Holy ground in Midian, and a calf in the wilderness
30 “When forty years were fulfilled, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in the wilderness of Mount Sinai, in a flame of fire in a bush. 31 When Moses saw it, he wondered at the sight. As he came close to see, the voice of the Lord came to him, 32 ‘I am the God of your fathers: the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.’ Moses trembled and dared not look. 33 The Lord said to him, ‘Take off your sandals, for the place where you stand is holy ground. 34 I have surely seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt, and have heard their groaning. I have come down to deliver them. Now come, I will send you into Egypt.’ 35 “This Moses whom they refused, saying, ‘Who made you a ruler and a judge?’—God has sent him as both a ruler and a deliverer by the hand of the angel who appeared to him in the bush. 36 This man led them out, having worked wonders and signs in Egypt, in the Red Sea, and in the wilderness for forty years. 37 This is that Moses who said to the children of Israel, ‘The Lord our God will raise up a prophet for you from among your brothers, like me.’ 38 This is he who was in the assembly in the wilderness with the angel that spoke to him on Mount Sinai, and with our fathers, who received living revelations to give to us, 39 to whom our fathers wouldn’t be obedient, but rejected him and turned back in their hearts to Egypt, 40 saying to Aaron, ‘Make us gods that will go before us, for as for this Moses who led us out of the land of Egypt, we don’t know what has become of him.’ 41 They made a calf in those days, and brought a sacrifice to the idol, and rejoiced in the works of their hands. 42 But God turned away and gave them up to serve the army of the sky, as it is written in the book of the prophets, ‘Did you offer to me slain animals and sacrifices forty years in the wilderness, O house of Israel? 43 You took up the tabernacle of Moloch, the star of your god Rephan, the figures which you made to worship, so I will carry you away beyond Babylon.’
God appears in a desert bush and calls the ground holy — and the generation that received the law at Sinai was worshiping a calf while it was being given.
Forty years later, an angel appears in a flame of fire in a bush in the wilderness of Mount Sinai, and the voice identifies itself as the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Then the sentence Stephen has been walking toward since his first verse: Take off your sandals, for the place where you stand is holy ground.
A patch of scrub in Midian, hundreds of miles from Canaan and centuries from any sanctuary, is declared holy — and it is holy for one reason only, which is that God is there. Holiness in this speech is never a property of a location. It arrives with a presence and it can arrive anywhere.
The commission follows in God's own words, and it is worth noticing how active they are: I have seen, I have heard, I have come down to deliver, now I will send you. God has already decided and already descended before Moses is given anything to do.
Then Stephen springs the trap he set in the previous paragraph, and he quotes the insult back word for word. This Moses whom they refused, saying, Who made you a ruler and a judge? — God has sent him as both a ruler and a deliverer. The people's question is answered by God's appointment, and the two offices they denied him are precisely the two he is given. Rejection by Israel and commission by God are not alternatives in this history. They happen to the same man, in that order.
The next three sentences pile up honors, each beginning with a demonstrative that keeps pointing at him. This man led them out with wonders and signs. This is that Moses who promised a prophet like himself. This is he who was in the assembly in the wilderness with the angel, and who received living revelations to give to Israel. Nobody could hear this and think the speaker despises Moses, which was half the charge against him.
And then the reversal, in a single relative clause: to whom our fathers wouldn't be obedient, but rejected him and turned back in their hearts to Egypt. The same fathers. The same Moses they had just refused as a ruler, now refused after he had proved to be one.
The evidence is the calf. While the pattern was being shown on the mountain, a sacrifice was being offered to a piece of metal at its foot, and the people rejoiced in the works of their hands. That phrase is the speech's sharpest edge, because a work of human hands is exactly what Stephen is about to say a temple is.
The consequence is stated in prophetic words and it is terrifying in its restraint: God turned away and gave them up to serve the army of the sky. The punishment for insisting on an idol was to be left with idols. And the quoted oracle runs on to a carried-away tabernacle of a foreign god and an exile — so that the first mention of a tabernacle in this speech is not the one God commanded but the counterfeit the people carried alongside it for forty years.
settled What this mark means