The false witnesses had accused Stephen of blaspheming God (6:11). He proceeded to show the Sanhedrin that his view of God was absolutely orthodox. However in relating Israel's history during the patriarchal period, he mentioned things about God and the patriarchs that his hearers needed to reconsider.
Stephen began his defense by going back to Abraham, the father of the Jewish nation, and to the Abrahamic Covenant, God's foundational promises to the Jews.
7:2-3 Stephen called for the Sanhedrin's attention addressing his hearers respectfully as "brethren and fathers"(cf. 22:1). These men were his brethren, in that they were fellow Jews, and fathers, in that they were older leaders of the nation.
He took the title "God of glory"from Psalm 29:2 where it occurs in a context of God revealing His glory by speaking powerfully and majestically. God had revealed His glory by speaking this way to their father (ancestor) Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia. Genesis 12:1-3 records God's instruction for Abraham to leave his homeland to go to a foreign country that God would show him. Stephen was quoting from the Septuagint translation of Genesis 12:1.313
God directed Abraham to a promised land. The Promised Land had become a Holy Land to the Jews, and in Stephen's day the Jews venerated it too greatly. We see this in the fact that they looked down on Hellenistic Jews, such as Stephen, who had not lived there all their lives. What was a good gift from God, the land, had become a source of inordinate pride that made the Jews conclude that orthodoxy was bound up with being in the land.
7:4 Obeying God's call Abraham left Mesopotamia, specifically Ur of the Chaldeans (cf. Gen. 15:7; Josh. 24:3; Neh. 9:7), and settled temporarily in Haran, near the top of the Fertile Crescent. After Abraham's father Terah died, God directed Abraham south into Canaan, the land the Jews occupied in Stephen's day (Gen. 12:5).
"A comparison of the data in Genesis (11:26, 32; 12:4) seems to indicate that Terah lived another 60 years after Abraham left [Haran]. . . . The best solution seems to be that Abraham was not the oldest son of Terah, but was named first because he was the most prominent (11:26)."314
The father of Judaism was willing to depart from where he was to follow God into unknown territory on the word of God alone. The Jews in Stephen's day were not willing to depart from where they were in their thinking even though God's word was leading them to do so, as Stephen would point out. Stephen wanted them to follow Abraham's good example of faith and courage.
7:5 Stephen also contrasted Abraham's lack of inheritance in the land with God's promise to give the land to Abraham's descendants as an inheritance (Gen. 12:7; cf. Heb. 11:8). God promised this when the patriarch had no children. Thus the emphasis is on God's promise of future possession of the land through descendants to come. Of course, Abraham did possess the cave of Machpelah in Canaan (Gen. 23:3-20), but perhaps Stephen meant that God gave no continuing or full possession to Abraham.
The Jews of Stephen's day needed to realize that God had not exhausted His promises to Abraham in giving them what they presently had and valued so highly. There was greater inheritance to come, but it would come to future generations of their descendants, not to them. Specifically it would come to those who continued to follow Abraham's good example of faith by believing in Jesus. God sought to teach these Jews that there were spiritual descendants of Abraham who were not his physical descendants (Gal. 3:6-9, 29).
7:6 God also told Abraham that his offspring would be slaves and suffer mistreatment outside their land for 400 years (Gen. 15:13).315
The Israelites were currently under Roman oppression but were about to lose their freedom and experience antagonism outside the land for many years. Jesus had predicted this (Matt. 23:1-25:46).
7:7 God promised to punish the nations that oppressed Israel (Gen. 12:3) and to bring her back into the land eventually (Gen. 15:13). God had told Moses that he would bring the Israelites out of Egypt and that they would worship Him at Mt. Sinai (Exod. 3:12). Stephen's point was that God had promised to punish those who oppressed His people. The Jews had been oppressing the Christians by prohibiting their preaching and even flogging them (4:18; 5:40). Gamaliel had warned that if the Christians were correct the Jewish leaders would be fighting against God by opposing them (5:39). God's promise to judge His people's oppressors went back into the Abrahamic Covenant, which the Jews treasured and Stephen reminded them of here.
7:8 Stephen probably referred to God giving Abraham the covenant of circumcision (Gen. 17) because this was the sign that God would deliver what He had promised. It was the seal of the Abrahamic Covenant. God's promise was firm. Moreover God enabled Abraham to father Isaac, whom Abraham obediently circumcised, and later Isaac gave birth to Jacob who fathered the 12 patriarchs. Thus this chapter in Israel's history ends with emphasis on God's faithfulness to His promises to Abraham. The Sanhedrin needed to reevaluate these promises in the light of how God was working in their day.
Stephen affirmed belief that the God of glory had given the Abrahamic Covenant, which contained promises of land (vv. 2-4), seed (v. 5), and blessing (vv. 6-7). He had sealed this covenant with a sign, namely circumcision (v. 8). Circumcision was one of the Jewish customs that would pass away in view of the new revelation that had come through Jesus Christ (cf. 6:14).
Throughout his speech Stephen made many statements that had revolutionary implications for traditional Jewish thinking of his day. He did not expound these implications, but they are clear in view of what the disciples of Jesus were preaching. As such his speech is a masterpiece of understatement, or rather non-statement. That the Sanhedrin saw these implications and rejected them becomes clear at the end of the speech when they reacted as negatively as possible.
Stephen next proceeded to show what God had done with Joseph and his family. He selected this segment of the patriarchal narrative primarily for two reasons. First, it shows how God miraculously preserved His people in faithfulness to His promises. Second, it shows the remarkable similarity between the career of Joseph, a savior God raised up, and that of Jesus. Jesus repeated many of Joseph's experiences illustrating God's choice of Him. Also the Israelites in the present were similar to Joseph's brothers in the past. Stephen's emphasis continued to be on God's faithfulness to His promises even though Joseph's brothers were wicked and the chosen family was out of the Promised Land. Stephen mentioned Jesus explicitly only once in his entire speech, in his very last sentence (v. 52). Nevertheless he referred to Him indirectly many times by drawing parallels between the experiences of Joseph and Moses and those of Jesus.
7:9-10 The patriarchs, Joseph's brothers, became jealous of him (Gen. 37:11) and sold him as a slave into Egypt (Gen. 37:28). Nevertheless God was with him (Gen. 39:2, 21) and rescued him from prison, gave him favor and wisdom before Pharaoh, and made him ruler over Egypt (Gen. 41:41) and his father's family. God was with Joseph because he was one of God's chosen people and because he followed God faithfully. This is what the Christians were claiming to be and do.
"The treatment of Joseph by his Hebrew brothers should have been a pointed reminder of the way Jesus had been dealt with by the Jewish nation."316
Like Joseph, Jesus' brethren rejected and literally sold Him for the price of a slave. Nevertheless God was with Joseph and Jesus (v. 9). God exalted Joseph under Pharaoh and placed Him in authority over his domain. God had done the same with Jesus.
7:11-12 The Jews' forefathers suffered from a famine in the Promised Land and sent to Egypt for food (Gen. 41:54-55; 42:2, 5). When hard times came upon God's people, He sustained them and brought them into blessing and under the rule of Joseph. So will it be in the future with Jesus. The Jews would suffer hardship (in the destruction of Jerusalem and in the Tribulation) and then God will bring them into blessing under Jesus' rule (in the Millennium).
7:13-14 On their second visit, Joseph revealed himself to his brothers, who could not believe he was their ruler, and he revealed his family's identity to Pharaoh (Gen. 45:1-4). In the future Israel will finally recognize Jesus as her Messiah (Zech. 12:10-14). Joseph then invited Jacob and his family, who numbered 75, to move to Egypt (Gen. 45:9-10). I take it that this was the number of people invited to Egypt. Some interpreters believe 75 people entered Egypt.
"Stephen apparently cited the LXX figure which really was not an error, but computed the total differently by including five people which the Masoretic text did not."317
"One of the most widely accepted solutions is to recognize that the Hebrew text includes Jacob, Joseph, and Joseph's two sons, Ephraim and Manasseh (a total of 70), but that the Septuagint omits Jacob and Joseph but includes Joseph's seven grandchildren (mentioned in 1 Chron. 7:14-15, 20-25). This is supported by the Hebrew in Genesis 46:8-26 which enumerates 66 names, omitting Jacob, Joseph, and Joseph's two sons."318
7:15 The number of people who made the trip and entered Egypt was probably 70 (Gen. 46:26-27; Exod. 1:5; Deut. 10:22). Jacob died safe and blessed under Joseph's rule. So will Israel end its days under Jesus' rule in the Millennium. Jacob died in Egypt as did his sons and their immediate descendants. Thus verses 11-15 record a threat to the chosen people and God's preservation of them, a second testimony to God's faithfulness in this pericope (cf. vv. 9-10).
7:16 From Egypt the chosen people eventually returned to the Promised Land. God had been with them out of the land, and He now returned them to the land. Believers in Jesus will end up in the final resting place of Jesus, heaven.
Shechem was of special interest to Stephen. The Israelites buried Joseph's bones there after their initial conquest of the land (Josh. 24:32). Stephen's allusion to this event was his way of concluding this period of Israel's history. Really Jacob, not Abraham, had purchased the tomb from Hamor in Shechem (Gen. 33:19; cf. 23:16; 50:13). This is probably a case of attributing to an ancestor what one of his descendants did (cf. Heb. 7:9-10). In the ancient oriental view of things, people regarded an ancestor as in one sense participating in the actions of his descendants (Gen. 9:25; 25:23; cf. Mal. 1:2-3; Rom. 9:11-13). Abraham had purchased Joseph's burial site in the sense that his grandson Jacob had purchased it (cf. Heb. 7:9-10). Stephen probably intended that his reference to Abraham rather than to Jacob would remind his hearers of God's faithfulness in fulfilling the promises God gave to Abraham. He did this in one sense when Israel possessed Canaan under Joshua's leadership. Israel will experience the ultimate fulfillment of God's land promises to Abraham when she enters rest under Jesus' messianic rule in the Millennium.
Two other explanations of this apparent error are these. Stephen telescoped two events into one: Abraham's purchase from Ephron in Hebron (Gen. 23:1-20), and Jacob's purchase from Hamor in Shechem.319Abraham really did purchase the plot in Shechem, though Moses did not record that (cf. Gen. 12:6-7), and Jacob repurchased it later.320
In Stephen's day Shechem was in Samaritan territory. He reminded the Sanhedrin that their ancestral deliverer was buried in the land that orthodox Jews despised and avoided. This was another instance of helping them see that they should not think that the only place God worked was in the Promised Land. Stephen had already referred to Mesopotamia as where God had revealed Himself to Abraham (v. 2).
