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Acts 7:1. The question of the high priest breaks in upon the silence (Holtzmann). St. Chrysostom, Hom., xv., thought that the mildness of the inquiry showed that the assembly was overawed by St. Stephen’s presence, but the question was probably a usual interrogation on such occasions (Felten, Farrar).—On εἰ see Acts 1:6, and Blass, Grammatik, p. 254.

Acts 7:2. Ἄνδρες ἀδελφοὶ καὶ πατέρες, cf. St. Paul’s address, Acts 22:1, and also note on Acts 23:1. On St. Stephen’s speech see additional note at the end of chapter.—ὁ Θεὸς τῆς δόξης: lit[199], “the God of the glory,” i.e., the glory peculiar to Him, not simply ἔνδοξος, a reference to the Shechinah, Exodus 24:16-17, Psalm 29:3, Isaiah 6:3, and in the N.T. cf. 1 Corinthians 2:8, and Jam 2:1 (John 1:14). The appearances to Abraham and Moses were similar to those later ones to which the term Shechinah was applied. Such words were in themselves an answer to the charge of blasphemy; but Stephen proceeds to show that this same God who dwelt in the Tabernacle was not confined to it, but that He appeared to Abraham in a distant heathen land. ὤφθη: there was therefore no need of a Temple that God might appear to His own (Chrys., Hom., xv.; see Blass, in loco).—τῷ πατρὶ ἡμῶν: emphatic, cf. Acts 7:19; Acts 7:38-39; Acts 7:44-45; St. Stephen thus closely associates himself with his hearers. Wetstein comments: “Stephanus ergo non fuit proselytus, sed Judæus natus,” but it would seem from Wetstein himself that a proselyte might call Abraham father; cf. his comment on Luke 1:73, and cf. Sir 44:21; Speaker’s Commentary, “Apocrypha,” vol. ii.; see also Lumby’s note, in loco, and cf. Schürer, Jewish People, div. ii., vol. ii., p. 326, note, E.T.—Μεσοποταμίᾳ: a difficulty at once arises in comparing this statement with the Book of Genesis. Here the call of Abraham is said to have come to him before he dwelt in Haran, but in Genesis 12:1, after he removed thither. But, at the same time Genesis 15:7, cf. Joshua 24:3, Nehemiah 9:7, distinctly intimates that Abraham left “Ur of the Chaldees” (see “Abraham,” Hastings’ B.D., p. 14, and Sayce, Patriarchal Palestine, pp. 166–169, as to its site) in accordance with the choice and guidance of God. St. Stephen applies the language of what we may describe as the second to the first call, and in so doing he was really following on the lines of Jewish literature, e.g., Philo, De Abrah., ii., 11, 16, Mang., paraphrases the divine counsel, and then adds διὰ τοῦτο τὴν πρώτην ἀποικίαν ἀπὸ τῆς Χαλδαίων γῆς εἰς τὴν χαῤῥαίων λέγεται ποιεῖσθαι. Moreover the manner of St. Stephen’s quotation seems to mark the difference between the call in Ur and the call in Haran (R.V., not Charran, Greek form, as in A.V.). In Genesis 12:1 we have the call to Abraham in Haran given as follows: ἔξελθε ἐκ τῆς γῆς σου καὶ ἐκ τῆς συγγενείας σου καὶ ἐκ τοῦ οἴκου τοῦ πατρός σου. But the call in Ur, according to St. Stephen’s wording, is one which did not involve the sacrifice of his family, for Abraham was accompanied by them to Haran, and so the clause ἐκ τοῦ οἴκου κ.τ.λ. is omitted because inappropriate. Of course if we omit ἐκ before τῆς συγγενείας (see critical notes), St. Stephen’s words become more suitable still to the position of Abraham in Ur, for we should then translate the words, “from thy land and the land of thy kindred” (Rendall, cf. Lightfoot, Hor. Heb.). St. Stephen may naturally have referred back to Abraham’s first migration from Ur to Haran, as desiring to emphasise more plainly the fact that since the call of God came to him before he had taken even the first step towards the Holy Land by settling in Haran, that divine revelation was evidently not bound up with any one spot, however holy.—Χαῤῥὰν, Genesis 11:31; Genesis 12:5; Genesis 27:43, LXX, in the old language of Chaldea = road (see Sayce, u. s., pp. 166, 167, and “Haran” Hastings’ B.D., and B.D.2, i. (Pinches)), in Mesopotamia; little doubt that it should be identified with the Carrœ of the Greeks and Romans, near the scene of the defeat of Crassus by the Parthians, B.C. 53, and of his death, Lucan, i., 104; Pliny, N.H., v., 24; Strabo, xvi., p. 747. In the fourth century Carrœ was the seat of a Christian bishopric, with a magnificent cathedral. It is remarkable that the people of the place retained until a late date the Chaldean language and the worship of the Chaldean deities, B.D.2, “Haran,” and see Hamburger, Real-Encyclopädie des Judentums, i., 4, p. 499, and references cited by him for identification with Carrœ (cf. Winer-Schmiedel, p. 57).

[199] literal, literally.

Acts 7:4. μετὰ τὸ ἀποθανεῖν: St. Stephen apparently falls into the same chronological mistake as is made in the Pentateuch and by Philo (De Migr. Abrah., i., 463, Mang.). According to Genesis 11:26 Terah lived seventy years and begat Abraham, Nahor, Haran; in Genesis 11:32 it is said that Terah’s age was 205 years when he died in Haran; in Genesis 12:4 it is said that Abraham was seventy-five years old when he left Haran. But since 70 + 75 = 145, it would seem that Terah must have lived some sixty years after Abraham’s departure. Perhaps the circumstance that Terah’s death was mentioned, in Genesis 11:32, before the command to Abraham to leave Haran, Acts 12:1, may be the cause of the mistake, as it was not observed that the mention of Terah’s death was anticipatory (so Alford). Blass seems to adopt a somewhat similar view, as he commends the reading in Gigas: “priusquam mortuus est pater ejus,” for the obedience of the patriarch, who did not hesitate to leave even his father, is opposed to the obstinacy of the Jewish people (see Blass, in loco). Other attempts at explanation are that reference is made to spiritual death of Terah, who is supposed to have relapsed into idolatry at Haran, a view which appears to have originated with the Rabbis, probably to get rid of the chronological difficulty (Lightfoot, Hor. Heb.; Meyer-Wendt, in loco), but for which there is absolutely no justification in the context; or that Abraham need not have been the eldest son of Terah, but that he was mentioned first because he was the most famous, a view adopted with more or less variation by Wordsworth, Hackett, and recently by Felten (see too B.D.2, p. 16, note), but apparently in opposition to the authority of Hamburger, who states that Terah was seventy years old when Abraham was born, that he was alive when Abraham departed at the age of seventy-five, being released from the duty of caring for his father by the more imperative command to obey the call of God. Lumby quotes from Midrash Rabbah, on Genesis, cap. 39, that God absolved Abraham from the care of his father, and yet, lest Abraham’s departure from Terah should lead others to claim the same relaxation of a commandment for themselves, Terah’s death is mentioned in holy Holy Scripture before Abraham’s departure, cf. Genesis 11:32; Genesis 12:1. One other solution has been attempted by maintaining that μετῴκισεν does not refer to the removal, but only to the quiet and abiding settlement which Abraham gained after his father’s death, but this view, although supported by Augustine and Bengel, amongst others, is justly condemned by Alford and Wendt. The Samaritan Pentateuch reads in Genesis 11:32, 145 instead of 205, probably an alteration to meet the apparent contradiction. But it is quite possible that here, as elsewhere in the speech, Stephen followed some special tradition (so Zöckler).—μετά with infinitive as a temporal proposition frequent in Luke (analogous construction in Hebrew), cf. Luke 12:5; Luke 22:20, etc., cf. LXX, Bar 1:9; Viteau, Le Grec du N. T., p. 165 (1893).—μετῴκισεν, subject ὁ Θεός: cf. for a similar quick change of subject Acts 6:6. Weiss sees in this the hand of a reviser, but the fact that Stephen was speaking under such circumstances would easily account for a rapid change of subject, which would easily be supplied by his hearers; verb only in Acts 7:43 elsewhere, in a quotation—found several times in LXX, and also in use in classical Greek.

Acts 7:5. κληρονομίαν: the field which Abraham bought, Genesis 23:9-17, could not come under this title—the field was Abraham’s purchase, not God’s gift as κληρονομία (see Meyer-Wendt, and Westcott, Hebrews 6:12, additional note, also Bengel, in loco); Acts 7:16 sufficiently shows that Stephen was fully acquainted with Abraham’s purchase of the field.—οὐδὲ βῆμα ποδός, cf. Deuteronomy 2:5; Deuteronomy 11:24, same Hebrew (cf. Hebrews 11:9), “spatium quod planta pedis calcatur” (Grimm); cf. also its use in Xen. It may have been a kind of proverbial expression, cf. Genesis 8:9 (Schöttgen).—καὶ ἐπηγγείλατο, cf. Genesis 12:7 (Genesis 17:8, Genesis 48:4), so that here again God appeared unto Abraham in what was a strange and heathen land. See also for verb, Jam 1:12; Jam 2:5. On the force of the word see p. 54.—εἰς κατάσχεσιν: “in possession,” R.V., the A.V. renders the word in its secondary or derivative sense, which is found in Acts 7:45.—οὐκ ὄντος αὐτῷ τέκνου: the faith of Abraham “tecte significatur” (Blass), first because nothing was given—there was only a promise—and secondly because the promise was made while yet he had no child.

Acts 7:6. δέ: not in contrast to the fact just mentioned that Abraham had no child, but introducing a fuller account of God’s promise. The quotation is from LXX, Genesis 15:13, with a few alterations; in LXX and Heb., the second person, not the third, is used; instead of οὐκ ἰδίᾳ in LXX, ἀλλοτρίᾳ, cf. Hebrews 11:9; and instead of αὐτούς, αὐτό corresponding to σπέρμα. Wendt takes ὅτι as “recitantis,” and not with Meyer as a constituent part of the quotation itself, LXX: Γιγνώσκων γνώσῃ ὅτι κ.τ.λ.—πάροικον in LXX as a stranger or so journer in a country not one’s own, several times in combination with ἐν γῇ ἀλλοτρίᾳ, cf. Genesis 21:23; Genesis 21:34; Genesis 26:3, and in N.T. cf. this passage and Acts 7:29. In Ephesians 2:19, 1 Peter 2:11, the word is also used, but metaphorically, although the usage may be said to be based on that of the LXX; cf. Epist. ad Diognet. v., 5, and Polycarp, Phil., inscript. See Kennedy, Sources of N. T. Greek, p. 102.—ἔτη τετρακόσια: so too Genesis 15:13. The period named belongs not only to κακώσουσιν but also to ἔσται, as Meyer rightly observes. But in Exodus 12:40 four hundred and thirty years are mentioned as the sojourning which Israel sojourned in Egypt, and in both passages the whole space of time is so occupied; or, at all events it may be fairly said that this is implied in the Hebrew text in both Genesis 15:13 and Exodus 12:40 : cf. also for the same mode of reckoning Philo, Quis rer. div. her., 54, p. 511, Mang. But neither here nor in Galatians 3:17 is the argument in the least degree affected by the precise period, or by the adoption of one of the two chronological systems in preference to the other, and in a speech round numbers would be quite sufficient to mark the progressive stages in the history of the nation and of God’s dealings with them. For an explanation of the point see Lightfoot, Galatians 3:17, who regards the number in Genesis as given in round numbers, but in Exodus with historical exactness (to the same effect Wendt, Felten, Zöckler). But in the LXX version, Exodus 12:40, the four hundred and thirty years cover the sojourn both in Egypt and in Canaan, thus including the sojourn of the Patriarchs in Canaan before the migration, and reducing the actual residence in Egypt to about half this period, the Vatican MS. reading four hundred and thirty-five years after adding καὶ ἐν γῇ Χαναὰν (the word five, however, πέντε, being erased), and the Alexandrian MS. reading after ἐν Χαναὰν the words αὐτοὶ καὶ οἱ πατέρες αὐτῶν, making the revision in the chronology more decisive. This is the chronology adopted in Galatians 3:17, and by Josephus, Ant., ii., 15, 2; but the latter writer in other passages, Ant., ii., 9, 1, and B.J., v., 9, 4, adopts the same reckoning as we find here in Acts. But see also Charles, Assumption of Moses, pp. 3, 4 (1897).

Acts 7:7. The oratio recta is introduced by the words εἶπεν ὁ Θεός … κρινῶ ἐγώ emphatic, cf. Romans 12:19. In this verse the quotation is a free rendering of Genesis 15:14, the words ὧδε μετὰ ἀποσκευῆς πολλῆς being omitted after and the latter part of the verse being apparently introduced from Exodus 3:12. And so at length, after so long a time, God appointed for Himself a “holy place,” cf. Acts 6:13 (Blass).—ᾧ ἐὰν δουλεύσωσι, cf. LXX, Genesis 15:14, and see critical note above, cf. also Burton, N. T. Moods and Tenses, p. 123.

Acts 7:8. διαθήκην, fœdus (Grimm, Blass), the same word is used in LXX, Genesis 17:10, and with two or three exceptions uniformly in LXX for “covenant,” so too in the Apocrypha with apparently two exceptions. The ordinary word for “covenant,” συνθήκη, is very rare in LXX (though used by the later translators, Aquila, Sym., Theod., for בְּרִית, but see also Ramsay, Expositor, ii., pp. 322, 323 (1898)). But the word διαθ. would be suitably employed to express a divine covenant, because it could not be said that in such a case the contractors are in any degree of equal standing (συνθήκη). In the N.T. the sense of “covenant” is correct (except in Galatians 3:15 and Hebrews 9:16). But in classical writers from the time of Plato διαθήκη generally has the meaning of a will, a testament, a disposition of property, and in the Latin renderings of the word in the N.T. we find uniformly testamentum in cases where the sense of “covenant” is beyond dispute (Luke 1:72, Acts 3:25 d. dispositionis; and here d. has dispositionem, also in Romans 11:27), cf., e.g., in this verse, Vulgate and Par. No doubt the early translators would render διαθήκη by its ordinary equivalent, although in the common language it is quite possible that testamentum had a wider meaning than the classical sense of will, see Westcott, Hebrews, additional note on Acts 9:16; Lightfoot on Galatians 3:15; A. B. Davidson, Hebrews, p. 161; and “Covenant” in Hastings’ B.D. and Grimm-Thayer, sub v.; Hatch, Essays in Biblical Greek, pp. 47, 48; and more recently Ramsay, Expositor, ii., pp. 300 and 321 ff. (1898).

Acts 7:9. ζηλώσαντες, cf. Genesis 37:11, and so in Genesis 26:14; Genesis 30:1, Isaiah 11:13, Sir 37:10; used also in a bad sense in Acts 17:5, 1 Corinthians 13:4, Jam 4:2, and so in classical writers. It may be used here absolutely, as in A.V. (see Grimm, Nösgen), or governing Ἰωσήφ, as in R.V.—ἀπέδ. εἰς, cf. for construction Genesis 45:4.