Charles Ellicott Commentary Acts 7:6

"And God spake on this wise, that his seed should sojourn in a strange land, and that they should bring them into bondage, and treat them ill, four hundred years." — Acts 7:6 (ASV)

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.