Acts 7:17-21 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

When the time of the promise drew nigh That is, the time for the accomplishment of the promise; which God had sworn to Abraham Concerning the multiplication of his seed; see note on Genesis 22:16-17; the people grew, &c. Became very numerous in Egypt, notwithstanding that they were under great oppression there; till another king arose Probably of another family; which knew not Joseph And had no regard to his memory. The same dealt subtly with our kindred Formed crafty and treacherous designs against them; and evil-entreated our fathers Used them in a most injurious and barbarous way, lest in time they should become too powerful; so that In obedience to a most inhuman order, which he published; they cast out their young children Exposed them to perish by hunger or wild beasts; or cast them into the river Nile; to the end they might not live That they might be cut off from being a people, and their very race become quite extinct. In which afflictive and persecuting, but seasonable time When our fathers were reduced to this miserable state; Moses was born The person intended by God to be the instrument of his people's deliverance; and was exceeding fair Greek, αστειος τω Θεω, fair to God, as the margin reads it. The words, being a Hebraism, are only an emphatical expression, to denote Moses's extraordinary beauty, and might be not unfitly rendered divinely beautiful, the name of God being often introduced to express such things as were extraordinary in their kind. So in the Hebrew, what we translate great wrestlings, (Genesis 30:8,) is wrestlings of God; goodly cedars, (Psalms 80:10,) are cedars of God; great mountains, (Psalms 36:6,) are mountains of God. This then agrees with what is said of Moses, (Exodus 2:2,) that he was a goodly child; and with the account which Josephus gives of him, who says, “that when he was but three years old, his extraordinary beauty was such, that it struck every one that saw him; and as they carried him about, persons would leave their work to look at him.” See Grotius and Whitby. And when he was cast out Was thus exposed to perish, the providence of God so ordered it, that Pharaoh's daughter took him up Being moved with pity at the sight of him; and nourished him With a purpose of adopting him; for her own son By which means, being designed for a kingdom, he had all those advantages of education, which he could not have had if he had not been exposed. “All these extraordinary circumstances, relating to the birth, preservation, education, genius, and character of Moses, serve to aggravate the crime of Israel in rejecting him, when he offered himself to them as a deliverer under so many advantages, and when Providence had so wonderfully interested itself in his favour.” Doddridge.