Charles Ellicott Commentary Acts 7:4

"Then came he out of the land of the Chaldaeans, and dwelt in Haran: and from thence, when his father was dead, [God] removed him into this land, wherein ye now dwell:" — Acts 7:4 (ASV)

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.