Expositor's Bible Commentary Commentary Acts 7:25

"and he supposed that his brethren understood that God by his hand was giving them deliverance; but they understood not." — Acts 7:25 (ASV)

Still on the subject of “the land,” Stephen recounts the life of Moses. Incorporated into this section, largely by way of anticipation, is a Mosesrejection theme in vv.23–29 and 35, which will later be highlighted in vv.39–43 and then driven home in the scathing indictment of vv.51–53. But here Stephen’s primary emphasis is on God’s providential and redemptive action for his people apart from and outside the land of Palestine, of which Stephen’s hearers made so much: (1) God’s raising up of the deliverer Moses in Egypt (vv.17–22); (2) his provision for the rejected Moses in Midian (v.29); (3) his commissioning of Moses in the desert near Mount Sinai—the place God himself identified as being “holy ground,” for wherever God meets with his people is holy ground though it possesses no sanctity of its own (vv.30–34); and (4) Moses’ resultant action in delivering God’s people and doing “wonders and miraculous signs” for forty years in Egypt, at the Red Sea, and in the desert. This narration of events in Moses’ life is not given just to introduce the Second Moses theme that follows in vv.37–43, though it certainly does that. Its primary purpose seems rather to be that of making the vital point, contrary to the popular piety of the day in its veneration of “the Holy Land,” that no place on earth—even though given as an inheritance by God himself—can be claimed to possess such sanctity or be esteemed in such a way as to preempt God’s further working on behalf of his people. By this method Stephen was attempting to clear the way for the proclamation of the centrality of Jesus in the nation’s worship, life, and thought.