Expositor's Bible Commentary Commentary Acts 7:3

"and said unto him, Get thee out of thy land, and from thy kindred, and come into the land which I shall show thee." — Acts 7:3 (ASV)

Stephen begins by addressing the council in a somewhat formal yet fraternal manner: “Men, brothers and fathers” (cf. 22:1). Then he launches into his message, taking up first the situation of Abraham. “The God of glory,” Stephen says, “appeared to our father Abraham while he was still in Mesopotamia, before he lived in Haran [italics mine].” God’s word to him was to move forward into the possession of a land that was promised to him and his descendants. But though he entered into his promised inheritance, he did not live in it as if living in it was the consummation of God’s purposes for him. Rather, he cherished as most important the covenantal and personal relationship that God had established with him, whatever his place of residence—a relationship of which circumcision was the God-given sign. There are a number of difficulties as to chronological sequence, historical numbers, and the use of biblical quotations in Stephen’s address that have led to the most strenuous exercise of ingenuity on the part of commentators in their attempts to reconcile them. Four of these difficulties appear in vv.2–8. Verse 3 quotes the words of God to Abraham given in Ge 12:1 and implies by its juxtaposition with v.2 that this message came to Abraham when he was still in Mesopotamia, whereas the context of Ge 12:1 suggests that it came to him in Haran. Verse 4 says that he left Haran after the death of his father, whereas the chronological data of Ge 11:26–12:4 suggest that Terah’s death took place after Abraham’s departure from Haran. Verse 5 uses the words of Dt 2:5 as a suitable description of Abraham’s situation in Palestine, whereas their OT context relates to God’s prohibition to Israel not to dwell in Mount Seir because it had been given to Esau. And v.6 speaks of 400 years of slavery in Egypt, whereas Ex 12:40 says 430. We need not, however, get so disturbed over such things as, on the one hand, to pounce on them to disprove a “high view” of biblical inspiration or, on the other hand, to attempt to harmonize them so as to support such a view. These matters are paralleled in other popular writings of the day, whether overtly Hellenistic or simply more nonconformist in the broadest sense of that term. The Jewish philosopher Philo, for example, explained Abraham’s departure from Ur of the Chaldees by referring to Ge 12:1, even though he elsewhere wrote that Ge 12:1–5 is in the context of leaving Haran. The Jewish historian Josephus spoke of Abraham’s being seventy-five years old when he left Chaldea (contra Ge 12:4, which says he was seventy-five when he left Haran). Likewise, Philo placed the departure of Abraham from Haran after his father’s death. And undoubtedly the round figure of four hundred years for Israel’s slavery in Egypt —a figure that stems from the statement credited to God in Ge 15:13—was used in popular expressions of religious piety in first-century Judaism. There is a remarkable psychological or emotional truth in Luke’s report of Stephen’s address. With his life at stake, Stephen was speaking under intense emotion and with God-given eloquence. With remarkable verisimilitude Luke shows him using commonly understood language in vivid terms and with burning eloquence as he refers to Israel’s history. Stephen’s speech was not a scholarly historical survey; it was a powerful portrayal of God’s dealing with Israel, and it mounted inexorably to a climax that unmasked the obstinacy and disobedience of Israel and of their leaders in Stephen’s time. Church history knows of few, if any, greater displays of moral courage than Stephen showed in this speech. And to dissect it on precisionist grounds shows lack of understanding of its basic truth.