Who have received the law by the disposition of angels, and have not kept it. Who have received, х Hoitines (G3748) elabete (G2983)] - rather 'Who [are the parties that] received the law;' thus identifying those who had just killed the Prince of life with those who had at the beginning of their economy received the law at Mount Sinai, as one corporate personality-one in privilege, responsibility, and guilt.
By the disposition of angels, х eis (G1519) diatagas (G1296) angeloon (G32)]. This expression is special, and has occasioned some discussion. Literally, it is 'at the arrangements of angels,' which, no doubt, means 'through their instrumentality.' [For this sense of eis (G1519), compare Matthew 12:41, and see Winer,
xxxii. 4 b, and 49: a, 100:] This interesting fact, that the ministration of angels was employed in the sublime scenes of the giving of the law at mount Sinai is not expressly recorded in the Old Testament; but it is certainly implied in Psalms 68:17, "The chariots of God are twenty thousand, even thousands of angels: the Lord is among them [as in] Sinai, in the holy place" (compare also Deuteronomy 32:2, in the Septuagint): it is explicitly. stated (as if it had been a known fact) in Galatians 3:19, and Hebrews 2:2); the general doctrine of Scripture regarding the ministry of angels, especially in all the higher operations of providence and grace, is quite in accordance with it; and Josephus and Philo both speak of it as a recognized fact.
And have not kept it. This closing word may seem to sum up their guilt somewhat weakly, after the awful charge brought against them in the foregoing verse, of being the betrayers and murderers of the Lord of glory. But as he was there, not to bring home a charge of guilt against them, but to rebut their charge against himself-of dishonouring the law-he shows, rather, consummate wisdom in rolling that charge back upon themselves, by first reminding them that the law had been committed to them as a sacred trust by Yahweh Himself, amidst august angelic ministrations at Sinai, and then, in a word (as the result of his long historic induction of facts) protesting that, throughout their entire history, they 'had not kept it.'
Martyrdom of Stephen (7:54-60)