And they stoned Stephen, calling upon God, and saying, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit. And they stoned Stephen, calling upon God, and saying, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.
And they stoned Stephen, х elithoboloun (G3036)] - the imperfect tense here denoting the continuance and protracting of the operation until it ended in death.
Calling upon [God], and saying, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit. A most unhappy supplement of our translators is this word "God" here-as if, while addressing the Son, he was really calling not upon Him, but upon the Father. The sense is perfectly clear without any, supplement at all х epikaloumenon (G1941) kai (G2532) legonta (G3004)] - 'invoking and saying' (as the Vulgate, Calvin, and Beza render it), "Lord Jesus"
Lord Jesus - He being the Person intended, and addressed by name (compare Acts 9:14). Even Grotius, DeWette, and Meyer so understand the words, the two latter adding several examples of direct prayer to Christ from the New Testament. Pliny, in his well-known letter to the Emperor Trajan (1 AD), says it was part of the regular Christian service to address, in alternate strains, a hymn to Christ as God. In presenting to Jesus the identical prayer which Himself had on the cross offered to His Father, Stephen renders to his glorified Lord absolute divine worship, in the most sublime form, and at the most critical moment of his life. And in this committal of his spirit to Jesus, Paul afterward followed the footsteps of the first martyr, with a calm and exultant confidence that with Him it was safe for eternity: "I know Whom I have believed, and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed unto Him against that day" (2 Timothy 1:12). For more on this subject see the note at 1 Corinthians 1:2.