Stephen’s Speech to the Sanhedrin
1 Then the high priest asked Stephen, “Are these charges true?”
2
To this he replied: “Brothers and fathers, listen to me! The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham while he was still in Mesopotamia, before he lived in Harran.
3
‘Leave your country and your people,’ God said, ‘and go to the land I will show you.’
4
“So he left the land of the Chaldeans and settled in Harran. After the death of his father, God sent him to this land where you are now living.
5
He gave him no inheritance here, not even enough ground to set his foot on. But God promised him that he and his descendants after him would possess the land, even though at that time Abraham had no child.
6
God spoke to him in this way: ‘For four hundred years your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own, and they will be enslaved and mistreated.
7
But I will punish the nation they serve as slaves,’ God said, ‘and afterward they will come out of that country and worship me in this place.’
8
Then he gave Abraham the covenant of circumcision. And Abraham became the father of Isaac and circumcised him eight days after his birth. Later Isaac became the father of Jacob, and Jacob became the father of the twelve patriarchs.