Moses. Stephen describes the growth of the people, the change of ruler and his oppression, as in Exodus 1.
Acts 7:20. fair unto God (mg.): from Exodus 2:2; Philo and Josephus speak of the beauty of Moses.
Acts 7:21. Cf. Exodus 2:3; Exodus 2:10. The papyri show that the exposure of infants was still common in Egypt in Christian times. The OT says nothing of Moses-' education or learning; Philo knows much more of it than is here stated.
Acts 7:23. forty years old: according to Deuteronomy 34:7 Moses is 120 years old when he dies, and this speech, after a rabbinic tradition, gives him three periods of forty years: (a) till the visit to his brethren; (b) to his return to Egypt from Midian (Acts 7:30); (c) to the end of his life.
Acts 7:24. Following Exodus 2:11, somewhat carelessly expressed and presupposing in the audience a knowledge of the facts.
Acts 7:25. Stephen's own comment; Moses wished to appear as a deliverer not a murderer, but he, like others afterwards, had to do with a race slow to recognise its saviours. The rest of the story is slightly altered from Ex., and brings out more strongly Moses-' anxiety to help his brethren. He also appears here as fleeing from Egypt on account of his own people rather than for fear of the king. They distrust him and resist him always.
Acts 7:30. The second forty years-' period opens in the wilderness of Sinai; in Acts 7:32 God Himself speaks to him in the bush as in Ex.
Acts 7:31-34. The theophany is narrated as in Exodus 3. Note that the holy ground here spoken of is not in Palestine, but far from it.
Acts 7:35. The emphatic repetition of the pronouns with which Acts 7:35-38 all begin in the originalthis, this, this is lost in EV. Moses is placed as strongly as possible before the hearers of the speech; his rejection by his fellow-countrymen; his mission by God; the angel his companion and helper; his signs and wonders in Egypt and in the wilderness for forty years (Numbers 14:33; Amos 5:25; Psalms 95:10).
Acts 7:37. The prediction by Moses of the true prophet (Deuteronomy 18:15) is repeated from Acts 3:22 and seems somewhat out of place here, introducing Christ too soon for the argument.
Acts 7:38. church: the word has been used once only (Acts 5:11) up to this point; it will now occur more frequently. It is the LXX equivalent of qahal (Matthew 16:18 *), which is an assembly for business transactions, not for worship. It could be taken from the phrase day of assembly, used in Dt. for the day of the Lawgiving. living oracles: Philo compares the Law with the living power of seed (Galatians 3:21 f.). Stephen's utterance swells from this point onwards with fullness of ideas as well as with passion.
Acts 7:39. The Israelites receive the Law unwillingly; their hearts turn back to Egypt, not to its fleshpots but to its idols, as Exodus 32 is taken to mean.
Acts 7:41. The sacrifice to the golden calf and its accompanying sports (Exodus 32:5 f.).
Acts 7:42. As a punishment God gives up the people to strange rites (cf. Romans 1:25 f., where God gives up the Gentiles to unnatural vices, as a punishment for their blindness to His glory in creation); they serve the host of heaven as the prophets, the second part of the Jewish Scriptures, testify. Jeremiah (Jeremiah 7:18; Jeremiah 19:13) describes the idolatrous worship in Palestine at the time of the Exile (see also 2 Kings 17:9-17), and Amos (Amos 5:26 f.) that of an earlier date. For Remphan Amos has Chiun as the god served by Israel, as well as Moloch. The name is spelt in many different ways in the MSS; it has been regarded as the Egyptian name for Saturn, and Cheyne (EBi, 4032) shows how easily in Heb. writing Chiun could be altered into Remphan. Stephen's auditors could readily reply that this idolatry belonged to the infancy of their race, and that they had nothing to do with it. For Babylon, Amos has Damascus; the change is easily intelligible.