Charles Ellicott Commentary Acts 7

Then said the high priest, Are these things so? (Acts 7:1)—The question was analogous to that put to our Lord. The accused was called on to plead guilty or not guilty, and had then an opportunity for his defence. On that defence we now enter.

Men, brethren, and fathers.—The discourse that follows presents many aspects, each of special interest:

1. It is clearly an unfinished fragment, interrupted by the clamours of the bystanders (Acts 7:51)—the torso, as it were, of a great apologia. Its very incompleteness, the difficulty of tracing the argument as far as it goes because we do not see how far it was meant to go, are indirect proofs that we have a true, though not necessarily a verbatim, report.

   A later writer, composing a speech after the manner of Herodotus and Thucydides, would have made it a much more direct answer to the charges in the indictment. And this, in its turn, supplies a reasonable presumption in favor of other speeches reported by the same author.

2. Looking to the relations between St. Luke and St. Paul, and to the prominence of the latter among the accusers of Stephen, there is a strong probability that the report was derived from him. This is confirmed by some instances of remarkable parallelism between the speech and his later teaching (Compare to Acts 7:53, Galatians 3:19; Acts 7:48, Acts 17:24).

3. The speech is the first great survey of the history of Israel as a process of divine education—the first development from the lips of a human teacher of principles that had previously been latent. As such, it contains the germs that were, in their turn, to be afterwards developed, on the one hand, by St. Paul in the Epistles known to be his, and on the other hand by Apollos, or whoever was the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews.

4. The speech is also remarkable as bringing together within a comparatively small compass a considerable number of real or apparent inaccuracies in the details of the history that is commented on. Whether they are real or apparent will be discussed as we deal with each of them.

   It is obvious that the results thus arrived at will form something like a crucial test of theories that men have formed as to the nature and limits of inspiration.

5. As Stephen was a Hellenistic or Greek-speaking Jew, it is probable that the speech was delivered in Greek. To that extent, it confirms the inference that has been drawn from the Aramaic words specially recorded in our Lord’s teaching—“Ephphatha,” “Talitha cumi,” and the cry upon the cross—that He habitually used the former language, and that this was the medium of intercourse between the priests and Pilate (See Notes on Mark 5:41; Mark 7:34).

The God of glory.—The opening words are an implied answer to the charge of blaspheming God. The name contained an allusive reference to the Shechinah, or cloud of glory, which was the symbol of the Presence of Jehovah. That was the “glory of the Lord.” He, in like manner, was the “Lord of glory” .

Before he dwelt in Charran.—We come, at the very outset, on one of the difficulties above referred to. Here the call of Abraham is spoken of as before he sojourned in Haran, or Charran, west of the Euphrates. In Genesis 12:1 it is first mentioned after Abraham’s removal there. On the other hand, Genesis 15:7 speaks of God as bringing him from Ur of the Chaldees—i.e., from Mesopotamia, or the east of the Euphrates; and this is confirmed by Joshua 24:3, Nehemiah 9:7.

The language of writers contemporary with Stephen (Philo, De Abrah.; Jos. Ant. i. 7, § 1) lays stress, as he does, on the first call as well as the second. Here, accordingly, it cannot be said that the statement is at variance with the Old Testament narrative. The word Mesopotamia was used by the LXX, and has from there passed into later versions, for the Hebrew Aram-Naharaim, “Syria of the two rivers” (Genesis 24:10; Deuteronomy 23:4; Judges 3:8), and, less accurately, for Padan-Aram in Genesis 25:20; Genesis 28:2; Genesis 28:5–6; where our version retains the Hebrew name.

From there, when his father was dead.—In Genesis 11:26; Genesis 11:32, Terah, the father of Abraham, is said to have died at the age of 205 years, and after he had reached the age of seventy to have begotten Abram, Nahor, and Haran; while Abraham in Genesis 12:4 is said to have been seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran.

This, primâ facie, suggests the conclusion that he lived for sixty years after his son’s departure.

The explanations sometimes given include:

1. that Abraham may have been the youngest, not the eldest son of Terah, placed first in order of honour, not of time, as Shem is among the sons of Noah (Genesis 5:32; Genesis 6:10), though Japheth was the elder (Genesis 10:21);
2. that the marriage of Abraham’s son with the granddaughter of Nahor by the youngest of his eight sons, Bethuel (Genesis 22:22), suggests some such difference of age, and that he may therefore have been born when Terah was 130, and so have remained in Haran until his father’s death.

These explanations, though probable as hypotheses, would hardly appear as natural as the explanation that the memory of St. Stephen or of his reporter dwelt on the broad outlines of the history and was indifferent to chronological details.

It is remarkable that similar difficulties present themselves in St. Paul’s own survey of the history of Israel. (See Notes on Acts 13:20; Galatians 3:17.) A man speaking for his life, and pleading for the truth with passionate eagerness, does not commonly carry with him a memoria technica of chronological minutiae. This seems, on the whole, a more satisfactory explanation than the assumption that the Apostle, having a clear recollection of the facts as we find them, brought them before his hearers in a form that presented at least the appearance of inaccuracy.

He removed him.—The change of subject may be noted as more natural in a speaker than a writer, and as thus confirming the inference that we probably have a verbatim report.

And he gave him none inheritance.—The apparent exception of the field and cave of Machpelah (Genesis 23:9–17) was not a real one. That was purchased for a special purpose, not given as an inheritance.

And that they should bring them into bondage . . . — Here again, there is another apparent discrepancy of detail. Taking the common computation, the interval between the covenant with Abraham and that with Moses was 430 years (Galatians 3:17), of which only 215 are reckoned as spent in Egypt. The Israelites were indeed sojourners in a strange land for the whole 430 years, but history shows that they were not in bondage nor mistreated until the Pharaoh arose who did not know Joseph.

The chronological difficulty, however, lies in reconciling St. Paul’s statement in Galatians 3:17 with the language of Genesis 15:13, which gives 400 years as the sojourning in Egypt, and Exodus 12:40, which gives 430, and with which St. Stephen is in substantial agreement.

St. Paul appears to have followed the LXX. reading of Exodus 12:40, which inserts “in the land of Canaan,” and in some manuscripts, “they and their fathers,” and with this the Samaritan Pentateuch agrees. Josephus varies; in some passages (Ant. 2.15, § 2), he gives 215 years, while in others (Ant. 2.9, § 1; Wars, 5.9, § 4), he gives 400.

All that can be said is, as before, that chronological accuracy did not affect the argument in either case. It was enough for St. Stephen, as for St. Paul, to accept this or that system of dates as they had been taught, without inquiring into the grounds on which it rested. Such inquiries were foreign to the Jewish character generally, and especially to that character when experiencing the sense of new and divine realities. Round numbers were enough for them to mark the successive stages of God’s dealings with His people.