of circumcision, Genesis 17:10-14; Acts 7:8 — a seal of the righteousness of faith. Romans 4:11.
The timing carries the argument. Abraham received the covenant when he had nothing left to give.
Abraham is near a hundred years old, "his body now dead," with nothing more to expect from it. Right there God steps in as the "Almighty" God. He renews His assurance of what He will do, at the very point where Abraham can do nothing… So where is the law? Where is all the work of man that Israel trusted in, in a covenant given to a man with a "body now dead"?
God did not put this covenant's sign in the sky for all to see. He put it in the body, and its message was severe.
Its sign was not to be in the clouds for every eye to see, but in the flesh. On the flesh it waged all-out war, declaring it unclean and sentencing it to death. It did not simply demand purity. It set out death, a picture of Christ's death for His own, who by nature were as unclean and ungodly as anyone else. It was not of Moses but of the fathers, as the Lord told the Jews (John 7:22).
So the sign itself cut away the confidence men were building on it.
God then gave Abraham the covenant of circumcision (v.8), to be applied to his descendants. It was a sign that no promise of God could apply to man as he is in the flesh. The flesh must be cut off, to have no part in God's counsels. Yet in Stephen's time the Jews were boasting in the mere rite of circumcision, and so standing against what it meant.
Abraham circumcised Isaac on a set day. That day was chosen for a reason.
"So Abraham became the father of Isaac, and circumcised him on the eighth day" — the day of resurrection and its glory, and of that new standing which belongs to the believer by God's counsels of grace. In Genesis 15 Abraham believed God, who counted it to him as righteousness. He had also been called out, and he obeyed the call, set apart to Jehovah — both while still uncircumcised. But it was after his own circumcision, and in the full order of the covenant, that he became the father of Isaac.
Stephen does not attack the institutions he was charged with insulting. He gives them their place in the story.
Stephen draws marked attention to the covenant of circumcision that God gave to Abraham. He does not belittle an institution that the law itself took up… But the promise came long before the law. And Abraham, the father of the faithful, had enjoyed God's election and call even before circumcision. The truth is a whole. It only suffers when one part is misused to weaken or destroy another.
The verse ends with the twelve patriarchs, the fathers of Israel's tribes. Stephen's next words tell what they did.
How does Stephen sum up the history of that early twelve? "And the patriarchs through jealousy sold Joseph into Egypt: and God was with him, and delivered him out of all his afflictions"… Yet which of the twelve was tried by his brothers as Joseph was? Who was plotted against as he was?
- Given, not bargained. God makes His covenants from Himself, without consulting man. This one was an unconditional promise, sealed as the righteousness of faith.
- Given to a dead body. It came when Abraham was near a hundred, with nothing left to give. The law and the work of man have no place in the promise.
- Given as death on the flesh. The sign went into the flesh, not into the clouds. It declared the flesh unclean and pointed to Christ's death for His own.
- Given on the eighth day. The eighth day is resurrection's day — the new standing grace gives the believer.
- Given, then boasted in. The Jews of Stephen's day prized the rite and fought its meaning. Stephen honours the covenant and shows the promise came long before the law. The same twelve who carried the sign sold Joseph out of jealousy.
And the patriarchs, envying Joseph, sold him away into Egypt. And God was with him,
Stephen stands before Israel's leaders and answers them by retelling the nation's own story. Here he reaches the twelve sons of Jacob, and what he reports is not glory but envy: they sold their brother, and God was with him.
The twelve sons named in the previous verse became the heads of Israel's tribes. Their first act together was a crime against their own brother. One writer sees in it a preview of the nation's later history.
Did these twelve men prove to be the most exemplary and upright people? Far from it! As early as this in Israel's history we see signs of the great evils that would later take place. This cruel rejection of their own brother tells us that from the beginning that nation was no better than any other. The fathers of the nation cast out their brother because of envy. In the same way, the nation has cast out their promised Messiah when He came in grace. The same envy and hatred moved them.
Joseph gave his brothers no cause. Older translations call their jealousy envy, and one writer names what lay behind it.
The heads of the tribes of Israel show their evil state from the first. Nothing justly provoked them. There was only refusal to obey their father, hatred of their godly brother, and rebellion against the mind of God. They envied Joseph, and even when they gave up their plan to kill him, they sold him away into Egypt. Pride of position hates the faith that rebukes it. It hates the spirit of grace shown in deed and truth. It goes on to hostility beyond measure, more cruel than the world's.
The second half of the verse answers the first. Stephen does not say God saved Joseph from the sale. He says God went with him into it.
Joseph was a beloved son, a God-fearing slave, a guiltless prisoner, and a wise deputy ruler. In every place and in every circumstance God was with him. Yet who of the twelve was so tried by his brothers? Who was so plotted against as he? Who seemed to suffer more in spite of — yes, because of — his spotless purity? Even so, in prison, "the LORD was with him, and whatever he did, the LORD made it succeed."
The same writer notes where Scripture says this most strongly:
The Lord was with him when he gained his father's confidence and love. The Lord was with him when his faithfulness earned the envy and hatred of his brothers. Now Scripture says it with special force about a slave in a strange land… The Lord was with him all the more because the need was greater.
The brothers sold Joseph to stop his rise. The sale was the road to it.
Who could forget the envy of Joseph's brothers! Yet it helped to fulfil the very hints of his greatness that had caused their envy. They sold him into Egypt. Did those standing before Stephen not remember their own thirty pieces of silver? Then came the famine, which forced his guilty brothers to turn to the one they had rejected and cast out… Man acted freely and, sadly, away from God. Even so, he carried out God's purposes as if he had aimed at them on purpose.
Joseph was rejected, then raised, then he reached back to the very brothers who sold him. His hearers had just lived through the same pattern.
The patriarchs, moved with envy, hated and persecuted Joseph. But God was with him, and highly exalted him. In his exaltation Joseph sends a message to his brothers. He presents himself as their saviour and deliverer. So Joseph becomes a striking picture of Christ, their own Messiah. Out of envy the leaders of Israel handed Him over to be crucified. But God had exalted Christ to His own right hand to be a Prince and a Saviour. From that place of exaltation, through the Holy Spirit, came the offer of repentance to Israel and the forgiveness of their sins.
Stephen never says any of this out loud.
Stephen does not say a word about the Lord Jesus. Yet who could miss the parallel between the Just One and the innocent object of the patriarchs' jealousy? Could anyone doubt that this was the plain lesson of their own Scriptures, and no clever trick to serve a purpose?
- Envy starts it. Joseph gave the nation's founding fathers no provocation. The fault lay in their hatred of a godly brother.
- Envy repeats itself. What the fathers did to their brother, the nation later did to its Messiah, moved by the same envy.
- God goes with him. Joseph was not spared slavery or prison. God was with him in both, and most of all when the need was greatest.
- God overrules it. The sale meant to stop Joseph's rise became the means of it. Men acting freely in evil still carried out God's purpose.
- The rejected one saves. Sold, then exalted, Joseph became the deliverer of the brothers who cast him out. He pictures the exalted Christ, who offers Israel repentance and forgiveness from His place of glory.
and delivered him out of all his tribulations, and gave him favour and wisdom in the sight of Pharaoh king of Egypt, and he appointed him chief over Egypt and all his house.
Stephen is on trial, and instead of defending himself he retells Israel's own story, starting with the brothers who sold Joseph into Egypt. Verse 10 is the turn: God did not stop the crime, but He rescued Joseph and set him over the empire that had bought him.
God did not keep Joseph out of trouble. He was with him inside it, and that presence held steady while Joseph's position kept changing.
A beloved son, or a God-fearing slave, a guiltless prisoner or a wise ruler — Joseph had God with him everywhere and in all circumstances. Yet who of the twelve sons of Jacob was so tried by his brothers? Who was so plotted against as he? Who seemed to fare worse despite his unstained purity — yes, because of it? Still, even in prison, "the Lord was with him, and whatever he did, the Lord made it succeed."
The rescue came through people who did not know Israel's God: a slave-owner's household, a king's troubled sleep. Commentators trace God's hand through the whole chain.
God visits the home of a heathen captain. He visits the household of a heathen king — yes, even his bedside. He makes the very dreams in the king's head serve the working out of His plans... How clearly God's providence comes out in this deeply interesting history of Joseph! Look for a moment into the dungeon of the captain of the guard. See a man there in irons, charged with a disgusting crime, the outcast and refuse of society. Then see him raised, almost in a moment, to the very highest position. Who can deny that God is in it all?
The brothers' sin was real sin, and God overruled it without excusing it.
Their anger had sold Joseph into Egypt. God used their sin to make Joseph the great organiser of the day, saving countless lives. Nothing could excuse the terrible sin of Joseph's brothers against him. But it must have comforted their accusing hearts to find that God used the anger of man to praise Him.
Joseph's high standing came from God. But it was still a man's goodwill, and one writer weighs it against something safer.
He rose from the obscurity of the prison to the "favour" of Pharaoh, who set him over the land of Egypt and the king's house (Acts 7:9-10). But after all, this was only the favour of man. It cannot compare with the favour of God. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, the justified believer has gained a permanent right to that favour.
Stephen's hearers knew this history well. What they had not weighed was how exactly it matched the One they had just handed over. The pattern holds down to the detail of which kingdom Joseph was given.
God was with the hated Joseph. Just as surely, He was with Jesus in all fullness. Jesus was the object of divine delight and the storehouse of wisdom for His glory. His troubles went deeper than any that ever came on anyone. When God brought Him out of them all, He highly exalted Him and set Him at His own right hand. But if it was not the kingdom of Israel, with Zion at its centre, this only confirms how fitting the type is... the despised and rejected One is exalted on His Father's throne, not yet on His own. He has all authority over a kingdom as wide as the world. Its form is quite special, and He received it when He was cast out, separated from His brothers. Of this, Joseph's exaltation by the king of Egypt is the striking shadow — made chief over Egypt and all his house.
The wisdom God gave Joseph ended up feeding the very men who had sold him. That is the point Stephen aimed at his judges.
Joseph was handed over to the Gentiles. Afterwards he became the highest man in the running of the kingdom, and the instrument of God's goodness and wisdom for the very brothers who had persecuted and sold him... such had been the features of their recent sin, and such would be the path of God in His grace. But they had no ear for Him yet.
Others put the same argument as a question the council could not dodge:
Moved with envy, they rejected and sold him (v.9). Yet God preserved him and in fact exalted him to a place of great authority in Egypt. Could God not do the same (or something greater) with Jesus, whom Israel rejected?
- Rejected. The story starts with envy inside the family that became a nation. Stephen's point: Israel had a long record of rejecting the man God sent.
- Accompanied. "God was with him" covers slave, prisoner and ruler alike; the circumstances changed, the presence did not.
- Rescued. God did not excuse the brothers' sin; He overruled it. The dungeon became the road to the throne.
- Favoured. God gave the favour and the wisdom. Pharaoh's goodwill was only a man's; God's favour to the believer in Christ is permanent.
- Enthroned. Joseph over Egypt is a picture of Christ. He came out of deeper suffering, and He now rules on His Father's throne — with grace for the very brothers who sold Him.