Acts 7:11–16

They sold him into Egypt. (Did the men in front of Stephen not remember their own thirty pieces of silver?) But God was with him, despite those afflictions in the meantime. God so plainly delivered him out of them, and made him governor over all the land. Then came the famine, which forced his guilty brothers to turn for help to the one they had rejected and cast out. And this again led to the fulfilment of the prophecy given to Abraham. Man acted freely and, sadly, far from God. Yet he still worked out God's purposes, as if he had set out to bring them about.

It was a pathway of righteous suffering that led to glory. Once exalted, Joseph handed out, in the wisdom of God, what that same wisdom had raised him up to store in the days of plenty for the days of scarcity. Under the mighty hand of God, the scarcity pressed not only over all Egypt but over Canaan. There the heads of Israel tasted that cruel affliction, for they found no food. In God's providence they went to Egypt for grain.

It is called CHANAAN in Acts 7:11; Acts 13:19.

During the days of plenty the world paid little attention to Joseph. Of his brothers we hear nothing; they were completely indifferent to him. But when the shortage set in, need woke up. "The land of Egypt was famished" (v. 55), and starvation and death faced Jacob and his sons (Gen. 42:1-2). The need calls out a cry for bread. The Gentiles have to learn, and the brothers discover, that no one can meet the need except the one they once scorned and rejected.

Yet His grace can use famine and great distress of every kind for mercy and blessing. But to be blessed, the sinner must feel his evil state... Food for the inner man comes only from Him. The sons of Jacob found none in Canaan. Their father heard of food in Egypt — for the fulfilment of God's purpose — and sent them there. Joseph had provided for a famished world, and his heart longed to supply his father and his brothers, little as they knew who it was they had sold away there.

There is nothing that brings a man down like hunger. Neither a man's pride nor his family name can fill him in the day of hunger and need... Nothing brings a man down like soul-hunger. It is a great thing when that soul-hunger becomes urgent — when a man feels that he is a sinner, that he needs Christ, and that he must have Christ.

God's sovereignty again shone out in the great famine that drove Joseph's brothers to Egypt for food. In fact, God would yet bring Israel to such a state of desolation that they too would have to look for help. And they would find that help in none other than the Jesus whom they had crucified. Only at the second visit, after real distress and searching of soul, did Joseph make himself known to his brothers (v.13).

How often God chooses to use hardship for His own purposes and in His own ways, for the good of all — saints and sinners alike! So it is here. The pinch of want fell on Jacob and his sons; "for the famine was in the land of Canaan."

It was a pathway of righteous suffering which led to glory. Once exalted, Joseph gave out, in the wisdom of God, what that same wisdom had raised him up to store in the days of plenty for those in famine. Under the mighty hand of God, the famine pressed not only over all Egypt but over Canaan. There the heads of Israel tasted that cruel affliction, for they found no food, and in God's providence they sought grain in Egypt. This, "at the second time," gave occasion for their great discovery, and it did not come without self-judgment. Joseph made himself known to his brothers, and the line of promise was no longer a secret to Pharaoh.

Then came the famine which forced his guilty brothers to turn to the one whom they had rejected and cast out. And this again led to the fulfilment of the prophecy to Abraham. Man acted freely and, sadly, far from God. Yet he still worked out God's purposes, as if he were deliberately trying to achieve them.

He starts with the very beginning of the nation's existence, dating it from Abraham. He retells its history down to the days of Moses. He points out that twice over their ancestors made the great mistake of rejecting the instrument God had designed for their deliverance. First it was Joseph. Next it was Moses. Joseph's brothers sold into Egypt the one who turned out to be their saviour and deliverer… The mistake they made over Joseph they had repeated over Moses. What were they doing now? They were repeating that mistake.

The patriarchs sold Joseph into Egypt because they were moved with envy. Matthew records Pilate's efforts to release Jesus, "for he knew that it was out of envy that they had delivered Him up." It was the same with Moses. The words that made him flee — "Who made you a ruler and a judge over us?" — came from one of his own brothers, not from an Egyptian. The rejection came from among his own people, not from outside. So it had been with Jesus too.

Stephen does not say a word about the Lord Jesus. Yet who could fail to see the parallel between the Just One and the innocent object of the patriarchs' jealousy? Could anyone doubt that this was no clever device invented to serve a purpose, but the plain lesson of their own Scriptures?

…these events foreshadow what the prophets promise in God's name. A greater than Joseph was rejected by His brothers, and God exalted Him to sit at His own right hand with richer supplies for a famished world. He is about to make Himself known "the second time" to His brothers, with broken hearts and deep repentance.

Under the mighty hand of God, the famine pressed not only over all Egypt but over Canaan. There the heads of Israel tasted that cruel affliction, for they found no food. So in God's providence they sought grain in Egypt. This, "on the second visit," gave occasion for their great discovery. It did not come without self-judgment, when Joseph made himself known to his brothers, and the line of promise was no longer a secret to Pharaoh.

Not a word does Stephen say of the Lord Jesus. Yet who could fail to see the parallel between the Just One and the innocent brother whom Jacob's sons envied? Could anyone doubt that this was no clever device to serve a purpose? It was the undeniable lesson of their own Scriptures.

Scripture foreshadows Israel's wickedness through unbelief as plainly as it foreshadows Messiah's humiliation and rejection by His brothers. This was Stephen's point, and he could not help saying it if he cared for the Lord and for their souls. They might disdain it, but it was exactly the truth they needed then, as they do still.

The discovery did not come from any insight or shrewdness on the part of the brothers. It came entirely from Joseph revealing himself to them… What is more, Joseph revealed himself as the fruit of his love for them. That love was so real that he could not hold back any longer, and it moved him to tears.

But who can describe the scene where Joseph made himself known to his brothers, when they had come the second time? It is a chapter of great tenderness. Some day the Lord Jesus Christ, whom His brothers rejected and disowned, will come the second time. Israel in the end time will pass through deep anguish and searching of soul. When that reaches its climax, He will come, and those who pierced Him will look on Him.

Joseph was not only to be made known to his brothers, as we have seen. His relatives were now to be made known to Pharaoh as well. So he presents them to the king. They were shepherds, it is true, keepers of cattle from their youth, people the Egyptians detested. But what of that? "He is not ashamed to call them brothers." He owns them in front of the king. The king himself is of one mind with Joseph toward them. He owns them too, and honours them.

It was no new feature in their history. Their fathers had done the same as they were doing. Man is always resisting what God sends in blessing. Joseph and Moses had both been rejected — the two clearest pictures of the Lord Jesus. Their fathers despised and hated Joseph; they had done the same to Christ. God exalted Joseph; and Stephen's testimony was to Jesus standing at the right hand of God. And if Joseph sent and called his relatives in grace, did not, and will not, Christ do the same?

Now Stephen places special emphasis on the twelve sons of Jacob, the immediate father of the twelve tribes. Was their history a glorious, beautiful one? Far from it! If Israel wanted to boast, let them think about what their fathers did to their own brother Joseph. 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 even more, for Jesus whom Israel rejected?

Food for the inner man comes only from Him. The sons of Jacob found none in Canaan. Their father heard of it in Egypt, and to fulfil God's purpose he sent them there. Joseph had provided for a starving world, and his heart longed to supply his father and his brothers, little as they knew who had sold him away there. They thought evil against him; but God meant it for good, to keep descendants for them on the earth and save their lives. How much more was this proved true in the One greater than Joseph!

The message that Joseph sends to Jacob is "Come down to me." Joseph is lord of all, with the riches of glory at his disposal for all. Yet only those who "come" receive the blessing. If all power is in his hands to bless, all grace is in his heart to attract to himself — the blesser. Joseph says in effect to his father, "I want you," for it is not only "Come," but "Come down to me."

It is God's register of Jacob and his house, "seventy" souls including Jacob, and Joseph with his two sons, "sixty-six" without these. The Septuagint, which Stephen quotes, speaks of seventy-five. It adds Manasseh's son Machir and his grandson Gilead. It also adds Ephraim's two sons, Shuthelah and Tahan, with Shuthelah's son Eran, or Edom. … Scripture reveals the interest God took in recording things little in man's eyes.

The real question is not about truth, but about the purpose and the manner of speaking. The original account speaks of 66 in one verse and of 70 in the next. In the first of those verses the Hebrew strictly means "belong to," rather than "with Jacob." The 70 are his house, including more. The Greek version that Stephen quotes includes five more, even though they were born in Egypt. This follows the well understood practice of treating parent and children as one.

Notice, though, that this count may not include Joseph and his sons. If it does not, that leaves room for nine more of the patriarch's "kindred." And kindred is not the same thought as those who "came out of his loins." We do not offer any firm solution to the difficulty. Nor is it needful to prove exactly how the list of seventy-five was made up. … Stephen was also full of the Holy Spirit. He was speaking before an assembly of Israel's teachers, who knew every detail of the history of Jacob. These and other considerations leave no room to question the truth of the martyr's statement.

And the fathers, with Israel their father, went down into Egypt. There, in long, repaying sorrow, they were to pay the penalty for their heartless wrong to their brother. God exalted him in the very place where Jew and Gentile had both put him to shame. He repaid that with nothing but grace to all, but especially to Israel.

It was plain how little they knew anything as they should. They had never yet thought of seeing the Christ in Joseph. They had never seen in the guilty fathers themselves the still guiltier murderers of the Lord of glory. Their ignorant boast was their shame.

God had brought out their forefather Abraham, but He never gave him this land to own. Why, then, boast of it so much? By natural descent they made loud boasts of Abraham and of God's dealings. Yet they were not in communion with God, or even with Abraham.

They valued their dead bodies and the burial places which held them. While they lived, they were content to live in Canaan without so much as a place to set their foot. But "they died in faith." God's promise had made over that land, that very land, to them, though they themselves were to be gathered to their fathers. That was the warrant for their dying in faith, in the sure and certain hope of a resurrection to the enjoyment of it. They would link their dead bodies with that land, though not their living ones.

The move of Jacob and his family to Egypt begins a new period in Israel's history. The nation grew there under intense pressure and slavery. Jacob himself died outside the land, but his body went back there for burial. This showed that God still considered it Israel's land.

The true solution is not Calvin's idea that "Abraham" is a wrong reading for "Jacob." It lies in the compressed way Stephen, like other Jews, referred to well-known facts. Abraham's grave was at Hebron, bought from Ephron the Hittite. Jacob bought ground at Shechem from the sons of Hamor. Everyone knew who lay in the first: Sarah, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Ancient scripture tells us that Joseph was laid in the second, and Stephen shows here that his brothers were too. The difficulty comes from bringing both together, as Stephen did.

This is thought to clash with Genesis 33:19, which speaks of Jacob buying it. But nothing is said in that passage about a burial place: Jacob bought a piece of ground to spread his tent in. Bengel says of this alleged discrepancy in Stephen's address, that "the brevity which best suited the ardour of the Spirit gave Stephen good occasion, in the case of a fact so well known, to compress these details in the way he has done."

Is it not a safer conclusion that we may be ignorant of facts which, better known, would clear away this mist? Or that there is some peculiarity in the way of referring to things which Westerners are not used to, but which Jews understand without objection? … And one may question whether it would not be better, these things being so, to amend our manners instead of presuming to amend the text.

Prince of the Hivites and father of Shechem, from whose family Jacob bought a piece of ground in which Joseph was buried. Gen. 33:19; Joshua 24:32; Judges 9:28. He is called EMMOR in Acts 7:16.

The true solution is not Calvin's idea that "Abraham" is a wrong reading for "Jacob." It lies in the compressed way Stephen, like other Jews, referred to well-known facts. Abraham's grave was at Hebron, bought from Ephron the Hittite. Jacob bought ground at Shechem from the sons of Hamor. Sarah, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were buried in the first. Since ancient scripture tells us that Joseph was laid in the second, Stephen shows here that his brothers were laid there too… The difficulty comes from bringing both together, as Stephen did.

A writer on inspiration points out the same system of combining incidents. Compare verse 43 of this speech with Amos 5:27. There "beyond Damascus" clearly refers to the Assyrians carrying off the ten tribes, while Stephen combines with it, in his own way, the carrying off of the two tribes to Babylon.

Leave the word "Abraham" out and all difficulty disappears: "Jacob died, as did our fathers, and they were carried back to Shechem and laid in the tomb that he had bought," and so on. Joseph was buried there, and Jerome states that Paula saw the graves of the rest.

Given the circumstances, the least worthy suggestion is that this blessed and mighty witness of Christ confused Hebron with Shechem, and Abraham with Jacob. That would be a mistake below the level of an ordinary Sunday-school child… One may ask whether it would be better to correct our own manners than to set out to correct the text.

The point seems to be that Abraham had it while Israel did not yet hold the land. Shechem is mentioned to show God's title over the whole land, for it was now the centre of the Samaritan religion. That point carried weight in Stephen's speech. So did his showing that the best and most blessed of their ancestors had nothing there at all except what they bought. They were still pilgrims and strangers, as the saints now were becoming through the Jews' rejection of Messiah.

While they lived, they were content to live in Canaan without owning so much as a foot of it. But "they died in faith." God's promise had handed that land, that very land, over to them, though they themselves would be gathered to their fathers (Gen. 15). That was the ground of their dying in faith, in the sure and certain hope of rising again to enjoy it… It did not matter whether their bodies lay in Machpelah or Shechem. Their bones were linked to the promised land either way.