5. The High Priest’s Question (7:1)
1The high priest said,1 “Is this so?”
1 The high priest was probably still Caiaphas, as at the trial of Jesus; he remained in office until A.D. 36.2 As president of the Sanhedrin by virtue of his office, he was chief judge in Israel. It was necessary in Jewish court procedure that the accused person should know what the charges against him were, and have an opportunity of replying to them.3
a. The Patriarchal Age (7:2–8)
2Then Stephen said, “Brothers and fathers, listen. The God of glory appeared to Abraham our father when he was in Mesopotamia, before he took up residence in Harran,
3and said to him, ‘Leave your country and your kinsfolk, and come into the land that I will show you.’
4Then he left the land of the Chaldaeans and took up residence in Harran. After his father’s death, God made him migrate into this land in which you now reside.4
5He gave him no inheritance in it, not even as much as his foot could cover, but he promised to give it as a possession to him and to his posterity after him, although as yet he was childless.
6‘Your posterity,’ God told him, ‘will be resident aliens in a foreign land; they will enslave them and ill-treat them for four hundred years.
7But I will bring judgment on the nation by which they are enslaved,’ said God, ‘and after that they will come out, and worship me in this place.’
8He gave him, moreover, the covenant of circumcision, and so, when Isaac was born to Abraham he circumcised him on the eighth day, and Isaac did so in turn to Jacob, and Jacob to the twelve patriarchs.
This speech is commonly called Stephen’s defense, or apology, but it is obviously not a speech for the defense in the forensic sense of the term.5 Such a speech as this was by no means calculated to secure an acquittal before the Sanhedrin. It is rather a defense of pure Christianity as God’s appointed way of worship; Stephen here shows himself to be the precursor of the later Christian apologists, especially those who defended Christianity against Judaism. The charges brought against Stephen by the witnesses for the prosecution may have been framed tendentiously; Stephen sets forth here in some detail the arguments of which those charges were travesties.
A major theme of the speech is its insistence that the presence of God is not restricted to any one land or to any material building. God revealed himself to Abraham long before Abraham settled in the holy land; he was with Joseph in Egypt; he gave his law to the people of Israel through Moses when they were wanderers in a wilderness. The people of God similarly should not be restricted to any one locality; a movable tent such as they had in the wilderness and in the earlier years of their settlement in Canaan was a more fitting shrine for the divine presence in their midst than the fixed structure of stone that King Solomon built. The period that Israel spent as a pilgrim people—“the church in the wilderness”—is viewed as setting forth the divine order; in this respect (as in some others) Stephen echoes the teaching of the great Old Testament prophets—though even in the wilderness Israel fell short of the divine ideal.
Another theme of the speech becomes a regular feature of later anti-Judaic apologetic—the insistence that the Jewish people’s refusal to acknowledge Jesus as Messiah was all of a piece with their attitude to God’s messengers from the beginning of their national history. Joseph’s brothers hated him, although he was God’s predestined deliverer for them; Moses, another divinely ordained deliverer, was repudiated by his people more than once. The prophets too were persecuted and killed by those to whom they brought the word of God, and at last the one to whom the prophets bore witness in advance had been handed over to death by those to whom his saving message was first proclaimed.
It has been argued that Stephen’s speech is marked by emphases which are characteristically Samaritan.6 But the Samaritans did not dispute the principle of a temple, as Stephen did: they differed from the Jews on the question of its proper location—on Mount Gerizim or in Jerusalem (cf. John 4:20). Stephen’s insistence that “the Most High does not dwell in houses made with hands” (v. 48) would have been as applicable to the Samaritan temple on Gerizim while it stood as it was to the temple in Jerusalem.
The attempt has also been made to relate Stephen’s viewpoint to that of the Ebionites, those judaizing Christians who for some centuries maintained their distinctness from catholic Christianity.7 They shared to some extent Stephen’s negative attitude to the temple order and sacrificial ritual, and looked on Jesus as the Deuteronomic “prophet like Moses” (cf. v. 37). But the Ebionite attitude was the result of reflection on the theological implications of the destruction of the temple in A.D. 70, whereas Stephen appreciated the logic of the situation nearly forty years before that.8
The Ebionites were far from sympathizing with the Gentile world mission which was logically implied in Stephen’s argument and which was inaugurated by his death. The Christians who embarked on this world mission were Hellenists like Stephen, and in his speech we may recognize the first manifesto of Hellenistic Christianity. Stephen and his fellow-Hellenists, as has already been pointed out, were more farsighted than their “Hebrew” brethren in appreciating the breach with the temple order implied in the teaching and work of Jesus. But it looks as if they were also more farsighted in appreciating the supranational and universal scope of the gospel. The opening words of Stephen’s defense imply that the people of God must be on the march, must pull up their tent stakes as Abraham did, leaving national particularism and ancestral ritual, and go out where God may lead. This note indeed anticipated the call in Heb. 13:13 to abandon traditional Judaism for Jesus’ sake and “go forth to him outside the camp.” In a number of respects Stephen blazes a trail later followed by the writer to the Hebrews, although Stephen is in some ways the more radical of the two: in Hebrews the levitical ritual is treated as “a shadow of the good things to come” (Heb. 10:1), whereas Stephen maintains that the sacrificial system was a perversion from the wilderness period onward (vv. 41–43).9
There were doubtless different nuances of emphasis within Hellenistic Christianity. Luke himself does not share Stephen’s wholly negative estimate of the temple: until a late point in his record he mentions it with respect, from the angelic annunciation to Zechariah in the holy place (Luke 1:8–22) to Paul’s vision of Christ within the sacred precincts (Acts 22:17). Not until Paul’s ejection from the temple during his last visit to Jerusalem (21:30) is its doom sealed.10
It is uncertain if Stephen’s view of the temple order as a deviation from the authentic tradition of Israel’s worship reflects a particular tendency within Hellenistic Judaism.11 No doubt many Jews of the dispersion felt less attached to temple and sacrifice than did their fellow-Jews nearer home, but even Philo of Alexandria regarded the temple with veneration and went on pilgrimage to Jerusalem to offer prayers and sacrifices there.12 Stephen’s view, in any case, was controlled by his understanding of the difference that Christ had made.
2–3 Stephen has his reply ready. It takes the form of a historical retrospect—a form well established in Jewish tradition. “The protestation of faith is, in the Old Testament, often associated with a recital of the divine intervention in the life of Israel. ‘God in history’ was the underlying basis of Rabbinic optimism. The declaration at the bringing of the first-fruits (Deut. 26:5–10) is paralleled by Psalms 78 and 107.… Stephen’s address in Acts 7 is thus in the true form. It is in the sequel that he differs from Hebrew models.”13
Stephen’s historical survey reviews the history of the nation from the call of Abraham to the building of Solomon’s temple. His outline of the patriarchal age (vv. 2–8) and of Israel in Egypt (vv. 9–19) provides an introduction to his central themes; his account of Moses’ early days (vv. 20–29), the call of Moses (vv. 30–34), and the wilderness wanderings (vv. 35–43) provides an indirect answer to the charge of speaking against Moses and a more direct answer to the charge of speaking against God; his contrast between the wilderness tent and the Jerusalem temple (vv. 44–50) replies particularly to the charge of speaking against the temple.
Beginning with the patriarchal age, then, he reminds his hearers that it was in Mesopotamia,14 far from the promised land, that God first revealed himself to Abraham. One might well ask what could have persuaded Abraham to uproot himself as he did from the land of his birth and set out on a journey whose goal he did not know in advance. By all the prudential canons of ordinary life, it was a mad adventure; but as related in the biblical narrative it was an act of true wisdom. It was the God of glory15 who appeared to him and summoned him to embark on the path of faith, and the use of that title implies that God manifested himself to Abraham in glory so compelling that Abraham had no option but to obey. Those who are obedient to the heavenly vision, Stephen seems to suggest, will always live loose to any particular earthly spot, will always be ready to get out and go wherever God may guide.
A glance at any edition of the New Testament, Greek or English, in which Old Testament quotations or allusions are set in distinctive type, will show how far the very language of the Old Testament enters into the texture of Stephen’s speech. (It is quoted regularly in the LXX form.) But the speech is no mere catena of quotations, studiously put together; the Old Testament wording is reproduced with a spontaneity which suggests that the author has the narrative at his fingertips and is able to use it with a striking freshness and freedom.16 Here, in verse 3, he quotes from Gen. 12:1 the words spoken by God to Abraham in Harran after the death of his father Terah, but gives them a setting before Abraham’s departure for Harran on the first stage of his journey. When it is stated in Gen. 15:7 and Neh. 9:7 that God brought Abraham from Ur of the Chaldees, it is probably implied that Abraham received a divine communication there as well as later, when he had settled in Harran. Philo and Josephus concur.17
4–5 Abraham accordingly left “the land of the Chaldaeans”18—a term which is plainly synonymous here with “Mesopotamia” (v. 2)19—and settled in Harran, in the upper Euphrates valley, at the intersection of important caravan trade routes, known to have been a flourishing city early in the second millennium B.C.20 There he stayed until his father died; then, under divine direction, he continued his migration and arrived in Canaan.21 But even then Abraham was given no part of the land in actual possession: for the rest of his life he lived as a resident alien there. It was a promised land indeed to him—promised to him and his posterity before he had any children—but to him and his immediate posterity it remained no more than a promised land. Abraham had no tangible object in which to trust: he believed the bare word of God, and acted upon it.
6–7 Not only did Abraham receive no portion of the land as a present possession; his faith was further tested by the revelation that his descendants would leave that land for one that was not their own, and that they would suffer oppression and servitude there for several generations.22 Yet their exile would not be permanent: in due course God would give them deliverance from their oppressors and bring them back to worship him in the land of Canaan.23
8 One sign was given to Abraham, the sign of circumcision, as the outward token of the covenant which God made with him.24 Abraham’s acceptance of this visible token for himself and his descendants was a further expression of his faith in God. And “thus, while there was still no holy place, all the essential conditions for the religion of Israel were fulfilled.”25 When Isaac was born, Abraham circumcised him on the eighth day after his birth,26 and the sign of the covenant was transmitted from generation to generation, from Isaac to Jacob, and from Jacob to his twelve sons, the ancestors of the twelve tribes of Israel.27
9“The patriarchs, moved by jealousy, sold Joseph into Egypt; but God was with him,
10and delivered him out of all his afflictions, and gave him favor and wisdom in the presence of Pharaoh, king of Egypt. Pharaoh appointed him governor over Egypt and over all his house.
11Then a famine and great distress came upon the whole of Egypt and Canaan, and our forefathers could find no food.
12Hearing that there was grain in Egypt, Jacob sent our forefathers there a first time.
13On their second visit Joseph was made known to his brothers, and Joseph’s kinship was disclosed to Pharaoh.
14Then Joseph sent and called for his father Jacob and all his family, amounting in all to seventy-five persons.
15So Jacob went down into Egypt28 and died there, as also did our forefathers,
16and they were brought back to Shechem and laid in the tomb which Abraham had bought for a price in silver from the sons of Hamor in Shechem.29
17When the time was approaching for the (fulfilment of the) promise which God had made30 to Abraham, the people increased and multiplied in Egypt,
18until there arose over Egypt another king, who did not know31 Joseph.
19This king plotted against our people; he ill-treated our forefathers, making them expose their newborn infants so that they should not be brought up alive.
9–10 As early as the patriarchal age, there was opposition to the purpose of God in calling Abraham and guiding the fortunes of his posterity. The sons of Jacob sold their brother Joseph into slavery in Egypt. But God was continuously superintending the accomplishment of that one increasing purpose which he inaugurated when he called the father of the faithful out of Mesopotamia, and which was to find its consummation in the coming of Christ. He so ordered the fortunes of Joseph in Egypt that he rose to high authority in that land as grand vizier to Pharaoh.32
11–16 This worked out to the advantage of Joseph’s family, for when famine arose in Canaan the sons of Jacob went to buy food in Egypt, where Joseph’s foresight and authority had prepared large stores of grain. On the second occasion when they went to Egypt to buy food, Joseph (whom they had not recognized on their former visit)33 revealed his identity to them, and they were forced to acknowledge him as their deliverer. (There may be a suggestion here that a greater than Joseph, who also was not recognized by his people when he came to them the first time, will be acknowledged by them as their divinely appointed deliverer when they see him the second time.) The result of the brothers’ recognition of Joseph and their reconciliation to him was that Jacob and all his family went down to Egypt—seventy-five persons in all, says Stephen, following the Greek text.34 There Jacob died; there, too, his sons also died in due course. But they were buried not in Egypt but in the land which God had promised to their descendants as their inheritance.35 The presence of their tombs in the land of promise, where the tombs of Abraham and Isaac were already, was a token that, even if they died down in Egypt, they died in faith.36
17–19 Their children and grandchildren, however, stayed in Egypt and multiplied there, until the appointed time came for God to redeem his promise to the patriarchs and give their descendants possession of the land of Canaan. The instrument in God’s hand for bringing about their departure from Egypt was a new king (presumably one of the early kings of the Nineteenth Dynasty)37 who tried to restrict the increasing number of Israelites by forced labor and compulsory infanticide. But for his policy they might have found Egypt so comfortable that they would never have thought of leaving it.
c. Moses’ Early Days (7:20–29)
20“It was at this time that Moses was born—an exceedingly beautiful38 child. He was brought up for three months in his father’s house.
21Then he was exposed, but Pharaoh’s daughter adopted him and brought him up as her son.
22So Moses was educated in all the wisdom of the Egyptians; he was powerful in his words and deeds.
23When he was nearly forty years old, he conceived the idea of visiting his brothers, the people of Israel.
24When he saw one of them being unjustly treated, he went to his defense and avenged the injury inflicted on him by giving the Egyptian a mortal blow.39
25He thought his brothers understood that God was giving them deliverance through him, but they did not.
26The next day he accosted them when they were engaged in a fight and tried to reconcile them peacefully. ‘Men,’ he said, ‘you are brothers.40 Why should you harm each other?’
27But the man who was attacking the other pushed him away: ‘Who,’ he asked, ‘made you ruler and judge over us?
28Do you want to kill me, as you killed the Egyptian yesterday?’
29When he heard this, Moses fled. He lived as an alien in the land of Midian; there two sons were born to him.
20–22 The edict that every male child born to the Israelites was to be exposed at birth, or thrown into the Nile, was defied by Moses’ parents. They kept him for three months before exposing him, and when at last they did expose him, they did so in such a way that he was quickly rescued.41 A daughter of the king found him, was attracted by him, and brought him up as her son, in a style befitting a royal prince.42 Thus Moses received the best education that the Egyptian court could provide, and distinguished himself in speech and action.43 Stephen expresses himself with more moderation than other Jewish Hellenists, who represent Moses as the father of science and culture and as the founder of Egyptian civilization.44
23–28 That an Egyptian king should try to frustrate the divine purpose was intelligible, but some of the chosen people themselves tried unintentionally to hinder it. If Pharaoh was God’s instrument in weaning the Israelites from their attachment to Egypt, Moses was his agent in leading them out. Moses had begun to be aware of this, but his fellow-Israelites were slow to recognize him as their deliverer. This was shown on the occasion when he presented himself to them as their champion, after he was fully grown,45 but his intervention on their behalf was not appreciated. The writer to the Hebrews tells how at this time he made the great renunciation, refusing to be known any more as the son of a royal princess and casting in his lot by preference with the downtrodden people of God (Heb. 11:24–26). Here again a pattern of behavior is traced which was to find its complete and final expression when Jesus appeared among his people as the Savior provided by God.
29 Moses had exposed himself to grave peril by his attempt to champion his oppressed people. His action in killing an Egyptian bully was more widely known than he wished. His royal upbringing would not protect him if Pharaoh suspected that he planned to lead a slave revolt. Moses had to leave Egypt in haste, and find refuge in northwest Arabia.46 There he in turn, like his patriarchal ancestors, became “a sojourner in a foreign land” (Ex. 2:22)—a fact which he acknowledged when he called his firstborn son Gershom (“a sojourner there”).47
d. The Call of Moses (7:30–34)
30“When forty years had elapsed, an angel appeared to him in the wilderness of Mount Sinai, in the flame of a burning bush.
31When Moses saw it, he was amazed at the sight. As he was approaching it to look at it, the voice of the Lord came to him.48
32‘I am the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.’49 Moses trembled and did not dare to look.
33Then the Lord said to him, ‘Take off your sandals from your feet; the place where you are standing is holy ground.
34I have indeed seen the ill-treatment of my people in Egypt. I have heard their groaning, and I have come down to deliver them. Come now, let me send you to Egypt.’
30–34 Moses’ exile was part of the divine plan: it was there in northwest Arabia, “in the wilderness of Mount Sinai,” that an angel of God appeared to him in the burning bush and the voice of God addressed him.50 The God who revealed himself to Abraham in Mesopotamia and gave Joseph the assurance of his presence in Egypt now communicated with Moses by vision and voice in Midian, far from the frontiers of the holy land. That spot of Gentile territory was “holy ground” for the sole reason that God manifested himself to Moses there.51 No place on earth possesses an innate sanctity of its own. In its Christian application this principle is expressed excellently in William Cowper’s lines:
“Jesus, where’er thy people meet,
There they behold thy mercy-seat;
Where’er they seek thee, thou art found,
And every place is hallowed ground.”
But it found expression much earlier in Israel’s covenant law: “in every place,” said Yahweh, “where I cause my name to be remembered, I will come to you and bless you” (Ex. 20:24).
The message which Moses received from God at that holy place was one of faithfulness to his promise. God had not forgotten his covenant with the patriarchs: he remained the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Nor was he heedless of the distress of their descendants in Egypt: he was on the point of intervening for their deliverance, and in this deliverance Moses was to be his agent. “Come now, let me send you to Egypt.”
e. The Wilderness Wanderings (7:35–43)
35“This man Moses, whom they repudiated with the words, ‘Who made you our ruler and judge?’52—this is the man whom God has sent as their ruler and deliverer, with the power of the angel who appeared to him in the bush.
36This is the man who brought them out, after performing wonders and signs in the land of Egypt and at the Red Sea, as also for forty years in the wilderness.
37This is that Moses who said to the people of Israel, ‘God will raise you up a prophet like me from among your brothers.’53
38This is he who was in the assembly in the wilderness with the angel that spoke to him on Mount Sinai and with our forefathers; it is he who received living oracles to give to us.
39But our fathers refused to obey him: they rejected him and turned back to Egypt in their hearts.
40‘Make us gods to go before us,’ they said to Aaron; ‘as for this man Moses, who brought us out of Egypt, we do not know what has happened to him.’
41In those days, moreover, they made the calf, offered a sacrifice to the idol, and exulted in what their own hands had made.
42So God turned (from them): he abandoned them to the worship of the host of heaven. So it is written in the book of the prophets:
‘Did you bring sacrifices and offerings to me,
Those forty years in the wilderness, O house of Israel?
43No: you took up the tent of Moloch
and the star of your god Raiphan,
the images which you made for your worship.
I will remove you beyond Babylon.’54
35–36 The very man whom his people had refused was the man chosen by God to be their ruler and redeemer. They had rejected him the first time (as Joseph’s brothers had repudiated Joseph), but the second time he came to them they had no option but to accept him (as Joseph’s brothers recognized him on the second occasion). The implied parallel with the recent refusal of Jesus is too plain to require elaboration. All the authority of the divine messenger whom he had seen at the burning bush lay behind Moses when he went back to Egypt to lead his people out, and lead them out he did, amid tokens of his heavenly commission that none could gainsay—“wonders and signs55 in the land of Egypt and at the Red Sea,” not to speak of those which marked the following years of wandering in the wilderness.56
37 Was Moses in all this a forerunner of Jesus, as Stephen appeared to claim? Moses’ own words supply a sufficient answer—and here Stephen quotes the promise about the prophet like Moses from Deut. 18:15 which Peter has already quoted in the temple court (3:22).
38 There in the wilderness Moses was the people’s leader; there they were constituted Yahweh’s assembly;57 there they had the “angel of the presence”58 in their midst; there they received through Moses the living oracles of God.59 What more could the people of God want?—and it was all theirs in the wilderness, far from the promised land and the holy city.
39–41 Even so, they were not content: they disobeyed Moses and repudiated his leadership, although he was God’s spokesman and viceregent among them. Was Stephen charged with speaking “blasphemous words against Moses”—with propagating doctrines which threatened the abiding validity of “the customs which Moses handed down to us”? Such a charge came well from the descendants of those who had refused Moses’ authority in his very lifetime, from people whose attitude to the greater prophet than Moses had shown them to be such worthy children of their forefathers! Why, those Israelites in the wilderness, for all their sacred privileges, longed to go back to Egypt, from which Moses had led them out.60 The invisible presence of God was not enough for them: they craved some form of divinity that they could see. When Moses was absent, receiving the “oracles” from God on Mount Sinai, they persuaded Aaron to manufacture “gods to go before us.”61 Thus they showed how much they cared for the pure, aniconic worship of their fathers’ God. The long history of Israel’s lapsing into idolatry, which called forth the remonstrance of one prophet after another and at last brought them into exile, had its beginnings in the wilderness, when they paid sacrificial homage to the golden calf and held high festival in honor of their own handiwork.62
42–43 The course of their idolatry, as traced throughout the Old Testament, from the wilderness wanderings to the Babylonian exile, Stephen finds summed up in the words of Amos 5:25–27. The full-blown worship of the “host of heaven,” the planetary powers, to which Jerusalem gave itself over in the later years of the monarchy, under Assyrian influence, was the fruition of that earlier idolatry in the wilderness.63 It was more than its fruition, in fact; it was the divinely ordained judgment for that rebellious attitude. God turned and “abandoned them to the worship of the host of heaven.” These are terrible words, but the principle that men and women are given up to the due consequences of their own settled choice is well established in scripture and experience.64 While Stephen asserts the principle here in relation to the Jewish nation, Paul asserts it in relation to the Gentile world in Rom. 1:24, 26, 28.
The Masoretic text of the words quoted from Amos differs considerably from the form reproduced here (the LXX rendering, with some variations). In the original wording and context Amos, prophesying on the eve of the Assyrian invasions which brought the northern kingdom of Israel to an end, warns the Israelites that they will be deported “beyond Damascus” and that they will carry with them into exile the very tokens of that idolatry—“Sakkuth your king and Kaiwan your star-god”—for which Yahweh is about to bring this judgment on them.65 Both forms of the text begin with the question: “Did you bring me sacrifices and offerings during the forty years in the wilderness, O house of Israel?” And in both forms of the text the implied answer is “No.”
It must be determined how the implied answer “No” was understood first by Amos and then by Stephen.
As for Amos’s intention, it has commonly been believed that he implied that Israel’s worship in the wilderness was entirely nonsacrificial. But this interpretation fails to bring out the main emphasis of his words. His question probably meant: “Was it mere sacrifices and offerings, sacrifices and offerings that were an end in themselves and not the expression of your loyalty of spirit, that you offered in the wilderness days?” The expected answer will then be: “No: we offered something more than that; we brought true heart-worship and righteousness.”66 Amos, like Jeremiah, looks back on the wilderness experience as Israel’s honeymoon period, when Yahweh’s will was her delight.67
Stephen, however, following the LXX, understands the implied “No” to mean: “No: we offered sacrifices and offerings indeed, but to other gods, not to the God of Israel.”68 He has just emphasized the unfaithfulness of Israel in worshiping the golden calf, and infers from that episode that the idolatry which the prophets later condemned had its origins in the wilderness. Even then the people had been rebellious in heart; even then they had gone astray after foreign divinities, taking up “the tent of Moloch” and “the star of your god Raiphan”—Raiphan being a designation of the planet Saturn.
Stephen certainly does not mean that the Mosaic tabernacle had actually become “the tent of Moloch” because of Israel’s perversion of the pure order of worship:69 the Mosaic tabernacle is spoken of with high respect in the next sentence, as the symbol of God’s abiding faithfulness. Moloch and Raiphan are members of the “host of heaven”;70 Stephen means that the worship of the planetary powers, for which the nation lost its liberty and suffered deportation, was the climax of that idolatrous process which began in the wilderness. In principle at least the worship of those powers had its inception in the wilderness: it was to them that sacrifices and offerings were brought even at that early date.71 Stephen does not mention the apostasy of Baal-peor, when Israel “ate the sacrifices of the dead” (Ps. 106 [LXX 105]:28), but that would have reinforced his argument.
Amos, foretelling the Assyrian exile of the northern kingdom, described the place of their captivity as “beyond Damascus”; the LXX rendering concurs with the Masoretic text. But the same disloyalty to the God of their fathers brought a similar judgment on the southern kingdom more than a century later, in the Babylonian exile, and Stephen accordingly replaces “beyond Damascus” with “beyond Babylon” (perhaps as being more relevant in a Jerusalem setting). The idols which they had made for worship could give them no help in that terrible day.
f. Tabernacle and Temple (7:44–50)
44“Our forefathers had the tent of testimony in the wilderness, as Moses was directed, by the one who spoke to him, to make it according to the model he had seen.
45Our forefathers who succeeded them brought it in with Joshua when they dispossessed the nations which God drove out before72 them, (and so it remained) until the days of David.73
46David found favor in God’s sight and sought to provide a tabernacle for the God74 of Jacob.
47But it was Solomon who built a house for him.
48The Most High, however, does not dwell in houses made with hands. So the prophet says:
49‘Heaven is my throne;
Earth is a footstool for my feet.
What house will you build for me?’ says the Lord,
‘Or what will be my resting-place?
50Was it not my hand that made all these things?’75
44 But had the people of Israel no sanctuary in the wilderness, no reminder of the presence of God in their midst, that they should so unaccountably and so quickly forget him and lapse into idolatry? Yes indeed, says Stephen; they had the “tent of the testimony”—the “Trysting tent,” to use James Moffatt’s rendering. It was called the tent of the testimony because it housed the tables of the law, known comprehensively as “the testimony.” The ark in which these tables were placed was accordingly called the “ark of the testimony”; the tent, which served as a shrine for the ark, was correspondingly called (among other things) the tent of the testimony.76 It was no ordinary tent: it was made by the direct command of God, and constructed in every detail according to the model that Moses had been shown on the holy mount.77 The writer to the Hebrews lays special emphasis on this model, identifying it with the heavenly sanctuary, “set up not by man but by the Lord” (Heb. 8:2). But, whereas the writer to the Hebrews draws attention to the sacrifices offered in association with the wilderness sanctuary and to their typological significance, Stephen is significantly silent about them; the only wilderness sacrifices which he mentions are those offered to idols.
Stephen has just countered the charge of blasphemy against Moses with a vos quoque; now he proceeds to counter the charge of blasphemy against God—that is, against his dwelling place—in the same way. The forefathers of his accusers and judges had rebelled against Moses; they paid similar disregard to the shrine which bore witness that God was continually dwelling among them as they moved from place to place.
45 When the Israelites at last entered the land of Canaan under Joshua’s78 leadership, they took the tent of the testimony with them, together with the sacred ark which it enshrined. The tent remained with them, in one place or another, through the period of their dispossession of the Canaanites and their settlement in the land, down to the time of David. “In its mobile character—so we may here fill out the interstices of the argument—the tent was a type or figure of God’s never-ceasing, never-halted appointments for His people’s salvation.”79
46 Toward the end of the period of the judges, the ark was captured by the Philistines. When they found themselves compelled to restore it, Samuel wisely relegated it to a place of obscurity. When King David established his new capital at Jerusalem, he enhanced its sacral character by bringing the ark out of its place of relegation at Kiriath-jearim and installing it in a tent-shrine which he had erected for it on Mount Zion.80 His doing so is commemorated in Ps. 132:2–5, where it is related
“how he swore to Yahweh,
and vowed to the Mighty One of Jacob:
‘I will not enter my house
or get into my bed;
I will not give sleep to my eyes
or slumber to my eyelids,
till I find a place for Yahweh,
a dwelling-place for the Mighty One of Jacob.’ ”81
But when he had put down his enemies inside and outside the land, David longed to provide a nobler dwelling place for the ark (the token of God’s presence with his people) than this tent-shrine. The contrast between his own palace, panelled in cedar-wood, and the curtained tent within which the ark abode, weighed on his mind. He confided in the prophet Nathan, and Nathan’s first reaction was to commend the king and bid him act on his inclination and build a palace for the ark of God. But Nathan soon ascertained the mind of God more clearly, and went back to David with the message that God desired no house of cedar from him; instead, he would himself establish David’s house—his dynasty—in perpetuity.
Nathan went on to tell David that his son and successor would build a house for the “name” of God. But Stephen evidently did not consider that the building of Solomon’s temple was the fulfilment of this promise. It is plain that many early Christians interpreted the accompanying promise, that this son of David would have his throne established forever, as fulfilled in Christ.
“He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High;
and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David,
and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever;
and of his kingdom there will be no end” (Luke 1:32–33).
It was in Christ too, they believed, that the promise of a new house, built for the name of God, was truly fulfilled. It was directly after his entry into Jerusalem, when he was hailed as the son of David, that Jesus went into the temple area and ejected from the Court of the Gentiles the trespassers whose activity there prevented it from fulfilling its proper purpose. “Is it not written,” he asked, “ ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations’?” (Mark 11:17).82 In these words is an adumbration of that new temple in which those who were formerly “strangers and sojourners” are now made “fellow-citizens with the saints” and “built into” a living sanctuary which is a fit “dwelling place of God in the Spirit” (Eph. 2:19–22). The work of building began with Jesus’ resurrection: it was of “the temple of his body” that he spoke when he undertook to raise up a new temple in three days (John 2:20–21). If some such intention is rightly traced in Stephen’s language here, it underlines the relevance of this speech as a theological introduction to Luke’s narrative of the Gentile mission.
47 By contrast with the “tabernacle” or bivouac83 that David erected for God, the house84 that Solomon his son built was a structure of stone, immobile, fixed to one spot. The brevity with which Solomon’s building is introduced and dismissed, and the contrast implied with David’s intention, which was not to be realized until the advent of a greater than Solomon, expresses plain disapproval. Yet perhaps it is not so much Solomon’s action that Stephen deprecates—Solomon himself confessed that no temple made with hands could house the God of heaven: “Behold, heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain thee; how much less this house which I have built!” (1 Kings 8:27).85 It was rather the state of mind to which the temple gave rise—a state of mind which could not have been engendered by the mobile tabernacle—that Stephen reprobated, as Jeremiah had done in his day.
48 The gods of the heathen might be accommodated in material shrines, but not God Most High. This was taught by the higher paganism, as well as by Jews and Christians.86 The contrast between what is “made with hands” and what is “not made with hands” is a prominent feature in the primitive catechesis of the New Testament and early Christian apologetic.87 Where the temple is concerned, the contrast appears to go back to our Lord himself. Although the evidence given at his trial, to the effect that he said, “I will destroy this temple that is made with hands, and in three days I will build another, not made with hands” (Mark 14:58), is described as “false witness,” it is not likely to have been false on this point.88
49–50 To emphasize the full agreement of his case with the prophetic revelation, Stephen quotes the opening words of Isa. 66—words which clearly anticipate his own argument, whether their primary reference was to the building of the second temple or to some other occasion.89 There the prophet goes on to say in Yahweh’s name, almost immediately after the passage quoted by Stephen: “But this is the man to whom I will look, he that is humble and contrite in spirit, and trembles at my word” (Isa. 66:2b). This well described the character of the people of God, who constitute his true temple (cf. Isa. 57:15). But to those who imagine that they can localize the presence of God, the scornful answer comes: “What is the place of my rest?” Do they think they can make God “stay put”—imprison him in a beautiful ornamented cage?90 “The Temple was not intended … to become a permanent institution, halting the advance of the divine plan for the people of God.”91
Stephen’s argument is thus concluded; all that remains is to drive it home to the conscience of his audience. He has answered the charges brought forward by the prosecution. As for the charge of subverting the Mosaic tradition, it is not he but the nation, and preeminently its leaders, that should plead guilty to this: their guilt is amply attested by their own sacred scriptures, back to Moses’ own lifetime. As for the charge of blaspheming God by announcing the supersession of the temple by “this Jesus of Nazareth,” he makes no attempt to deny it but justifies his position by the claim that it is the position occupied by the patriarchs and prophets, whereas the position of his opponents involves a point-blank denial of the consistent witness of the scriptures. “Stephen’s speech thus resolves itself into a great defence of the doctrine of the Church Invisible, based on a broad survey of the history of the people of God.”92
g. Personal Application (7:51–53)
51“You obstinate people, disobedient in heart and hearing alike, you always oppose the Holy Spirit. Your forefathers did so, and so do you.
52Which of the prophets did your forefathers not persecute? They killed those who announced in advance the advent93 of the Righteous One; you have now betrayed and murdered him—
53you, who received the law by the agency of angels, but have not kept it.”
51 Having defended his position thus, Stephen now applies the moral to his hearers in true prophetic vein. The suddenness of his invective has taken some of his commentators by surprise, as it perhaps took some of his hearers; and it is suggested that his immediately preceding words must have occasioned an angry outburst in the court, to which he now responds. But it is unnecessary to think of any interruption at this point. There was really nothing to add after his quotation of Isa. 66:1–2; that clinched his case. The words that follow sum up in pointed and personal terms the indictment which he has been building up throughout his speech.
That the nation was obstinate, “stiffnecked,” was a complaint as old as the wilderness wanderings—a complaint made by God himself (Ex. 33:5). The description of them as disobedient—“uncircumcised in heart and ears”—meant that, while they were circumcised in the literal sense, in accordance with the Abrahamic institution, their unresponsiveness and resistance to God’s revelation were such as might have been expected from Gentiles to whom he had not made known his will (cf. Lev. 26:41; Deut. 10:16; Jer. 4:4; 6:10; 9:26; Ezek. 44:7). Moses and the prophets had described earlier generations in these terms; they were equally true, said Stephen, of the contemporary generation.
52 Many of the prophets of God in Old Testament times suffered persecution and sometimes death itself for their faithfulness to the divine commission. There is ample evidence of this in the canonical books, and Jewish tradition elaborated the theme,94 describing, for example, the martyrdom of Isaiah by sawing asunder in the reign of Manasseh95 and of Jeremiah by stoning at the hands of the people who had forced him to go down to Egypt with them.96 Much of that opposition to the prophets was due to their attack on Israel’s perverted notions of the true worship of God—an attack exemplified in the prophetic texts quoted in Stephen’s speech. Stephen placed himself in the prophetic succession by attacking Israel’s record on this very point; it is therefore especially relevant that Israel’s traditional hostility to the prophets should be mentioned here.
But did not the Jews of later days reprobate their ancestors’ behavior toward the prophets? Yes indeed. “If we had lived in the days of our fathers,” they said, “we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets” (Matt. 23:30). They paid tribute to the prophets’ memory and built monuments in their honor. But Stephen insists that they are still true sons of their ancestors, maintaining the same hostility to God’s messengers:97 if those ancestors killed those who foretold the advent of the Righteous One,98 they themselves—and here Stephen’s indictment is directed particularly to his chief-priestly judges—had carried that hostility to its logical conclusion by handing the Righteous One himself over to violent death.
53 By rejecting the Messiah, they had filled up the measure of their fathers. The fathers had all along resisted the plan of God, the very purpose for which he had made them a nation and called them into covenant relationship with himself; their descendants had now repudiated the one in whom the divine plan and purpose were to be consummated. In the earliest days of the nation, it disobeyed the law of God, although it had received that law by angelic mediation.99 And now in these last days, when God has spoken through no angel but through the Righteous One par excellence, Stephen’s hearers had with even greater decisiveness rejected him.
7. The Stoning of Stephen (7:54–8:1a)
a. Stephen’s Final Witness (7:54–56)
54Hearing this, they were filled with rage and ground their teeth at him.
55But he, being full of the Holy Spirit, looked up into heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus100 standing at God’s right hand.
56“Look!” he said, “I see heaven opened, and the Son of Man standing at God’s right hand.”
54 To the earlier part of Stephen’s speech his judges had perhaps listened with considerable interest, wondering where his outline of patriarchal times would lead him. But as he continued, the drift of his argument became clearer, and they heard him with increasing anger and horror.101 And when he flung the charge of blasphemy, persistent opposition to God and his ways, back on themselves, their vexation and rage could no longer be restrained.102
55–56 While his hearers gave vent to their annoyance, Stephen remained calm, fully controlled as before by the Spirit of God, when suddenly, as he kept his gaze fixed upward, a vision of the glory of God met his inward eye. Much more real to him in that moment than the angry gestures and cries of those around him was the presence of Jesus at God’s right hand. “Look!” he exclaimed. “I see the heavens parted and the Son of Man standing at God’s right hand.”103
Not many years before, another prisoner had stood at the bar before the same court, charged with almost the same offenses as Stephen. But when the hostile evidence broke down, the high priest adjured the prisoner to tell the court plainly if he was indeed the Messiah, the Son of God. Had he said “Yes” and no more, it is not clear that he could have been convicted of a capital offense. “Messiah” was not his chosen self-designation, but if the question was put to him like that, he could not say “No.” He went on, however, to reframe his answer in words of his own choosing: “you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Almighty, and coming with the clouds of heaven” (Mark 14:62).104 No more was required: Jesus was found guilty of blasphemy and judged to be worthy of death. Now Stephen in the same place was making the same claim on Jesus’ behalf as Jesus had made for himself: he was claiming, in fact, that those words of Jesus, far from being false and blasphemous, were words of sober truth which had received their vindication and fulfilment from God. Unless the judges were prepared to admit that their former decision was tragically mistaken, they had no option but to find Stephen guilty of blasphemy as well.
This is the only New Testament occurrence of the phrase “the Son of Man” outside the Gospels.105 Apart from this instance, it is found only on the lips of Jesus. It has its Old Testament roots in Dan. 7:13–14, where a human figure (“one like a son of man,” in the literal rendering of the Aramaic) is seen coming to the enthroned Ancient of Days “with the clouds of heaven” to receive universal dominion from him. The un-Greek idiom “the Son of Man” (more literally “the son of the man”) means “the ‘one like a son of man’ ” who is to receive world dominion, but since it was not in current use as a technical term, Jesus could and did employ it freely of himself and fill it with whatever meaning he chose. The background in Dan. 7:13–27 links the “one like a son of man” closely with “the saints of the Most High,” whom the New Testament identifies with Jesus’ disciples and their converts.106
Jesus’ reply to the high priest’s question combines Daniel’s description of the “one like a son of man” coming with the clouds of heaven and the oracle of Ps. 110:1 in which the king of Israel is invited by Yahweh to sit at his right hand. This oracle underlies the description of Stephen’s present vision. But Stephen sees the Son of Man not sitting but standing at God’s right hand. Is there any significance in this change of verb?
Some commentators have thought not; C. H. Dodd, for example, remarks that the verb to stand “has commonly the sense ‘to be situated’, without any necessary implication of an upright attitude.”107 But in allusions to the oracle of Ps. 110:1 the participle “sitting” is so constant that this exception calls for an explanation. Various explanations have been offered. “He had not yet taken definitely his seat,” says William Kelly, “but was still giving the Jews a final opportunity. Would they reject the testimony to Him gone on high indeed, but as a sign waiting if peradventure they might repent and He might be sent to bring in the times of refreshing here below?”108 But from Luke’s point of view this was no “final opportunity” for the Jews; they continue to receive further opportunities to the very end of his narrative.109
More plausibly, Jesus has been pictured as rising up from the throne of God to greet his proto-martyr; J. A. Bengel, who takes this view, quotes to the same effect from the sixth-century Christian poet Arator.110 Others have understood Stephen to foresee the glory of Christ’s advent: “Christ rises in preparation for his Parousia,” says Huw Pari Owen.111 A refinement of this interpretation is proposed by C. K. Barrett: Jesus is indeed standing because “he is about to come,” but Luke believed that “the death of each Christian would be marked by what we may term a private and personal parousia of the Son of man.”112
Most probably Stephen’s words should be taken closely along with Jesus’ promise: “everyone who acknowledges me before men, the Son of Man also will acknowledge before the angels of God” (Luke 12:8; in Matt. 10:33 “the Son of Man” is replaced by “I”). That is to say, Jesus stands up as witness or advocate in Stephen’s defense. Stephen appeals from the adverse judgment of the earthly court, and “in the heavenly court … this member of the Son of Man community is already being vindicated by the head of that community—the Son of Man par excellence (C. F. D. Moule).113 If, at the moment when he was about to begin testifying before the Sanhedrin, Stephen had some foreview of this beatific vision, no wonder his face shone like an angel’s (6:15).
Did Stephen’s vision of the Son of Man involve an appreciation of his exercising world dominion? According to William Manson, “Stephen grasped and asserted the more-than-Jewish-Messianic sense in which the office and significance of Jesus in religious history were to be understood.… Whereas the Jewish nationalists were holding to the permanence of their national historical privilege, and even the ‘Hebrew’ Christians gathered round the Apostles were, with all their new Messianic faith, idealising the sacred institutions of the past, ‘continuing stedfastly in the temple’, ‘going up to the temple at the hour of prayer’ which was also the hour of the sacrificial service, sheltering under the eaves of the Holy Place, Stephen saw that the Messiah was on the throne of the universe.”114
This may be a just assessment of Stephen’s thought, but nothing like certainty on this is attainable. Manson’s interpretation is part of his case for seeing Stephen as the antecursor of the writer to the Hebrews. What may be said with some confidence is that Luke treats the ministry of Stephen as an introduction to the Gentile mission, in which Christ’s claim to world dominion began to be vindicated. The vindication of his sovereign claim by the Gentile mission appears again as the theme of James’s speech at the Council of Jerusalem (15:14–18).
In short, the presence of the Son of Man at God’s right hand meant that for his people a way of access to God had been opened up more immediate and heart-satisfying than the temple could provide. It meant that the hour of fulfilment had struck, and that the age of particularism had come to an end. The sovereignty of the Son of Man was to embrace all nations and races without distinction: under his sway there is no place for an institution which gives religious privileges to one group in preference to others.
57But with a loud shout they stopped their ears and rushed on him as one man.115
58Then they hustled him outside the city and proceeded to stone him. The witnesses laid down their clothes at the feet of a young man called Saul.
59So they stoned Stephen, while he called on (the Lord): “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit,” he said.
60Then, falling on his knees, he cried aloud, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.” So saying, he fell asleep.
57–58 Commentators differ about what happened next. Many who heard Stephen describe his vision must have felt that this was unabashed contempt of the Shekhinah.116 Did the crowd of bystanders take the law into their own hands and lynch him? Joseph Klausner thought that Stephen’s stoning was the work of “some fanatical persons … who decided the case for themselves. They saw in Stephen a ‘blasphemer’ worthy of stoning, although according to the Talmudic rule ‘the blasphemer’ is not culpable unless he pronounces the Name itself’—which Stephen had not done. The fanatics did not trouble themselves about the judicial rule; they took Stephen outside the city and stoned him.” It may be true, as Klausner goes on to say, that “in the opinion of the Pharisees there was in his words no actual blasphemy, but only an offense requiring the forty stripes lacking one.” But that does not justify the conclusion that “the Sanhedrin could not see fit to impose the death sentence on him.” He conceded that Stephen “may have been deserving of that according to the rules of the Sadducees”;117 and in the trial of Stephen, as in the examination of Jesus, it was the Sadducean chief priests who played the leading part. We must beware of supposing that trials before the Sanhedrin in the early decades of the first century A.D. were invariably conducted in the atmosphere of severe impartiality and judicial calm prescribed in the idealized Mishnaic account.118
The reference to the witnesses suggests strongly that Stephen’s stoning was carried out as a legal execution, as the penalty for blasphemy. The restriction of blasphemy to the actual pronouncing of the ineffable name was a later rabbinical refinement;119 there is no reason to think that the Sadducean authorities limited the offense in any such way. For Stephen to suggest that the crucified Jesus stood in a position of authority at the right hand of God must have ranked as blasphemy in the thinking of those who knew that a crucified man died under the divine curse.
As for the witnesses, it was their duty to play the chief part in such an execution—a duty prescribed in the written Torah. “The hand of the witnesses shall be first against him to put him to death, and afterward the hand of all the people” (Deut. 17:7; cf. Lev. 24:14; Deut. 13:9–10). In order to throw the first stones the witnesses would naturally divest themselves of their outer garments, as they are here said to have done.
The young man called Saul, who guarded the clothes of the chief executioners, will play an increasingly important part in the record of Acts, as a leading champion of the cause which he was now opposing. Saul was his family name as an Israelite; he is better known in history by his Roman cognomen Paullus (Paul). It may be regarded as an undesigned coincidence that while Luke alone informs us that his Jewish name was Saul, he himself claims to have belonged to the tribe of Benjamin.120 His parents thus gave him the name of the most illustrious member of that tribe in the nation’s history—the name of Israel’s first king, Saul.121
If the stoning of Stephen was a legal execution, how could it be carried out on the spot, without that authorization of the Roman governor which was required by provincial law? It is not an adequate answer to suggest that it may have taken place in the interregnum after Pilate’s removal from his office in A.D. 36/37. For one thing, there was no interregnum (Lucius Vitellius, legate of Syria, saw to that);122 for another thing, even if there had been an interregnum, the exercise of capital jurisdiction by the Jewish court would still have been a usurpation of Roman prerogative, as was shown when James the Just was executed in A.D. 62, in the interval between Festus’s death and his successor’s arrival.123 The charge which was found proved against Stephen—speaking against the temple—probably belonged to the category of offenses against the temple for which the Roman administration, as an exceptional concession, allowed the Jewish authorities to carry out the death sentence without reference to the governor.124
59 The ancient law directing the witnesses to take the lead in the act of stoning was amplified in later times and is recorded thus in the Mishnah (late second century A.D.):
“When the trial is finished, the man convicted is brought out to be stoned.… When ten cubits from the place of stoning they say to him, ‘Confess;125 for it is the custom of all about to be put to death to make confession, and every one who confesses has a share in the age to come.’ … Four cubits from the place of stoning the criminal is stripped.126 … The drop from the place of stoning was twice the height of a man. One of the witnesses pushes the criminal from behind, so that he falls face downward. He is then turned over on his back. If he dies from this fall, that is sufficient.127 If not, the second witness takes the stone and drops it on his heart. If this causes death, that is sufficient; if not, he is stoned by all the congregation of Israel.”128
In the Mishnah this (or any other) form of execution is treated as an unwelcome necessity, to be avoided if the slightest legal loophole can be found; Luke does not give the impression that Stephen’s executioners stoned him reluctantly as a disagreeable but unavoidable duty.
Nor did Stephen make confession to his judges or executioners. Instead, as he was being stoned he committed himself to his advocate on high with the words: “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.” These words are reminiscent of Jesus’ final utterance from the cross in Luke’s passion narrative: “Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit!” (Luke 23:46).129 There is this striking difference: whereas Jesus committed his spirit to God, Stephen committed his to Jesus—eloquent evidence for the rapid emergence of a high christology in the church.130
60 There was yet another of our Lord’s words from the cross echoed by Stephen. For, on his knees among the flying stones, he made his last appeal to the heavenly court—not this time for his own vindication but for mercy toward his executioners. Before he was finally battered into silence and death, he was heard to cry aloud, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them” (the “Lord” being again, presumably, the Lord Jesus).131
There is an Old Testament story of another messenger of God who for his faithfulness was stoned to death, not (like Stephen) outside the city but in the temple court itself, “between the altar and the sanctuary,” as our Lord said (Luke 11:51)—Zechariah the son of Jehoiada, priest and prophet. But as Zechariah was about to breathe his last, he prayed, “May Yahweh see and avenge!” (2 Chron. 24:22). The martyr-deaths were similar; the dying prayers were widely different. Stephen had learned his lesson in the school of him who, when he was being fixed to the cross, prayed, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34).132 Having prayed thus, says Luke, Stephen “fell asleep”—an unexpectedly peaceful description for so brutal a death, but one which fits the spirit in which Stephen accepted his martyrdom.