Chapter 7

1The high priest asked Stephen, “Are these accusations true?”

2Stephen replied, “My fellow Israelites and respected elders, listen to me. The glorious God appeared to our ancestor Abraham while he was still in Mesopotamia, before he lived in Harran.

3God told him, ‘Leave your country and your relatives, and go to the land that I will show you.’

4So Abraham left the land of the Chaldeans and settled in Harran. After his father died, God moved him from there to this land where you now live.

5God did not give Abraham any land here as an inheritance—not even enough to set one foot on. Yet God promised that Abraham and his descendants would possess it, even though Abraham had no child at the time.

6God also said that Abraham’s descendants would live as foreigners in another land, where they would be enslaved and mistreated for four hundred years.

7God said, ‘I will judge the nation that enslaves them. Afterward, they will leave that land and worship me in this place.’

8Then God made an enduring agreement with Abraham, marked by circumcision. Abraham became the father of Isaac and circumcised him on the eighth day after his birth. Isaac became the father of Jacob, and Jacob became the father of the twelve founding ancestors of Israel.

9“Those ancestors became jealous of Joseph and sold him into Egypt. But God was with him

10and rescued him from all his troubles. God gave Joseph wisdom and won him favor with Pharaoh, the king of Egypt. Pharaoh appointed him to govern Egypt and his entire royal household.

11Then a famine struck all Egypt and Canaan, causing terrible suffering. Our ancestors could not find enough food.

12When Jacob heard that grain was available in Egypt, he sent our ancestors there for the first time.

13On their second visit, Joseph revealed his identity to his brothers, and Pharaoh learned about Joseph’s family.

14Joseph then sent for his father Jacob and all his relatives, seventy-five people in all.

15So Jacob went down to Egypt. He died there, as did our other ancestors.

16Their bodies were taken to Shechem and placed in the tomb that Abraham had bought with silver from the sons of Hamor in Shechem.

17“As the time approached for God to fulfill the promise he had made to Abraham, our people grew and multiplied in Egypt.

18Eventually, another king came to power in Egypt who knew nothing about Joseph.

19This king acted deceitfully against our people and treated our ancestors cruelly. He forced them to abandon their babies so the children would not survive.

20Moses was born during that time, and he was beautiful in God’s sight. For three months he was cared for in his father’s home.

21When he was abandoned, Pharaoh’s daughter took him in and raised him as her own son.

22Moses was educated in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and he became powerful in both speech and action.

23“When Moses was forty years old, he decided to visit his own people, the Israelites.

24He saw an Egyptian mistreating one of them, so he defended the man and avenged him by killing the Egyptian.

25Moses thought his fellow Israelites would understand that God was using him to rescue them, but they did not understand.

26The next day, Moses came upon two Israelites fighting. He tried to reconcile them, saying, ‘Men, you are brothers. Why are you hurting each other?’

27But the man who was mistreating the other pushed Moses away and said, ‘Who appointed you to rule and judge us?

28Do you want to kill me as you killed the Egyptian yesterday?’

29When Moses heard this, he fled. He lived as a foreigner in the land of Midian, where he became the father of two sons.

30“Forty years later, an angel appeared to Moses in the wilderness near Mount Sinai, in the flame of a burning thornbush.

31Moses was amazed by what he saw. As he approached to look more closely, the Lord’s voice said,

32‘I am the God of your ancestors—the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.’ Moses began trembling and did not dare look any closer.

33The Lord told him, ‘Take the sandals off your feet, because the place where you are standing is sacred ground.

34I have certainly seen my people being mistreated in Egypt. I have heard their groaning, and I have come down to rescue them. Now come; I will send you to Egypt.’

35“This was the same Moses the Israelites had rejected when they said, ‘Who appointed you to rule and judge us?’ Yet God sent this very man to be both their ruler and rescuer, with the help of the angel who appeared to him in the bush.

36Moses led them out, performing wonders and miraculous signs in Egypt, at the Red Sea, and in the wilderness for forty years.

37This is the Moses who told the Israelites, ‘God will raise up a prophet like me for you from among your own people.’

38Moses was with the gathered people in the wilderness. He stood between our ancestors and the angel who spoke to him on Mount Sinai, and he received living words to give to us.

39But our ancestors refused to obey him. They rejected him, and in their hearts they turned back toward Egypt.

40They told Aaron, ‘Make gods for us who will lead us. As for this Moses who brought us out of Egypt, we do not know what has happened to him.’

41During those days, they made a calf-shaped idol and offered a sacrifice to it. They celebrated what their own hands had made.

42So God turned away from them and allowed them to worship the stars and other heavenly bodies. As it is written in the book of the prophets: ‘People of Israel, was it really to me that you brought slaughtered animals and sacrifices during those forty years in the wilderness?

43No, you carried the sacred tent of the god Moloch and the star of your god Raiphan—images you had made to worship. Therefore, I will send you into exile beyond Babylon.’

44“Our ancestors had the sacred tent containing the evidence of God’s covenant while they were in the wilderness. God instructed Moses to make it according to the pattern he had seen.

45Later, our ancestors received that tent and brought it with Joshua when they took possession of the lands of peoples whom God drove out before them. It remained there until the time of David.

46David found favor with God and asked permission to provide a dwelling place for the God of Jacob.

47But Solomon was the one who built a house for God.

48Yet the Most High does not live in structures made by human hands. As the prophet says,

49‘Heaven is my throne, and the earth is the footstool beneath my feet. What kind of house could you build for me, says the Lord? Where could I rest?

50Did my own hand not make all these things?’

51“You are stubborn! Your hearts and ears remain ‘uncircumcised’—closed to God. You always resist God’s Holy Spirit, just as your ancestors did.

52Was there ever a prophet your ancestors did not persecute? They killed those who announced beforehand that the one who is right in God’s sight would come. Now you have betrayed and murdered him.

53You received God’s law as commands delivered by angels, but you did not obey it.”

54When the leaders heard this, they became furious and ground their teeth at Stephen.

55But Stephen, filled with God’s Holy Spirit, looked steadily into heaven. He saw God’s radiant glory and Jesus standing at God’s right side.

56Stephen said, “Look! I see heaven opened and the Son of Man—the human figure appointed by God—standing at God’s right side.”

57The leaders shouted loudly, covered their ears, and rushed at Stephen together.

58They dragged him outside the city and began throwing stones at him. The witnesses against him placed their outer garments at the feet of a young man named Saul.

59As they continued throwing stones, Stephen called out, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.”

60Then he fell to his knees and shouted, “Lord, do not charge them with this sin!” After saying this, he died.