7
“Brothers and Fathers, Listen!”
1 “Are these things true?” the high priest asked.
2 “Brothers and fathers, listen!” Stephen said. “The God of the Glory appeared to our ancestor Abraham while he was in Mesopotamia, before he settled in the city of Haran,
3 and said to him, ‘Leave ˢyour land and your relatives and come to the land that I will show you.’+
4 Then Abraham left the land of the Chaldeans and settled in Haran. From there, after his father died, God had Abraham move to this land where ᵖyou are now living,
5 but did not give him an inheritance in it, not even one small piece of ground. He did, however, promise to ‘give the land to him as a possession, and to his seed after him,’+ even though Abraham did not yet have a child.
6 God, moreover, spoke as follows: Your ‘seed will be foreigners in a land not their own, and the people there will enslave them and oppress them for four hundred years.
7 And the nation that they will serve as slaves I myself will punish,’ God said, ‘and after these things they will come out’+ and ‘render sacred service to me in this place.’+
8 Then he gave Abraham the rite of circumcision as a sign of the covenant. And so Abraham became the father of Isaac and circumcised the boy when he was eight days old, and Isaac the same with Jacob, and Jacob the same with the twelve patriarchs.
9 And as for the patriarchs, because they were jealous of Joseph, they sold him as a slave into Egypt. Yet God was with Joseph
10 and rescued him from all his troubles and granted him favor and wisdom in the eyes of Pharaoh king of Egypt, who appointed him ruler of Egypt and put him in charge of the entire royal household and everything he possessed.
11 Then a widespread famine struck Egypt and Canaan, and with it great trial and distress, and our ancestors themselves could not find any food.
12 When Jacob heard, however, that there was grain in Egypt, he sent our ancestors on their first visit.
13 On their second visit, Joseph disclosed his identity to his brothers, and news of Joseph’s family reached Pharaoh.
14 Joseph, then, sent a message and told Jacob, his father, and the entire family to come—in total seventy-five.
15 And so Jacob went down to Egypt. He himself died there, as did our other ancestors.
16 The two embalmed bodies were carried back to Shechem and placed in the tomb that Abraham had purchased for a certain amount of silver from the sons of Hamor in Shechem.
17 “Now as the time drew nearer and nearer for God to do what he had promised and sworn to Abraham, our people’s number grew and increased in Egypt,
18 and eventually ‘there arose another king over Egypt, who did not know about Joseph.’+
19 This king deceitfully exploited our nation and oppressed our ancestors, forcing our people to leave their infants outside in the open air, so that the babies would die.
20 At this time Moses was born, and he was chosen by God for the most important of tasks. He spent his first three months in the home of his father.
21 When he was left outside, though, Pharaoh’s daughter claimed him for herself and raised him as her own son.
22 Moses was trained by the Egyptians in all fields of learning and wisdom, and he was skilled in the things he said and did.
23 “When Moses was about forty years old, he decided to go and help his countrymen, the people of Israel.
24 When he saw one of them being mistreated, he intervened and avenged the person who was being harmed by striking down the Egyptian.
25 (He thought that his own people would realize that God was going to grant them deliverance using him as the instrument, but they didn’t.)
26 The next day, he showed up as two Israelites were fighting and tried to reconcile them. ‘Men, you are brothers!’ he said. ‘Why are you hurting each other?’
27 The man who was harming his neighbor, however, pushed Moses away and said, ‘Who was it that appointed you as ruler and judge over us?
28 Surely you aren’t intending to kill me, are you, as you did yesterday that Egyptian?’+
29 “Moses fled when he heard the man say this and became a foreigner in the land of Midian, where he became the father of two sons.
30 And when forty years had passed, there appeared to him in the wilderness near Mount Sinai an angel ‘in the flames of a burning bush.’+
31 Moses, when he saw this, was amazed at the sight. As he went over to have a closer look, he heard the voice of the Lord.
32 ‘I am the God of ˢyour ancestors,’ the voice said, ‘the God in covenant with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob.’+ Moses, seized with fear to the point of shaking and trembling, didn’t dare look any closer.
33 ‘Remove the sandals from your feet,’ the Lord said to him, ‘for the place where you are standing is holy ground.
34 I have certainly taken note of the oppression of my people in Egypt and have heard their groaning, and have come down to rescue them. Now come, I am sending you back to Egypt.’+
35 Moses, the very man whom they had rejected with the words, ‘Who was it that appointed you as ruler and judge?’: This same man God sends back, by the power of the angel who appeared to him in the bush, as ruler and deliverer.
36 It was the same previously rejected man who led the people out, performing wonders and signs in the land of Egypt and at the Red Sea and in the wilderness for forty years.
37 It was the same previously rejected Moses who told the people of Israel, ‘God will raise up from among ᵖyour own people a prophet like me.’
38 It was the same previously rejected man who resided among the assembly in the wilderness in company with the angel who spoke to him on Mount Sinai and in company with our ancestors, and who received living oracles to pass on to ᵖyou,
39 and whom our ancestors refused to obey. Yes, they rejected him and longed to return to Egypt,
40 saying to Aaron, ‘Make for us some gods who will lead the way for us. For as for this fellow Moses who led us out of the land of Egypt, we don’t know what has happened to him.’+
41 They made an idol in the shape of a calf at that time and offered sacrifice to the idol and held a celebration in honor of the works of their hands.
42 Well, God turned against them and chose to surrender them to the worship of the heavenly powers and their celestial images, as it is written in the scroll containing the oracles of the twelve prophets:
“ ‘Was it offerings and sacrifices that ᵖyou presented to me
for forty years in the wilderness, O nation of Israel? No!
43 And so ᵖyou will surely bear the tabernacle of the sun god Moloch
and the star-image of the god Rephan,
the images you have made so that you can worship them,
and I will send you into exile’+ beyond Babylon.
44 “The tabernacle of the Testimony was with our ancestors in the wilderness, having been constructed at God’s command according to the detailed pattern that Moses had seen.
45 Once the tabernacle had passed into the care of the succeeding generation under Joshua, our ancestors brought it into the land when they dispossessed the nations that God drove out before them, and eventually the tabernacle came into the care of David.
46 David found favor in the eyes of God and requested the honor of providing a sanctuary for the descendants of Jacob,
47 although it was Solomon who actually got to build them a house.
48 The Most High does not dwell, however, in places made by human hands! As the prophet says,
49 “‘Heaven is my throne,
and the earth is the footstool for my feet.
What kind of house will ᵖyou build for me,
says the LORD,
or what sort of place will you build as my resting place?
50 It was my hand that made
each and every one of these things, was it not?’+
51 “You stubborn people, uncircumcised in your hearts and unwilling to listen! ᵖYou are always resisting the Holy Spirit; as your ancestors did, so you yourselves do, too.
52 Which of the prophets did ᵖyour ancestors not persecute? They even killed those who foretold the coming of the Righteous One, of whom now ᵖyou, for your own part, have become what? Betrayers and murderers.
53 ᵖYou received Torah through instructions passed on by angels, but you have not obeyed it.”
54 When the members of the Sanhedrin heard this, they were furious and began grinding their teeth at him in anger.
55 Then full of the Holy Spirit, looking intently into heaven, Stephen saw God’s glory and Jesus standing at the right hand of God.
56 “Look!” he said. “I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the very right hand of God!”
57 At that, screaming loudly, they covered their ears and made a united rush at him.
58 And after they had driven him outside the city, they began to stone him to death. His accusers, meanwhile, laid their cloaks at the feet of a young man named Saul.
59 As they were stoning Stephen, he kept calling out, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit!”
60 Then falling to his knees, he cried out with a loud voice, “Lord, don’t hold this sin against them!” And this having said, he died.