What is the star of Remphan mentioned in Acts 7:43?

The name of a god in Acts 7:43, which Israel had worshipped (but some of the Greek MSS read REPHAN). Stephen was quoting Amos 5:25-26 from the LXX, which has RAEPHAN. In the Hebrew the name of the god is CHIUN, but why the translators changed the name is not known. There have been found among the foreign gods in Egypt one named RENPU, and a goddess KEN, which may have been those referred to.

A heathen god. Amos 5:26. Supposed by some to be the same as REMPHAN in Acts 7:43.

The expression 'the tabernacle of your Molech,' Amos 5:26, is quoted in Acts 7:43-44. The Israelites had not worshipped Jehovah for forty years in the wilderness; but they had carried symbols of Molech and Chiun (or Remphan) and worshipped them. The root of their idolatrous course was that they had never in heart made a clean break from Egypt.

During all these years of wandering in the wilderness circumcision was not carried out (Joshua 5:2-5). What else happened during this unrecorded period in the wilderness may be learned from a number of passages. "But the house of Israel rebelled against Me in the wilderness; they walked not in My statutes, and they despised My judgments, which if a man do, he shall live in them; and My sabbaths they greatly polluted. Then I said, I would pour out My fury upon them in the wilderness to consume them" (Ezek. 20:13, etc.), "Have ye not offered unto Me sacrifices and offerings in the wilderness forty years, O house of Israel ? But ye have borne the tabernacle of your Moloch and Chiun your images, the star of your god, which ye made to yourselves" (Amos 5:25, 26). "Then God turned, and gave them up to worship the host of heaven, as it is written in the book of the prophets, O ye house of Israel, have ye offered to me slain beasts and sacrifices by the space of forty years in the wilderness? Yea, ye took up the tabernacle of Moloch, and the star of your god Remphan (worship of Saturn) figures which you made to worship them" (Acts 7:42, 43). They continued in stubbornness and rebellion and became idolators. But oh! the mercy of God! He continued to feed them and gave them water. "These forty years the Lord thy God hath been with thee, thou hast lacked nothing" (Deut. 2:7). "And I have led you forty years in the wilderness; your clothes are not waxen old upon you, and thy shoe is not waxen old upon thy foot" (Deut. 19:5). What marvellous compassion! And thus He still deals in mercy with His wayward wandering people. (Psalm 90, standing at the beginning of the fourth section of the book of Psalms (Numbers) was written by Moses, no doubt, when he saw them dying.)

Verses 42 and 43 cover a long space of time, indicating Israel's persisting in wilful, selfish ways, neglecting in their forty year wilderness history the honest offering to God of their slain beasts and sacrifices. Likely they killed beasts and offered them in sacrifice, but not to God. Later, in the land, they adopted the gods of the dispossessed idolaters, Moloch and Remphan making images of these to worship. Stephen says little more than this about Israel's history in the land, but adds the solemn warning of God that He would carry them away beyond Babylon, which the Jews knew had been fulfilled in the days of Nebuchadnezzar. This history of rebellion and of God's often intervening in discipline ought to have taught the Jews to learn by their fathers' experience.

'And they made a calf in those days, and offered sacrifice to the idol and rejoiced in the works of their own hands. But God turned and delivered them up to serve the host of heaven; as it is written in [the] book of the prophets, Did ye offer Me victims and sacrifices forty years in the wilderness, O house of Israel? Yea, ye took up the tabernacle of Moloch and the star of your [or, the] god Remphan, the forms which ye made to worship them; and I will transport you beyond Babylon' (vers. 41-43). So prone is man, incredulous man, to abandon the living God, in spite of daily standing witness of His power and grace, as well as of His solemn occasional judgments before all eyes; so readily does he take up that idolatry which he had but lately known to dominate the high and mighty, the refined and learned — the world, in short, where he himself had been enslaved. So powerful an adversary is 'public opinion' to the will and glory of God, even in the face of the grandest exhibitions of His favour to His people, and of stern unmistakable punishment on their enemies, and, not least, of shame on their gods who could neither help their votaries nor screen themselves. Nor did the 'calf', the abomination of Egypt, satisfy Israel; they craved after objects higher than the works of their own hands whatever the charm of this to man's vain heart. Once yielding to the snare Israel must outdo Egypt. So 'God turned and delivered them up to serve the host of heaven.' Grovelling idolatry aspires to higher things and inflates itself with its heavenly imaginations. Not Stephen is the authority for so withering a charge, but Amos (Amos 5:25-27). In the prophets' Book it is written: would an Israelite gainsay them too? or tax scripture itself with saying blasphemous things against Israel? The forms of Moloch, 'horrid king', and of Remphan, they made to worship, and they did worship them.

And not the least repulsive feature of this early corruption among the chosen people was that they offered all the while victims and sacrifices in the wilderness to Jehovah. To be lavish in honour of false gods the poorest can afford, who complain of what is due to the true God, as if He were a rigid exactor and not the Giver of every good and every perfect gift.

Here we have this principle applied to the judgment of Israel. It is not merely the calves that Jeroboam set for politico-religious purposes at Dan and Beth-el. They are reminded when and where their idolatry began, that is, in the wilderness. False gods were objects of worship there, the Moloch and the Chiun, that they took up all the time that the Levites were carrying the ark of the tabernacle, with the sons of Israel so demurely following. They had not got rid of the gods of Egypt then. They brought these vanities along with them into the wilderness; and now this is charged upon them. "But ye have borne the shrines of your king, and the basis of your images, the star of your god, which ye made to yourselves." Mark the circumstances. "Therefore will I cause you to go into captivity" (the deportation to the cities of the Medes) "beyond Damascus." Stephen says beyond Babylon (and so indeed was the fact) perhaps to distinguish from the Babylonish captivity. Such was the result of the old sin in the wilderness. No doubt that sin was more glaring at the end; the dark stream was always gathering further contributions to its volume. The mass of waters flowed more mightily down at its mouth than at the beginning of its course. Nevertheless God always goes back to the source, and at last declares that because of the first departure did the final blow come. The captivity of Israel was the consequence of their forefathers' sin in the wilderness, and not merely of the sins they had added to it in the land God allotted them. Of course there were many and bitter aggravations in the land; but the evils which abounded in the land were the consequence of a failure to judge the wickedness in the wilderness. It is the same thing practically with every Christian.

Consider the serious lesson in what Stephen quoted from the Greek Version of Amos 5:25-27. When the Spirit of prophecy set forth their coming captivity, He goes back, not to the wicked kings of Israel, nor to shameless sons of David who ruled Judah, but to the idolatry in the wilderness at the very time when they outwardly honoured the tabernacle of Jehovah and the priesthood of Aaron. But God saw all the while the hollowness of their victims and sacrifices in His name; for in their hearts and secretly, they took up the tent of Moloch and the star of the god Raiphan (or, Romphan), the forms which they made to worship them. However God may wait in His admirable patience, it is the early unjudged sin that decides, though the execution of judgment may not come for many centuries afterward. The writings of the earliest uninspired men of the Christian era prove the fallen state which undermined and destroyed the apostolic teaching; whilst the centuries that followed kept ever growing worse and worse, till the highest arrogance sat enthroned on the ruin of the church's heavenly association with Christ in entire separation from the world.

But this departure from Him was not a new thing in their history. They were always a stiffnecked people. Even in the wilderness did they not bring Him sacrifices and offerings, but instead they bore the tabernacle of Moloch and Chiun (or the booth of your king and the pedestal of your images, the star of your gods). Then follows the verdict, "Therefore will I cause you to go into captivity beyond Damascus, saith the LORD, whose name is the God of Hosts."

It had been their special sin. The prophet asks, you remember, "Hath a nation changed their gods, which are yet no gods? but My people have changed their glory for that which doth not profit." Even from the wilderness they had. There was first the golden calf, and all through the wilderness they had taken up "the tabernacle of Moloch, and the star of their god Remphan, figures which they made to worship them." God had declared that He was the one God, but they were idolaters to the core of the heart.