The speech comes nearer the charge it is to refute. The Temple itself is wrong. Moses acted on direct Divine injunction as to the tabernacle of witness which he made according to the pattern showed him and which the fathers carried with them in the wilderness (Exodus 25; especially Exodus 25:9; Exodus 25:40). This Tabernacle is contrasted on the one hand with the tent of Moloch, on the other with the Temple of Solomon. While the fathers carried it, they were successful. Joshua (Gr. Jesus) thrust out the nations before them from the promised land, which they possessed and occupied till the times of David. David asked that he might find a habitation for the God of Jacob. Instead of this the Temple was built by Solomon, who was less favoured by God than David; and the Temple was not a tabernacle, such as David would have built, but a house. The sentiment of Acts 7:48 occurs again in Paul's speech at Athens, and was, no doubt, a commonplace in the thought of Hellenists who dwelt at a distance from the Temple; Isaiah 66:1, now quoted, forced it into their mouth. Our Lord quotes it (Matthew 5:34 f.), with a somewhat different purpose, it is true, but His view of the Temple (Mark 13:2; Mark 14:58; John 4:21-24) is that of Stephen and Paul: it is not necessary for true religion.
Acts 7:51-53. The Speech Summed up. The phrases in which the audience is characterised often occur in OT. Their whole history has been a series of recalcitrancies against the Holy Spirit, and the present generation are following their fathers. The question of Acts 7:52 gives intensity to the charge that the Jews killed those who were sent to them. It is found in more detailed form in Mark 12:1-9; Matthew 23:30 ff., Hebrews 11:37. The righteous probably from Isaiah 53:11; the phrase might not at once be understood, but becomes clear in the latter part of the sentence. The end of the speech (Acts 7:53) contains a sting; the legislation of Sinai took place in splendid pomp, with thousands of attending angels (Deuteronomy 33:2; Psalms 68:17 f.), and the Jews rightly look back on it as the greatest event in the world's history; but they have not kept the Law, and so all their pride in it is turned to foolishness. They have always disobeyed the Giver of the Law, they have worshipped other gods, they have confined Him in a stone temple, they have killed His messengers and now His final messenger of whom all the prophets spoke.
[A few words may be added on the speech as a masterly handling of a difficult situation. Stephen desires to do two things: (a) to prove that religion is independent of place, and thus vindicate his attitude to the Temple, and (b) to bring home the ingrained rebelliousness of the Jewish people, and thus exhibit the rejection of Jesus as quite in keeping with their character. Such home truths were too unpalatable to be patiently received; if Stephen was to gain a hearing it could only be by giving an exposition to which no exception could be taken. His speech looks at first like a string of irrelevant incidents; but they are drawn from the OT, thus he secures himself against interruption; and they are skilfully chosen to illustrate his two main themes. Revelation comes in Mesopotamia and Haran, in Egypt and at Sinai. In Canaan Abraham has no possession, the tomb he purchases is in Shechem; Moses treads holy ground and the angel appears to him in Midian; the Hebrews had the Law given, and the Tabernacle, after a heavenly model, in the wilderness; with it they conquered Canaan, and were content with it till the time of David. Scripture itself proclaimed that no Temple could serve as God's dwelling. Again, the treatment of Joseph by his brethren, the rejection of Moses by the Hebrews in bondage, their disobedience in the making of the golden calf, the persecution of the prophets, all found their appropriate climax in the betrayal and murder of Jesus. Thus with consummate skill the speaker unfolds and illustrates his theses, saying all the while what none can controvert. Only when the case is complete on these lines, does history pass into invective, naturally to the immediate sealing of his doom, which, however, with such views would presumably have been inevitable. A. S. P.] See further on Stephen, pp. 639 f., 767.