Yea, ye took up the tabernacle of Moloch, and the star of your god Remphan, figures which ye made to worship them: and I will carry you away beyond Babylon.
Yea (rather, 'And' - [ Kai (G2532 )]) ye took up the tabernacle of Moloch, х teen (G3588) skeeneen (G4633)]. This was probably a small portable shrine, containing the image of the horrid deity. The meaning of these two verses, which is a little obscure, seems to be, 'Did ye offer to Me the sacrifices which I required?' and yet ye bore about at the same time the shrine of Moloch!' The form of the question in Acts 7:42 [with mee (G3361)] supposes the proper answer to be in the negative; and what is added is designed to show that, since the two actions were in direct contradiction to each other, it could be only a hypocritical and abhorred worship which, with such idolatrous hearts and hands, they offered to the living God.
And the star of your god, [not 'the god,' according to Lachmann and Tischendorf, the evidence for the Received Text being stronger]
Remphan, or 'Rephan.' The word is variously spelled in the manuscripts.
Figures [ tupous (G5179 ), or 'images,'] which ye made to worship them. Two kinds of idolatry are here charged upon the Israelites: that of the golden calf, and that of the heavenly bodies-Moloch and Remphan being deities representing apparently the divine powers ascribed to nature under different aspects. Remphan (or, as in the Septuagint, Rephan) is put for "Chiun" in Amos 5:26, which Stephen is quoting, and is supposed to correspond to Saturn. But as the object was rather to fasten on the nation the charge of foul and varied idolatry, than to specify the particular forms of it, there is the less necessity for going here into the learned speculations to which these words have given rise.
And I will carry you away beyond Babylon. The word used by the prophet is not Babylon, but "Damascus" (Amos 5:27), where the ten tribes were carried captive. But Stephen seems purposely to have changed this into "Babylon." the well-known region of the captivity of Judah, with which his hearers would have most sympathy. And as both captivities were equally the fulfillment of the ancient threatening, that they should be dispersed among the nations for their departure from the Lord (Leviticus 26:33), the substitution of the one captivity for the other, in Stephen's quotation, was in the strict line of the prophecy.