Acts 7.1-60 describes Stephen’s defense before the Sanhedrin, where he uses the history of Israel and the Patriarchs as a picture of what happened to Yeshua by the very same men he is speaking to; their reaction to it, and Stephen’s execution by stoning.
v 1…And the high priest (probably Caiaphas who remained in office till 36 AD) said, “Are these things so?”
v 2…And he said, “Hear me, brethren and fathers (teachers)! The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia (“between the rivers”) before he lived in Haran,
v 3…and said to him,’Depart from your country and your relatives, and come into the land that I will show you.’
v 4…Then he departed from the land of the Chaldeans and settled in Haran. And from there, after his father died (only when our “old man” is dead can we enter the promised land), God removed him into this country in which you are now living.
v 5…And he gave him no inheritance in it (to be personally enjoyed by him at that time), not even a foot of ground, and yet, even when he had no child, he promised to him a possession, and to his offspring after him.
v 6…But God spoke to the effect that his offspring would be aliens in a foreign land and that they would be enslaved and mistreated for four hundred years (in Canaan and Egypt).
v 7…’And whatever nation to which they shall be in bondage I myself will judge,’ said God, ‘And after that they will come out and serve me in this place.’
v 8…And he gave him the covenant of circumcision (a sign that his descendants have a covenant with Yehovah); and so Abraham became a father of Isaac, and circumcised him on the eighth day, and Isaac became the father of Jacob and Jacob of the twelve patriarchs (of Israel).
v 9…And the patriarchs became jealous of Joseph and sold him into Egypt. And yet God was with him (just like these leaders did to Yeshua),
v 10…and rescued him from all his afflictions (so was Yeshua, and now sits at the right hand of his Father), and granted him favor and wisdom in the sight of Pharaoh, the king of Egypt; and he made him governor over Egypt and all his household.
v 11…Now a famine came over all Egypt and Canaan, and great affliction; and our fathers could find no food.
v 12…But when Jacob heard there was grain in Egypt, he sent our fathers there the first time (a picture of the first coming of Yeshua).
v 13…And on the second visit Joseph made himself known to his brothers (Yeshua will make himself known to his brothers on his second visit), and Joseph’s family was disclosed to Pharaoh (his actual lineage from Abraham).
v 14…And Joseph sent word and invited his father and all his relatives to come to him, seventy-five persons in all (eleven brothers and a sister; fifty-two of his brother’s children; eleven wives of the brothers).
v 15…And Jacob went down to Egypt, and there he passed away, he and our fathers.
v 16…And (from there) they (their bones) were removed to Shechem and laid in the tomb which Abraham purchased for a sum of money from the sons of Hamor in Shechem (it was Jacob, but Stephen probably uses Abraham as representing the family).
v 17… But as the time of the promise was approaching which God had assured to Abraham (the promise of the deliverance from 400 years of servitude in Canaan and Egypt), the people increased and multiplied in Egypt,
v 18…until there arose another king (from a different dynasty-12th to the 13th) over Egypt who knew nothing about Joseph.
v 19…It was he who took shrewd advantage of our race (kindred) and mistreated our fathers so that they would expose their infants and they would not survive (to be aborted, exposed to ruin, cast into rivers, etc).
v 20…And it was at this time Moses was born, and he was lovely in the sight of God; and he was nurtured three months in his father’s home (the Hebrews did not believe in abortion or infanticide; children were seen as a gift from God not slave material-Psa 127.3).
v 21…And after he had been exposed (and could not be safely kept at home), Pharaoh’s daughter took him away, and nurtured him as (if) her own son.
v 22…And Moses was educated in all the learning of the Egyptians (in arithmetic, geometry, music, hieroglyphics, languages, warfare, but not the magic arts, etc), and he was a man of power in words and deeds (Exo 4.10 says he was “not eloquent and slow of tongue.” This means he did not know the Hebrew language, idioms and customs of the people when God called him. Acts 7.22 obviously shows he had ability).
v 23…But when he was approaching the age of forty, it entered his mind (by God’s purposes) to visit his brethren (he knew he was Hebrew), the sons of Israel.
v 24…And when he saw one of them being mistreated unjustly (Moses was moved by injustice here, not ethnicity), he defended him and took vengeance for the oppressed by striking down the Egyptian (this was no ordinary Egyptian because Pharaoh will be very upset).
v 25…And he supposed that his brethren understood that God was granting them deliverance through him (No…it will be through Yehovah); but they did not understand (Moses already had “the call” but he had not been “sent” yet; that won’t happen for another forty years-Exo 3 and 4).
v 26…and on the following day he appeared to them as they were fighting together, and he tried to reconcile them in peace, saying, “Men, you are brethren, why do you injure one another?”
v 27…But the one who was injuring his neighbor pushed him away, saying, ‘Who made you a ruler and judge over us (Num 16.3 says they said the same thing later; in these verses we will see Moses as a type of Yeshua: born under an evil king who wants to kill him; Israel not understanding his “call”; dealing with Jewish factions and fighting; Jewish leaders rejecting Yeshua)?
v 28…You do not mean to kill us as you killed the Egyptian yesterday, do you?’
v 29…And at this remark, Moses fled, and became an alien (stranger) in the land of Midian, where he became the father of two sons.
v 30…And after forty years (forty is the number of testing) had passed (Moses is now 80), an angel (an extraordinary messenger, perhaps Yehovah, the Messiah or a created angel according to many commentators) appeared to him in the wilderness of Mount Sinai in the flame of a burning thorn bush (unconsumed; a type of Israel under oppression and persecution being preserved).
v 31…and when Moses saw it, he began to marvel at this site (what did it mean; he couldn’t explain it); and as he approached to look more closely, there came the voice of the Lord;
v 32…’I am (exist as) the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob.’ And Moses shook and would not venture to look (at the bush).
v 33…But the Lord (Yehovah) said to him, ‘Take off the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground (“adamat kadosh”-it has a kedusha with certain limitations and restrictions).
v 34…I have certainly seen the oppression of my people in Egypt and I have heard their groans, and I have come down to deliver them; come now, and I will send you to Egypt (this is called the First Redemption, with Moses as the shaliach; Yeshua will be the shaliach in the Second Redemption).’
v 35…This Moses whom they (Israel) disowned (like Yeshua), saying, ‘Who made you ruler and a judge?’ is the one whom God sent to be both a ruler and a deliverer with the help of the angel who appeared to him in the thorn bush (a type of Yeshua).
v 36…This man led them out, performing wonders and signs in the land of Egypt and in the Red Sea and in the wilderness for forty years.
v 37…This is the Moses who said to the sons of Israel, ‘God shall raise up for you a prophet like me from among your brethren.’
v 38…This is the one who was in the congregation (“ecclesia” in Greek and the Hebrew “kahal”) in the wilderness together with the angel (in association or harmony with) who was speaking to him on Mount Sinai and with our fathers; and received living oracles (Torah) to pass on to you (this applies today also).
v 39…And our fathers were unwilling to be obedient to him, but repudiated him in their hearts turned back to Egypt,
v 40…saying to Aaron (the priests were leading this court scene too), ‘Make for us gods (elohim, powers) who will go before us, for this Moses who led us out of the land of Egypt-we do not know what happened to him (but they really don’t care anyway).
v 41…And at that time they made a calf and brought a sacrifice to the idol, and were rejoicing in the works of their hands.
v 42…But God turned away and delivered them up to serve the host (stars) of heaven; as it is written (already recorded) in the book of the prophets (Amos 5.25-26), ‘It was not to me that you offered victims and sacrifices (korbanot) forty years in the wilderness, was it, O house of Israel?
v 43…You also took along Moloch (or “Mlk” having several different meanings) and the star of the god Rompha (Saturn-on an equal level with Yehovah), the images which you made to worship them. I also will remove you beyond Babylon.’
v 44…Our fathers had the Mishkan of testimony (witness) in the wilderness, just as he who spoke to Moses directed to make it according to the pattern (blueprint) which he had seen.
v 45…And having received it in their turn (to Canaan) with Joshua upon dispossessing the nations whom God drove out before our fathers, until the time of David.
v 46…And David found favor in God’s sight, and asked that he might find a dwelling place for the God of Jacob (a Temple).
v 47…But it was Solomon who built a house for him (the Temple was seen as the covenantal center).
v 48…However, the Most High does not dwell in houses made of hands; as the prophet says:
v 49…’Heaven is my throne, and the earth is the footstool of my feet (under my authority and rule); what kind of house will you build for me?’ says the Lord (Yehovah); or what place is there for my repose?
v 50…Was it not my hand that made all these things (1 Kings 8.26-29; Isa 66.1-2; 2 Chr 2.6, 17-21)?’
v 51…You men who are stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart (no faith-Deut 30.6) and ears are always resisting the Ruach Ha Kodesh (Holy Spirit); you are doing just as your fathers did (being hostile to the truth and to those who are sent).
v 52…Which one of the prophets did your fathers not persecute? And they killed those who had previously announced the coming of the Righteous One (Messiah), whose betrayers and murderers you have now become;
v 53…you who received the Law (Torah) as ordained by angels (divine messengers), and yet did not keep it (incorporating the Torah into their lives by staying true to the pattern, or blueprint, God has given for us on how to live as believers by doing specific things, by specific people, at specific places, at specific times).”
v 54…Now when they heard this, they were cut to the quick (heart, affections, intentions, thoughts), and they began gnashing their teeth at him (like angry dogs-people are not hostile today because the “gospel” has changed into no Torah, so nobody gets upset; you just change churches if you don’t like something).
v 55…But being full of the Ruach Ha Kodesh (under his control, influence, and purposes which was why his words were so powerful), he gazed intently into heaven and saw the glory of God (beyond what the natural eye can see); and Yeshua standing (as if ready to greet Stephen in respect) at the right hand of God (the side of power and authority),
v 56…and he said, “Behold (take note and see), I see the heavens opened up (the outside veil of the Temple was called “the Heavens” and this term meant a deeper revelation was coming, a deeper insight-Josephus, Wars, Book 5, Chapter 5, verse 4 by Whiston; Matt 27.51; Mark 1.10) and the son of Man (bar Enosh of Dan 7.13 and an eschatological term for the Messiah) standing at the right hand of God.”
v 57…And they cried out with a loud voice, and covered their ears (against the message), and rushed upon him with one impulse.
v 58…And when they had driven him out of the city (they would have gone out the Damascus Gate to Golgotha, the place of execution for the city, and the same place they took Yeshua to be crucified at the base of Golgotha along the road. They would have cast Stepen down off the top of the hill, and if he survived that, the people would have stoned him-see the article called “Chapter 3: Golgotha the Place of the Skull”-Oxfordbiblechurch.co.uk, for more detail; Jeremiah wrote Lamentations in the area) they began stoning him (not as a mob, but in a judicial act; for information on how a stoning was done, see the Mishnah, Sanhedrin 6.1-4), and the witnesses (who would throw the first stones) laid aside their robes at the feet (under the authority of) a young man named Saul (he may have been the shaliach, or agent, of the Sanhedrin to oversee this execution; what is not mentioned much in Scripture is that Saul, or Paul, probably knew Yeshua and may have heard him speak many times; he may have been at his trial and witnessed the crucifixion; he knew who Peter and the other shaliachim were; he was certainly old enough; Saul would have gone out this same Damascus Gate on his way to arrest Hellenistic Jewish believers in Damascus).
v 59…And they went on stoning Stephen as he called upon and said, “Lord Yeshua receive my spirit!”
v 60…And falling on his knees, he cried out with a loud voice, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them!” And having said this, he fell asleep (in death, but his body will rise again so it would seem it was only “sleeping”)
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