Acts 7

35-41. This Moses whom they refused, saying,. Who made thee a ruler and a judge, &c.--Here, again, "the stone which the builders refused is made the head of the corner" ( Psalms 118:22 ).

37. This is that Moses which said . . . A prophet . . . him shall ye hear--This is quoted to remind his Moses-worshipping audience of the grand testimony of their faithful lawgiver, that he himself was not the last and proper object of the Church's faith, but only a humble precursor and small model of Him to whom their absolute submission was due.

38. in the church--the collective body of God's chosen people; hence used to denote the whole body of the faithful under the Gospel, or particular sections of them.
This is he that was in the church in the wilderness, with the angel . . . and with our fathers--alike near to the Angel of the Covenant, from whom he received all the institutions of the ancient economy, and to the people, to whom he faithfully reported the living oracles and among whom he set up the prescribed institutions. By this high testimony to Moses, Stephen rebuts the main charge for which he was on trial.

39. To whom our fathers would not obey, &c.--Here he shows that the deepest dishonor done to Moses came from the nation that now professed the greatest jealousy for his honor.
in their hearts turned back . . . into Egypt--"In this Stephen would have his hearers read the downward career on which they were themselves entering."

42-50. gave them up--judicially.
as . . . written in the book of the prophets--the twelve minor prophets, reckoned as one: the passage is from Amos 5:25 .
have ye offered to me . . . sacrifices?--The answer is, Yes, but as if ye did it not; for "neither did ye offer to Me only, nor always, nor with a perfect and willing heart" [BENGEL].

43. Yea, ye took up the tabernacle of Molech, &c.--Two kinds of idolatry are charged upon the Israelites: that of the golden calf and that of the heavenly bodies; Molech and Remphan being deities, representing apparently the divine powers ascribed to nature, under different aspects.
carry you beyond Babylon--the well-known region of the captivity of Judah; while "Damascus" is used by the prophet ( Amos 5:27 ), whither the ten tribes were carried.

44. Our fathers had the tabernacle of witness in the wilderness--which aggravated the guilt of that idolatry in which they indulged, with the tokens of the divine presence constantly in the midst of them.

45. which . . . our fathers that came after--rather, "having received it by succession" (Margin), that is, the custody of the tabernacle from their ancestors.
brought in with Jesus--or Joshua.
into the possession--rather, "at the taking possession of [the territory of] the Gentiles."
unto the days of David--for till then Jerusalem continued in the hands of the Jebusites. But Stephen's object in mentioning David is to hasten from the tabernacle which he set up, to the temple which his son built, in Jerusalem; and this only to show, from their own Scripture ( Isaiah 66:1 Isaiah 66:2 ), that even that temple, magnificent though it was, was not the proper resting-place of Jehovah upon earth; as his audience and the nations had all along been prone to imagine. (What that resting-place was, even "the contrite heart, that trembleth at God's word," he leaves to be gathered from the prophet referred to).

51-53. Ye stiffnecked . . . ye do always resist the Holy Ghost, &c.--It has been thought that symptoms of impatience and irritation in the audience induced Stephen to cut short his historical sketch. But as little farther light could have been thrown upon Israel's obstinacy from subsequent periods of the national history on the testimony of their own Scriptures, we should view this as the summing up, the brief import of the whole Israelitish history--grossness of heart, spiritual deafness, continuous resistance of the Holy Ghost, down to the very council before whom Stephen was pleading.

52. Which of, &c.--Deadly hostility to the messengers of God, whose high office it was to tell of "the Righteous One," that well-known prophetic title of Messiah ( Isaiah 53:11 , Jeremiah 23:6 , &c.), and this consummated by the betrayal and murder of Messiah Himself, on the part of those now sitting in judgment on the speaker, are the still darker features of the national character depicted in these withering words.

53. Who have received the law by the disposition--"at the appointment" or "ordination," that is, by the ministry.
of angels, and have not kept it--This closing word is designed to shut up those idolizers of the law under the guilt of high disobedience to it, aggravated by the august manner in which they had received it.

54-56. When they heard these things they were cut to the heart, &c.--If they could have answered him, how different would have been their temper of mind!

55. But he, being full of the Holy Ghost, looked up steadfastly into heaven, and saw the glory of God--You who can transfer to canvas such scenes as these, in which the rage of hell grins horribly from men, as they sit condemned by a frail prisoner of their own, and see heaven beaming from his countenance and opening full upon his view--I envy you, for I find no words to paint what, in the majesty of the divine text, is here so simply told. "But how could Stephen, in the council-chamber, see heaven at all? I suppose this question never occurred but to critics of narrow soul, one of whom [MEYER] conjectures that he saw it through the window! and another, of better mould, that the scene lay in one of the courts of the temple" [ALFORD]. As the sight was witnessed by Stephen alone, the opened heavens are to be viewed as revealed to his bright beaming spirit.
and Jesus standing on the right hand of God--Why "standing," and not sitting, the posture in which the glorified Saviour is elsewhere represented? Clearly, to express the eager interest with which He watched from the skies the scene in that council chamber, and the full tide of His Spirit which He was at that moment engaged in pouring into the heart of His heroical witness, till it beamed in radiance from his very countenance.

56. I see . . . the Son of man standing, &c.--This is the only time that our Lord is by human lips called THE SON OF MAN after His ascension ( Revelation 1:13 , 14:14 are not instances). And why here? Stephen, full of the Holy Ghost, speaking now not of himself at all ( Acts 7:55 ), but entirely by the Spirit, is led to repeat the very words in which Jesus Himself, before this same council, had foretold His glorification ( Matthew 26:64 ), assuring them that that exaltation of the SON OF MAN which they should hereafter witness to their dismay, was already begun and actual [ALFORD].

57, 58. Then they cried out . . . and ran upon him with one accord--To men of their mould and in their temper, Stephen's last seraphic words could but bring matters to extremities, though that only revealed the diabolical spirit which they breathed.

58. cast him out of the city--according to Leviticus 24:14 , Numbers 15:35 , 1 Kings 21:13 ; and see Hebrews 13:12 .
and stoned--"proceeded to stone" him. The actual stoning is recorded in Acts 7:59 .
and the witnesses--whose hands were to be first upon the criminal ( Deuteronomy 17:7 ).
laid down their clothes--their loose outer garments, to have them taken charge of.
at a young man's feet whose name was Saul--How thrilling is this our first introduction to one to whom Christianity--whether as developed in the New Testament or as established in the world--owes more perhaps than to all the other apostles together! Here he is, having perhaps already a seat in the Sanhedrim, some thirty years of age, in the thick of this tumultuous murder of a distinguished witness for Christ, not only "consenting unto his death" ( Acts 8:1 ), but doing his own part of the dark deed.

59, 60. calling upon God and saying, Lord Jesus, &c.--An unhappy supplement of our translators is the word "God" here; as if, while addressing the Son, he was really calling upon the Father. The sense is perfectly clear without any supplement at all--"calling upon [invoking] and saying, Lord Jesus"; Christ being the Person directly invoked and addressed by name (compare Acts 9:14 ). Even GROTIUS, DE WETTE, MEYER, &c. admit this, adding several other examples of direct prayer to Christ; and PLINY, in his well-known letter to the Emperor Trajan (A.D. 110 or 111), says it was part of the regular Christian service to sing, in alternate strains, a hymn to Christ as God.
Lord Jesus, receive my spirit--In presenting to Jesus the identical prayer which He Himself had on the cross offered to His Father, Stephen renders to his glorified Lord absolute divine worship, in the most sublime form, and at the most solemn moment of his life. In this commitment of his spirit to Jesus, Paul afterwards followed his footsteps with a calm, exultant confidence that with Him it was safe for eternity ( 2 Timothy 1:12 ).

60. cried with a loud voice--with something of the gathered energy of his dying Lord
Lord--that is, JESUS, beyond doubt, whom he had just before addressed as Lord.
lay not this sin to their charge--Comparing this with nearly the same prayer of his dying Lord, it will be seen how very richly this martyr of Jesus had drunk into his Master's spirit, in its divinest form.
he fell asleep--never said of the death of Christ. for Christ, amidst all the darkness of its perpetrators; and how many have been cheered by it to like faithfulness even unto death!