Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Acts · About this commentary
Moses refused: who made you a ruler over us?
Acts 7:17-29
17 “But as the time of the promise came close which God had sworn to Abraham, the people grew and multiplied in Egypt, · WEB
The lawgiver himself was rejected by the people he came to rescue, and the sentence they used against him is the hinge of the entire speech.
The section opens with a clock. As the time of the promise came close which God had sworn to Abraham, the people grew and multiplied in Egypt. God's schedule is running even while nothing visible is happening, and the first sign that deliverance is near is a hostile king. Growth attracts opposition; the promise approaching is what provokes the crisis.
Moses is introduced in three quick stages that together make him the most privileged Israelite alive. Born under a death sentence on infants, hidden three months, rescued by the daughter of the man who issued the decree, and raised as her son. He was instructed in all the wisdom of the Egyptians and mighty in his words and works — a man with the best education in the world and a position at its center.
At forty it came into his heart to visit his brothers. The initiative is his own, and the impulse is right; he identifies with the slaves rather than the palace. What follows is one man's private act of justice: seeing an Israelite wronged, he defends him and kills the Egyptian.
Stephen then supplies a motive the older account leaves unstated, and it is the interpretive key he has been building toward. He supposed that his brothers understood that God, by his hand, was giving them deliverance; but they didn't understand. Moses knew what he was for. The people did not, and the failure was theirs.
The next day proves it. He intervenes between two Israelites fighting and appeals to the one fact that should end the quarrel — Sirs, you are brothers — and is pushed away with a question: Who made you a ruler and a judge over us? That sentence is the most important quotation in the speech. Stephen will repeat it verbatim in a few verses in order to answer it, and the answer will be that God did.
The rebuff is followed by exposure — Do you want to kill me as you killed the Egyptian yesterday? — and Moses flees to Midian and becomes a father of two sons in a foreign country. The deliverer is now outside the land, among strangers, with forty years to wait.
The pattern from Joseph has repeated exactly, and Stephen has now established it twice from the fathers' own history. God raises up a rescuer; the people refuse him and ask by what right he acts; the rescuer is removed to a foreign place; God is with him there. The court hearing this has already asked the apostles, in this room, by what power, or in what name, have you done this? Acts 4:7. Stephen has not yet mentioned Jesus and will not for another forty verses. He does not need to. He is teaching them to recognize a shape, and when he finally names them as the ones who resist, the accusation will land on a foundation they helped him lay.
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