Albert Barnes Commentary Acts 7:53

"ye who received the law as it was ordained by angels, and kept it not." — Acts 7:53 (ASV)

Who have received the law. The law of Moses given on Mount Sinai.

By the disposition of angels. There has been much diversity of opinion regarding this phrase, eiv diatagav aggelwn. The word translated disposition does not occur elsewhere in the New Testament. It properly means the constituting or arranging of an army, disposing it into ranks and proper divisions. Hence, it has been supposed to mean that the law was given amidst the various ranks of angels, being present to witness its promulgation.

Others suppose that the angels were employed as agents or instruments to communicate the law. All that the expression fairly implies is the former: that the law was given amidst the attending ranks of angels, as if they were summoned to witness the pomp and ceremony of giving law to an entire people, and through them to an entire world.

It should be added, moreover, that the Jews applied the word "angels" to any of the messengers of God: to fire, tempest, wind, etc. And all that Stephen means here may be to express the common Jewish opinion that God was attended on this occasion by the heavenly hosts and by the symbols of His presence: the fire, smoke, and tempest (Psalms 68:17). Other places declare that the law was spoken by an angel, one eminent above all attending angels, the peculiar messenger of God (see the note on Acts 7:38).

It is plain that Stephen spoke only the common sentiment of the Jews. Thus, Herod is introduced by Josephus (Antiquities of the Jews, Book 15, Chapter 5, Section 3) as saying, "We have learned from God the most excellent of our doctrines, and the most holy part of our law by angels," etc. In the eyes of the Jews, it justly gave increased majesty and solemnity to the law that it had been given in such grand and imposing circumstances. And it greatly aggravated their guilt that, notwithstanding this, they had not kept it.