Stephen's witness: Israel's story retold and the first martyr

Acts is the second volume of the work of Luke, the companion of Paul according to church tradition (Colossians 4:14; 2 Timothy 4:11). Both Luke and Acts are addressed to Theophilus (Luke 1:3; Acts 1:1). The date is debated. Some place Acts in the early 60s, because it ends with Paul under house arrest in Rome and does not report his trial. Many critical scholars prefer the 80s or later. The events of chapter 7 belong to the early 30s AD, a few years after the crucifixion, though the exact year is uncertain.

The background is in chapter 6. The Jerusalem church had grown to include Greek-speaking Jewish believers, the Hellenists, alongside Hebrew-speaking believers. Seven men were chosen to oversee the daily distribution of food to widows, and all have Greek names. Stephen is the first named (6:5). He is described as full of faith and the Holy Spirit, and he performs wonders and argues in synagogues, including one of Hellenistic Jews. Opponents cannot answer his arguments, so they bring false witnesses before the Sanhedrin, the Jewish ruling council. The charge is that he speaks against the holy place, meaning the temple, and against the law, and that he says Jesus of Nazareth will destroy the temple and change the customs of Moses (6:13-14).

The high priest asks whether the charges are true (7:1). Stephen does not give a short answer. He gives the longest speech in Acts, and it ends with his death. The scene is the first recorded martyrdom of a follower of Jesus.

Acts 7 is a speech inside a narrative, given as a defence before a court. It looks like a history lesson and is actually an argument. Stephen has been accused of attacking the temple and the law, and his reply selects episodes from Genesis, Exodus and the later history to show two things: that God has always worked outside the land and the temple, and that Israel has regularly refused the people God sent. Reading it well means asking of each section why it was chosen.

The speech follows the order of the Old Testament narrative. It is an example of Jewish retelling of Israel's story, like the historical psalms (Psalm 78; 105; 106) and Nehemiah 9. These retellings were used to teach and to call for repentance. Stephen's retelling ends not in a lesson about the past but in a charge against the present listeners.

Students will notice places where Stephen's account differs from the Old Testament text as we have it. Abraham's call is placed in Mesopotamia before Haran (7:2; compare Genesis 11:31 and 12:1; Genesis 15:7 mentions Ur). Seventy-five people go down to Egypt (7:14), which follows the Greek Old Testament of Genesis 46:27 and Exodus 1:5, while the Hebrew text has seventy. The burial of the patriarchs at Shechem (7:16) seems to combine Genesis 23, Genesis 33:19 and Joshua 24:32. The quotation of Amos 5:25-27 has Babylon where the Hebrew has Damascus (7:43). Scholars explain these in several ways: use of the Greek text, summary and compression, and Jewish traditions known in the first century. None of them changes the point of the argument, and a reader should treat them as questions to study and not as reasons to doubt the passage.

Verses 1–8

Stephen begins with the God of glory, who appeared to Abraham in Mesopotamia before he lived in Haran. The first point is that God revealed himself to the father of the nation in a foreign land, long before there was a temple or a land of Israel. God told Abraham to leave and promised him a land he did not possess. Stephen notes that God gave him no inheritance in it, not even a foot's length, but promised it to his descendants and said they would be enslaved and mistreated in a foreign country for four hundred years (Genesis 15:13). God also gave the covenant of circumcision, and Isaac, Jacob and the twelve patriarchs followed.

Verses 9–16

The patriarchs, jealous of Joseph, sold him into Egypt, but God was with him. He rescued Joseph from his troubles and gave him favour before Pharaoh, who made him ruler over Egypt and his house. When famine came, Joseph's brothers went to Egypt, and on their second visit Joseph made himself known to them. Jacob and the family came down, and they died in Egypt, and their bodies were carried back to Shechem. The pattern is already visible: the brothers reject the one God had chosen, and he is later shown to be their saviour. Stephen's audience would hear in it what is later said of Jesus.

Verses 17–43

The longest section is on Moses. As the time of the promise drew near, the people multiplied in Egypt until a new king arose who oppressed them. Moses was born, hidden by his parents and raised in Pharaoh's household, educated in Egyptian learning and powerful in words and deeds. At forty he visited his people and struck down an Egyptian, supposing that they would understand that God was giving them deliverance through him, but they did not. When he tried to reconcile two Israelites, one pushed him away and asked who made him ruler and judge. Moses fled to Midian. Forty years later, at Sinai, an angel appeared to him in the flame of a bush. God told him that the ground where he stood was holy. Again Stephen makes the point that God was present in Midian, a foreign land, and made it holy ground.

Then comes the key statement: the same Moses whom they had rejected is the one God sent as ruler and redeemer. He led them out with wonders and signs. Stephen recalls Moses' promise that God would raise up 'a prophet like me' from among their brothers (7:37, from Deuteronomy 18:15). But the fathers refused to obey him. In their hearts they turned back to Egypt. They told Aaron to make gods, made a calf, and rejoiced in the work of their hands. God turned away and handed them over to worship the host of heaven, as Amos 5:25-27 says.

Verses 44–50

The tent of testimony was with the fathers in the wilderness, made as God had shown Moses. It was brought into the land under Joshua and remained until David, who asked to find a dwelling for the God of Jacob. Solomon built the house. Stephen then says that the Most High does not live in houses made by hands, and quotes Isaiah 66:1-2: heaven is God's throne and earth his footstool, and no house could contain him. The movement is not an attack on the temple as such, since God had commanded it, but a challenge to the idea that God can be held within it (compare 1 Kings 8:27).

Verses 51–53

Stephen turns to his hearers. They are stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, and they always resist the Holy Spirit as their fathers did. These are the words of the Old Testament against rebellious Israel (Exodus 33:5; Leviticus 26:41; Jeremiah 6:10; 9:26). Which of the prophets did their fathers not persecute? They killed those who announced beforehand the coming of the Righteous One, and now they have betrayed and murdered him. They received the law through angels and did not keep it.

Verses 54–60

The council is furious. Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit, looks up to heaven and sees the glory of God and Jesus standing at God's right hand. He says he sees the Son of Man standing there. This is the only use of the title 'Son of Man' in Acts. The crowd covers their ears, rushes at him, drags him out of the city and stones him. The witnesses lay their coats at the feet of a young man named Saul. As he is stoned, Stephen calls on the Lord Jesus to receive his spirit. He falls to his knees and cries out that the Lord not hold this sin against them. And with that he falls asleep.

The speech contains two theological arguments that run through the whole Bible. The first is that God's presence is not tied to a place. He appeared to Abraham in Mesopotamia, was with Joseph in Egypt, and met Moses in Midian. The tabernacle and the temple were gifts, but they were never meant to confine him. Solomon said this at the dedication of the temple itself (1 Kings 8:27), and Isaiah 66:1-2 repeats it. The New Testament carries the theme further. Jesus speaks of his own body as the temple (John 2:19-21), and the church is called a temple of the Spirit (1 Corinthians 3:16; Ephesians 2:19-22).

The second is that the history of Israel is a history of grace met with refusal. God sends deliverers, and the people reject them: Joseph by his brothers, Moses by his countrymen, and the prophets by the fathers. This does not mean that Stephen despises Israel or the law. He calls the law living oracles (7:38) and speaks of the fathers as our fathers. His complaint is that the people have not kept what they received, and that the rejection of Jesus fits a long pattern. The same pattern appears in Jesus' own words (Luke 11:47-51) and in Romans 9-11, where Paul holds that God has not abandoned his people.

The speech also leads to the church's mission. After Stephen's death a persecution scatters the believers throughout Judea and Samaria (8:1), and so the gospel moves out as Acts 1:8 had said. The speech, with its stress on God's activity outside the land, helps to prepare for that move.

Stephen makes a fulfilment claim when he cites Moses' promise of 'a prophet like me' (7:37). Peter applies the same promise to Jesus in Acts 3:22-23, and the New Testament presents Jesus as the prophet Moses spoke of. The point of putting the promise in the middle of a speech about rejection is that Israel's refusal of Moses foreshadows the refusal of the prophet he promised.

Joseph and Moses work as types. Each is rejected by his own brothers and then shown to be the one God sent as ruler and rescuer (7:9-13, 35). Stephen says that the council has repeated this pattern with 'the Righteous One' (7:52). Stephen himself calls the rejected Moses ruler and redeemer (7:35). The text does not call Joseph or Moses a type of Christ in so many words, but the pattern is the one Stephen applies to Jesus, so the typology rests on his argument. The same pattern appears in Peter's earlier sermon, where the people denied the Holy and Righteous One (3:14).

Stephen's death also echoes his Lord's. He entrusts his spirit to Jesus as Jesus entrusted his to the Father (Luke 23:46), and he prays for his killers as Jesus did (Luke 23:34, in the manuscripts that include it). The vision of the Son of Man at the right hand of God joins Daniel 7:13 and Psalm 110:1. Jesus is described as standing, not seated, and readers have understood this as a sign of welcome to the first martyr, of his role as advocate or witness, or of readiness to judge. The text does not say which.