Expositor's Bible Commentary Commentary Acts 7:40

"saying unto Aaron, Make us gods that shall go before us: for as for this Moses, who led us forth out of the land of Egypt, we know not what is become of him." — Acts 7:40 (ASV)

But while Peter and Stephen agree in seeing Christological significance in Dt 18:15–18 and in considering it an important testimonium passage for a Jewish audience, their attitudes toward Israel are very different. For Peter, his hearers are the sons of the prophets who should hear the new Moses (cf. 3:22–26); whereas for Stephen, his hearers are the sons of those who rejected Moses and killed the prophets (cf. 7:35–40, 51–53). In vv.39–40 Stephen specifies his rejection-of-Moses theme by picking up the awful words of Nu 14:3, “Their hearts turned back to Egypt” (v.39) and citing almost verbatim the people’s defiance of Ex 32:1: “Make us gods who will go before us. As for this fellow Moses who led us out of Egypt—we don’t know what has happened to him!” (v.40). The Jewish Talmud also speaks of the people’s rebellion in making the golden calf and generally views it as Israel’s first, ultimate, and most heinous sin. But there is a decided difference between the way they treat the people’s rebellion and the way Stephen does. The rabbis do not take this episode as the people’s rejection of Moses, but emphasize Moses’ successful intercession for Israel. Stephen, however, lays all his emphasis on Israel’s rejection of their deliverer, implicitly drawing the parallel between their treatment of Moses and their treatment of Jesus—a parallel he will broaden and drive home in his scathing indictment of vv.51–53. 41–43 Stephen emphasizes that the golden calf incident was the time when the Israelites “brought sacrifices to it and held a celebration in honor of what their hands had made.” So detestable to God was this episode in Israel’s experience in the desert that Stephen calls it a time when “God turned away and gave them over to the worship of the heavenly bodies” (cf. Romans 1:24, 26, 28 for the expression “God gave them over”). The inescapable inference from Stephen’s words is that Israel’s shameful behavior and God’s drastic response to it find their counterparts in the nation’s rejection of Jesus. To support his assertion that Israel’s idolatry caused God to give them over to the worship of heavenly bodies, Stephen quotes Am 5:25–27 (following closely the Greek translation of the OT). In applying this passage, Stephen emphasizes that rejection of God’s activity in the eschatological day of salvation brings God’s judgment, despite all the sacrifices and offerings that may be offered, just as Israel’s idolatry of the golden calf eventuated in Israel’s exile “beyond Babylon.”