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.