And when a period of forty years was fulfilled to him, it came into his heart to look upon his brethren, the sons of Israel;
Stephen is on trial before the council. He answers by retelling Israel's own history — the story of how God's people kept refusing the deliverers He sent. Here the story reaches a turning point. Moses, raised in Pharaoh's palace, reaches forty and looks toward the slaves he was taken from.
The number is not decoration. Stephen's speech splits Moses' life into three blocks of forty years. Some have claimed he invented numbers the books of Moses never give. One commentator does the arithmetic.
It is claimed that Acts 7:23, 30, 36 mentions three separate periods of forty years, and that only the last appears in the books of Moses. But turn to Exodus 7, and we are told that "Moses was eighty years old… when they spoke to Pharaoh" (v. 7). These eighty years agree exactly with Stephen's account. Moses was forty when it came into his heart to visit his brothers, and he spent forty years after that in Midian. Stephen makes the age of Moses one hundred and twenty years altogether. Deuteronomy 31:2 and 34:7 say he died at the age of one hundred and twenty. Now, where is there any discrepancy?
Nothing outside him pushed him toward it. The desire began in his own heart, and one writer says that is the right order.
Then he went out from the palace and looked at the burdens of his brothers among the brick-kilns (Exodus 2:11). This was the second stage in his life of devotion and single-heartedness, while he was still in Egypt and everything outside him was against him. "It came into his heart," we are told, to do this (Acts 7:23). And it is good, and the fruit is pleasant, when affection is the parent of service.
The word for "visit" means more than a friendly call. And forty years in a palace had not erased who his people were.
In all the forty years he had been moving in the court of Pharaoh, it now appears that he never forgot that those despised slaves were his brothers. One may imagine him looking round at the glitter of that court and at those who moved in it. In his heart he was thinking, "these are not my brothers."… We find that the word visit comes from the same root as the word for oversight. It seems as though he was already overseeing his own district, the future sphere of his service.
Moses could have kept his place as the son of Pharaoh's daughter. He refused it. One commentator explains what led him out.
But divine providence is no guide for faith; nothing but the word is. Providence brought him in, and from there faith led him out. "By faith Moses, when he was grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter… He considered the reproach of Christ greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking to the reward" (Hebrews 11:24-26).
The visit was right. What came next was too early. One writer separates the zeal from the timing.
This was zeal for his brothers, but it was "not according to knowledge." God's time had not yet come for judging Egypt and delivering Israel, and the intelligent servant will always wait for God's time. Moses "had grown up." He was "instructed in all the wisdom of the Egyptians." And further, "he supposed that his brothers would understand that God was giving them salvation by his hand." All this was true. Yet he ran ahead of the time, and when someone does this, failure must be the result.
Stephen is not giving a history lesson. He is showing the men in front of him that they have done again what their fathers did.
So Moses was an outcast for many long years. His own unworthy brothers drove him out as much as the angry king of Egypt did. They loved him less the more he loved them. They forgot the promised deliverance, and they set no value on the man who gave up everything for their sake. Israel denied the one who was in that day the type of the Holy and Righteous One. It was nothing new.
Where Moses went next matters too.
All of this is personal history. Yet Stephen plainly uses it as a type of Christ. When Christ presented Himself to His own people as their Deliverer, they rejected Him. Indeed, the flight of Moses into the land of Midian is a marked type of where our Lord stands now toward Israel and the world… But, like Moses, our Lord will return to deliver His people on earth, just as Moses returned from Midian and led Israel out.
- Heart — The move began inside him: "it came into his heart." Affection came first, and service was its fruit.
- Cost — Providence put Moses in the palace; faith took him out of it. He counted reproach with God's people as greater wealth than Egypt's treasures.
- Timing — The desire was right, the hand was early. God's servant waits for God's hour, and running ahead ends in failure.
- Refusal — The more he loved them, the less they loved him. The deep wound came from his own people, not from Egypt.
- Picture — Rejected, Moses withdrew to Midian and came back as deliverer. That is the pattern of Christ, and the pattern Stephen presses on his hearers.
and seeing a certain one wronged, he defended [him], and avenged him that was being oppressed, smiting the Egyptian.
Stephen is on trial for his life, and instead of defending himself he retells Israel's story. He stops at the day Moses, then forty, killed an Egyptian to save a Hebrew: was that faith or impatience, and why tell it to a court about to kill him?
Moses acted here for his own people, at his own cost. One commentator ties that action to what devotion to God actually looks like.
Holiness toward God always means separation from evil. It also means standing with His people, in heart and in the way you live. But now faith is tested, and its path never runs smooth for long. … Hating unrighteousness, he punished the oppressor of his brother. He took no thought of what it would cost him.
Stephen's words are warm: Moses defended the man and avenged him. But commentators differ over the deed itself. Some hold that the love behind it was beyond blame while the act was not, and they note how Scripture leaves it:
The Spirit could not blame the love that moved the hand of Moses. But neither could He justify the act. God has left it there, as He always knows how to do. He leaves what came from Himself to tell its own story. What did not come from Himself stands before the spiritual judgement of those who trust Him. Any other book would offer some kind of apology here, or even a long argument, to clear God of all share in what was far from His own holiness.
Another writer still calls it faith, while faulting the timing:
He had learned the wisdom of Egypt, but not yet the wisdom of God. He showed zeal for his brothers, but it was not according to knowledge. He attempted a deliverance before the time. Yet it was an action of faith.
Stephen had called Moses mighty in deeds. That very strength was the problem. One writer names whose plan was moving that day:
"Mighty in deeds," and acting for the people of God too — but acting in his own natural strength, not as one sent by God. That explains what followed. Moses was thinking about how Moses was going to deliver the people. … God had to teach him that He accepts service only in the power and strength that come from Himself, not in the strength or wisdom of Egypt.
The same writer contrasts this confident rescuer with a man who later knew what it means to be sent by God:
Before, when he went out in his own natural strength, the failure he met hit him hard. Now he has learned how small he is, and he says, "Who am I?" And it is always so. When a believer senses that God has sent him on a mission, he always feels the deepest humbling of spirit. God may bring this about through painful discipline of soul, but the aim of His training is to break down self-confidence.
This is why the story sits in Stephen's speech. The rescue was real, and the people refused it. His judges had just done the same on a far larger scale:
The people had no readiness of heart. They gave no generous response to the devotion that would have served them, and they saw nothing of the mind of God at all. They drove their appointed deliverer out among strangers. Israel was now doing the same to One who had come down from a far more wonderful height. God had borne witness to Him beyond anything ever given before, and He had come to bring a much mightier deliverance.
The sting is in where the rejection came from. Not from Egypt:
So too 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.
- Heart. The love that moved his hand was beyond blame, whatever is said of the blow.
- Hand. Commentators differ: some say the act could not be justified, others call it faith acting before the time. The strength on show was Egypt's, not God's.
- School. God breaks down self-confidence before He sends anyone. The bold rescuer became the man who asked, "Who am I?"
- Refusal. A real deliverer stood in front of them, and they saw nothing. The wound came from his own brother, not from the oppressor.
- Pattern. Stephen's judges were repeating what their fathers did — now against a far greater Deliverer, and against far greater proof.
For he thought that his brethren would understand that God by his hand was giving them deliverance. But they understood not.
Stephen is retelling Israel's story to men who are about to stone him. Here he pauses on a moment that failed. Moses acted for his brothers, and they missed who he was. The verse holds two things at once. Moses was sure God had chosen him. His people were too blind to see it.
His conviction rested on something God had made known to him.
God had sent conviction into Moses' heart both of sin and of righteousness. He saw how far Pharaoh's palace stood from the rest of God. He heard and understood the word of promise. God had made it known to him — we are not told how — that Israel was His people. He also made known that the day of their deliverance was near, and that He would keep His word of promise by Moses' own hand.
What Moses believed was true. But he acted before God's time, and that decided the outcome.
This was zeal for his brothers, but it was "not according to knowledge." God's time had not yet come to judge Egypt and deliver Israel. The servant who understands God will always wait for God's time. Moses had grown up. He was "instructed in all the wisdom of the Egyptians." And "he supposed that his brothers would understand that God was giving them salvation by his hand." All this was true. Yet he ran ahead of God's time, and when a man does that, failure must be the result.
The lesson God was teaching runs deeper than timing. It concerns the source of the strength a servant uses.
"Mighty in deeds," he acted for the people of God. But he acted in the energy of the flesh, not as one sent by God, and that explains what followed. Moses was thinking about how Moses would deliver the people... But no — "they did not understand." Moses had another lesson to learn. God had to teach him that He would be served only by the power and strength that come from Himself, not by the strength or wisdom of Egypt... When a person acts in the energy of the flesh, there is always disappointment and surprise when our efforts fail.
The failure was not only in the deliverer. Israel had lost the expectation God Himself had given them.
They had fallen, not only in their circumstances, but in their souls. Faith was at work in very few of them, so few expected a deliverer or valued a man who had faith in God. They were dark and dead toward God. They felt how hard men can be. The hope God had given to Israel had almost vanished from their souls. They expected no deliverance close at hand, yet they should have been looking for it. The fourth generation was already running its course. In that generation, as the Lord had said, this long-afflicted people were to leave a judged Egypt and come into the promised land again.
Stephen is not giving a history lesson. He holds a mirror up to the council in front of him. And he marks the one difference that makes their sin far worse.
His brothers, however, did not understand, because they did not share his faith. So they rejected him as their deliverer. They wanted to keep going their own wrong way... In Acts 7, God leads Stephen to make these points clear. He shows that when the Jews rejected the Lord Jesus, they were doing again what their fathers had done with Moses — but on a far more serious scale. In the Lord Jesus there was not the slightest element of imperfection. In Moses there was distinct failure. His desires were right: his action wrong.
Moses came twice. Commentators read the two visits as a shape that Israel's history is still following.
He left the palace and, perhaps, the throne, and came to his own to take up their cause. It all points to Him who left the glory and came to His own, and His own did not receive Him. When Moses came the first time to his brothers to deliver them, "they did not understand." But they understood when he came the second time. In the same way Israel will understand when He who is greater than Moses comes the second time.
- Understood — Moses' conviction was real. God had told him that deliverance would come by his hand. Being right about God's purpose is not the same as being right about God's timing.
- Unseeing — Israel's blindness was their own fault. God's own word had told them when to expect rescue, and they had stopped looking.
- Undone — work begun before God's time ends in failure and in "disappointment and surprise." Only strength that comes from God can serve God.
- Underlined — Stephen tells this failure for a reason. His hearers had repeated their fathers' sin against a Deliverer in whom there was no failure at all.
- Understood at last — Israel missed Moses the first time and understood him the second. Commentators see in that the hope still held out to Israel.
And on the morrow he shewed himself to them as they were contending, and compelled them to peace, saying, *Ye* are brethren, why do ye wrong one another?
Commentary for this verse has not been generated yet.
But he that was wronging his neighbour thrust him away, saying, Who established thee ruler and judge over us?
Stephen is on trial, and he answers by retelling Israel's own history back to the men judging him. He has reached the day Moses stepped between two fighting Hebrews, and one of them shoved him aside.
One writer weighs the Greek word behind the push:
The word is aposato = driven away. You can see its force in Acts 7:27, "thrust him away." It means complete refusal.
Moses was trying to reconcile two men. It was the aggressor, not the victim, who turned on him:
It was the unworthy dealing of his brethren which broke up all hope for the present. The man who was in the wrong was also the one with the bitter feeling — as is always the case. Moses loved both men and would gladly have made peace between them. Yet it was the wrongdoer who taunted him with the words, "Who made you a ruler and a judge?" The Israelite's own proud spirit was quick to read pride into others… Moses had certainly been hasty, and the Lord judged it. But he was right in the main. So the Lord left the completing of Israel's deliverance not to another, but to him, when the right time came.
The taunt read Moses as a man grabbing power. Both times he stepped in for Israel, they misread him:
Moses was not understood when he took a stand with Israel against their oppressors. He was not understood either when he tried to restore or build unity among Israelites. All they could see was selfish motives. The man who wronged his neighbour pushed Moses away with the cutting words, "Who made you a ruler and a judge over us?" He then asked whether Moses would kill him as he had killed the Egyptian. That warned Moses that his killing of the Egyptian was known, and that Egypt's authorities would hear of it… Israel was not ready to be delivered for another forty years, and Moses had to learn on his own what would fit him for public service.
Exodus leaves the impression that Moses ran from Pharaoh. Stephen ties the flight to the wrongdoer's words instead:
Reading Exodus, we get the impression that his main motive was the anger of Pharaoh. Acts 7:29 casts a different light on it. "Then Moses fled at this saying" — the saying of the wrongdoer — "Who made you a ruler and a judge over us?" So it was rejection by his own people that cut him to the quick. Forty years later they all had to discover that it was GOD who made him a ruler and judge over them. For the time being, though, they had lost him.
Moses is the second refused deliverer in the speech. His hearers were finishing the list:
In Acts 6 and 7, Stephen was the last great witness. He summed up their history: they had rejected every deliverer God ever sent. They had sold Joseph into Egypt. They had asked Moses, "Who made you a ruler and a judge?" They had killed the Just One, as their prophets had foretold. And now they resisted the Spirit of God! A broken law, stoned prophets, a slain Christ, and a resisted Spirit closed the tale.
One writer reads Moses here as a picture of Christ, and says the rejection had to be part of it:
The world sentenced Moses to death, and he was taken out of it. Then he had to take his place as a man rejected by his own people. Otherwise he would not be a true picture of the Deliverer here. The world casts him out, and his own people reject him, as they rejected our Lord… They say, "Who made you a ruler and a judge over us?" and Moses fled into Midian, rejected by his own people. It is in that character that we have to do with the Lord Jesus Christ now.
- Refusal. The push in "thrust him aside" means complete refusal, not hesitation.
- Refused by whom. The blow came not from Egypt but from his own people, and from the very man who was in the wrong.
- Refused for what. He came to make peace between two of his own people, and they read his care as a grab for power.
- Refusal's cost. Those words, not Pharaoh's anger, drove Moses into forty years of exile, and left Israel without their deliverer.
- Refusal reversed. Forty years later they all had to learn who made Moses a ruler and a judge: God did. Jesus meets the same reversal — refused by His own, and now the Deliverer.
Dost *thou* wish to kill me as thou killedst the Egyptian yesterday?
Stephen is on trial before the council, retelling Israel's own history back to them. He reaches the day Moses stepped between two Israelites who were fighting, and verse 28 is the sneer he got back.
Moses came to his own people seeking their good, and the man in the wrong turned on him.
The man who did wrong to his neighbour — it is always so — resented the love that sought their good, and pushed Moses away. He did worse still. "Who," said he, "made you a ruler and a judge over us? Do you want to kill me as you killed the Egyptian yesterday?"
The man turns yesterday's killing into a threat. The one in the wrong is the first to resent a judge.
Stephen makes a point of who spoke these words. The blow did not come from Egypt.
Stephen made it very plain that the Jewish rulers of his day were repeating the sin of their forefathers in a worse form... So too with Moses. The saying that made him flee, "Who made you a ruler and a judge over us?" came from one of his own people, and not from an Egyptian. The rejection came from among his own people, and not from outside. So it had been with Jesus too.
The second half of the taunt does more than insult. It tells Moses that his act is known.
All they could see was selfish motives. The man who did wrong to his neighbour shoved Moses away with the cutting words, "Who made you a ruler and a judge over us?" His next words asked whether Moses would kill him as he had killed the Egyptian. They warned Moses that his killing of the Egyptian was no secret, and would not stay hidden from Egypt's authorities. He fled the country and became a stranger in a strange land for no short time.
The man meant his question as a put-down. Stephen answers it a few verses later, and the answer is God.
True, at first they rejected his authority. The wrongdoer "thrust him away, saying, Who made you a ruler and a judge over us?" But we also read, "This Moses, whom they rejected, saying, 'Who made you a ruler and a judge?'—this man God sent as both ruler and redeemer by the hand of the angel who appeared to him in the bush."
A man's refusal settles nothing about God's appointment.
One writer sets Moses' rejection beside what Israel was doing to Christ at that very moment.
The people had no readiness of heart. They made no generous response to the devotion that would have served them. They saw nothing of the mind of God at all. They drove out their appointed deliverer to live among strangers. Israel was doing the same thing now to One who had come down from a far more wonderful height, with witness from God beyond anything ever given before, and who came to carry out a much mightier deliverance. But the warning was plain. The Moses they now boasted in had been an outcast for forty years, cut off from the people who still had to admit that God really had raised him up to be their ruler and their judge.
Moses had misjudged both the moment and his own people.
The time of deliverance had not come. So far Moses was mistaken. He had not yet fully judged himself; without realising it, he was off his guard in using his strength in words and deeds. The people had to sink lower — they had to cry to God under their bitter burdens... Moses thought his own people would understand that God was giving them deliverance through him. But they did not understand. And this is a far more searching trial than any fear of Egyptian anger.
- Refused. The insult comes from a fellow Israelite, not an Egyptian — his own people push the deliverer away.
- Exposed. The words reveal that Moses' killing of the Egyptian is public knowledge, and he runs.
- Appointed. The scornful question gets its answer in verse 35: the man they rejected was the one God sent as ruler and redeemer.
- Repeated. Stephen's hearers were doing to Christ what their ancestors did to Moses — driving out their own deliverer.
- Not yet. Moses had not yet judged himself, and the people had not yet cried to God — forty years as an outcast came first.
And Moses fled at this saying, and became a sojourner in the land of Madiam, where he begat two sons.
Stephen's account reaches the moment when Moses leaves Egypt. His own people had rejected him, and he spent the next forty years as a foreigner in Midian. Two questions sit inside that one verse. What drove him out? And what was God doing in those forty silent years?
What made Moses run? The answer shifts depending on which account you read.
Moses stepped in, and the immediate result was his flight from Egypt and forty years in Midian. Reading Exodus, we certainly get the impression that the main motive with him was the anger of Pharaoh. Acts 7:29 casts a different light on it: "At this retort Moses fled" — the retort of the wrongdoer, "Who made you a ruler and a judge over us?" So his rejection by his own people was what cut him to the quick. Forty years later they all had to discover that it was GOD who made him a ruler and judge over them, but for the time being he was lost to them.
Where the blow comes from decides how deep it goes.
The sharpest wound, like the lowest blow, comes from God's people: when man rules among them and not God, Satan works underneath it all and at his worst.
Egypt had already trained him. The wilderness had a different lesson.
Yet it was all useful discipline for Moses. He must learn of God alone in the wilderness. The wisdom of Egypt must be, as it were, unlearned: God does not choose to honour it for His deliverances. The wisdom He uses must come down from above.
The same pattern shows up in another life much later.
Moses needed forty years at the back of the desert to fit him to lead God's people out of Egypt and through the wilderness. No doubt God used his education in Egypt in forming the vessel for His service, but the forty years were needed to empty the vessel of what had filled it during its forming. It was the same with Saul of Tarsus. He needed three years in Arabia to be emptied of what he had picked up in the schools of this world, and then filled in the school of God.
Listen to how Moses speaks after Midian.
Moses spent forty years in the wilderness doing, as it were, nothing. Then in Exodus 3 God says to him, "Come, I will send you." Moses answers, "Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the children of Israel out of Egypt?" Now that God is sending him, he feels the weight of that responsibility deeply, and he shrinks from it. Before, he went out in the energy of the flesh, and the failure he met bitterly disappointed him. Now he has learned his own insignificance, and he says, "Who am I?"
The verse mentions two sons but does not name them. One of those names says where Moses' heart still was.
Moses had to flee from his brothers. They would have valued his using the world's influence for them, but cared nothing for his going down in love to share their affliction. No fact marks the difference more clearly than this: he called his son Gershom, "a stranger," while Joseph called his eldest Manasseh, "forgotten." Moses had in no way settled down in Midian. His affections were with his poor brothers, and he looked for the day when deliverance would come for them by his hand.
That name is handed on to everyone who reads it.
The "stranger" son does not become a resident of the land where he is born. These things should need no interpreter for any of our hearts. May God only grant that we be more Gershoms in the land of Midian — strangers in a world where, if Christ can find a bride, He cannot find a home.
Stephen is building a case, and his hearers are standing inside it.
He goes over the nation's history from its beginning with Abraham 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... With these facts in front of them they might well pause and weigh what they were doing, and where they might be drifting.
The exile itself proves fruitful.
The hour of Messiah's rejection is only the occasion for a higher glory and a closer relationship with those who meanwhile believe. It is like the stranger in the land of Midian, who becomes the father of two sons. He did not have them in Egypt, with the sons of Israel around him.
- Rejected — Pharaoh's anger was not the deepest wound. His own people's words sent Moses away, and the sharpest wounds come from those you came to help.
- Exiled — Forty years in Midian looked like waste. It was God emptying a vessel that Egypt had spent forty years filling.
- Renamed — He named his son Gershom, "a stranger." Joseph had named his son "forgotten." Moses never settled, and his heart stayed with the brothers who threw him out.
- Remade — The man who once acted on his own now asks "Who am I?" — the mark of someone God is about to send.
- Repeated — Stephen traces the same rejection twice, in Joseph and in Moses, so his hearers would stop and ask where they were drifting.