arch...@jab.org
The Acts of the Emissaries, Chapter 7
{7:1} The high priest said, "Are these things so?"
{7:2} He said, "Brothers and fathers, listen. The God of glory
appeared to our father Abraham, when he was in Mesopotamia, before he
lived in Haran, {7:3} and said to him, 'Get out of your land, and from
your relatives, and come into a land which I will show you.'[1] {7:4}
Then he came out of the land of the Kasdim, and lived in Haran. From
there, when his father was dead, God moved him into this land, where
you are now living. {7:5} He gave him no inheritance in it, no, not so
much as to set his foot on. He promised that he would give it to him
for a possession, and to his seed after him, when he still had no
child. {7:6} God spoke in this way: that his seed would live as aliens
in a strange land, and that they would be enslaved and mistreated for
four hundred years. {7:7} 'I will judge the nation to which they will
be in bondage,' said God, 'and after that will they come out, and
serve me in this place.'[2] {7:8} He gave him the covenant of
circumcision. So Abraham became the father of Isaac, and circumcised
him the eighth day. Isaac became the father of Jacob, and Jacob became
the father of the twelve patriarchs.
{7:9} "The patriarchs, moved with jealousy against Joseph, sold him
into Egypt. God was with him, {7:10} and delivered him out of all his
afflictions, and gave him favor and wisdom before Pharaoh, king of
Egypt. He made him governor over Egypt and all his house. {7:11} Now a
famine came over all the land of Egypt and Canaan, and great
affliction. Our fathers found no food. {7:12} But when Jacob heard
that there was grain in Egypt, he sent out our fathers the first time.
{7:13} On the second time Joseph was made known to his brothers, and
Joseph's race was revealed to Pharaoh. {7:14} Joseph sent, and
summoned Jacob, his father, and all his relatives, seventy-five souls.
{7:15} Jacob went down into Egypt, and he died, himself and our
fathers, {7:16} and they were brought back to Shechem, and laid in the
tomb that Abraham bought for a price in silver from the children of
Hamor of Shechem.
{7:17} "But as the time of the promise came close which God had
sworn to Abraham, the people grew and multiplied in Egypt, {7:18}
until there arose a different king, who didn't know Joseph. {7:19} The
same took advantage of our race, and mistreated our fathers, and
forced them to throw out their babies, so that they wouldn't stay
alive. {7:20} At that time Moses was born, and was exceedingly
handsome. He was nourished three months in his father's house. {7:21}
When he was thrown out, Pharaoh's daughter took him up, and reared him
as her own son. {7:22} Moses was instructed in all the wisdom of the
Egyptians. He was mighty in his words and works. {7:23} But when he
was forty years old, it came into his heart to visit his
[3>]brothers[<3], the children of Israel. {7:24} Seeing one of them
suffer wrong, he defended him, and avenged him who was oppressed,
striking the Egyptian. {7:25} He supposed that his brothers understood
that God, by his hand, was giving them deliverance; but they didn't
understand.
{7:26} "The day following, he appeared to them as they fought, and
urged them to be at peace again, saying, 'Sirs, you are brothers. Why
do you wrong one another?' {7:27} But he who did his neighbor wrong
pushed him away, saying, 'Who made you a ruler and a judge over us?
{7:28} Do you want to kill me, as you killed the Egyptian
yesterday?'[4] {7:29} Moses fled at this saying, and became a stranger
in the land of Midian, where he became the father of two sons.
{7:30} "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. {7:31} When Moses saw it, he wondered at the sight. As he
came close to see, a voice of the Lord came to him, {7:32} 'I am the
God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God
of Jacob.'[5] Moses trembled, and dared not look. {7:33} The Lord said
to him, 'Take your sandals off of your feet, for the place where you
stand is holy ground. {7:34} I have surely seen the affliction of my
people that is in Egypt, and have heard their groaning. I have come
down to deliver them. Now come, I will send you into Egypt.'[6]
{7:35} "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. {7:36} This man led
them out, having worked wonders and signs in Egypt, in the [7>]Red
Sea[<7], and in the wilderness for forty years. {7:37} 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.[8]'[9]
{7:38} 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 oracles to give to us, {7:39} to whom our fathers
wouldn't be obedient, but rejected him, and turned back in their
hearts to Egypt, {7:40} 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.'[10] {7:41} They made a calf in
those days, and brought a sacrifice to the idol, and rejoiced in the
works of their hands. {7:42} But God turned, and gave them up to serve
the [11>]army of the sky,[<11] 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?
{7:43} You took up the tabernacle of Moloch,
the star of your god Rephan,
the figures which you made to worship.
I will carry you away[12] beyond Babylon.'
{7:44} "Our fathers had the tabernacle of the testimony in the
wilderness, even as he who spoke to Moses commanded him to make it
according to the pattern that he had seen; {7:45} which also our
fathers, in their turn, brought in with Joshua when they entered into
the possession of the nations, whom God drove out before the face of
our fathers, to the days of David, {7:46} who found favor in the sight
of God, and asked to find a habitation for the God of Jacob. {7:47}
But Solomon built him a house. {7:48} However, the Most High doesn't
dwell in temples made with hands, as the prophet says,
{7:49} 'heaven is my throne,
and the earth a footstool for my feet.
What kind of house will you build me?' says the Lord;
'or what is the place of my rest?
{7:50} Didn't my hand make all these things?'[13]
{7:51} "You stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, you
always resist the Holy Spirit! As your fathers did, so you do. {7:52}
Which of the prophets didn't your fathers persecute? They killed those
who foretold the coming of the Righteous One, of whom you have now
become betrayers and murderers. {7:53} You received the Torah as it
was ordained by angels, and didn't keep it!"
{7:54} Now when they heard these things, they were cut to the heart,
and they gnashed at him with their teeth. {7:55} But he, being full of
the Holy Spirit, looked up steadfastly into heaven, and saw the glory
of God, and Yeshua standing on the right hand of God, {7:56} and said,
"Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing at the
right hand of God!"
{7:57} But they cried out with a loud voice, and stopped their ears,
and rushed at him with one accord. {7:58} They threw him out of the
city, and stoned him. The witnesses placed their garments at the feet
of a young man named Saul. {7:59} They stoned Stephen as he called
out, saying, "Lord Yeshua, receive my spirit!" {7:60} He kneeled down,
and cried with a loud voice, "Lord, don't hold this sin against them!"
When he had said this, he fell asleep.
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Footnotes:
[1] {7:3} Genesis 12:1
[2] {7:7} Genesis 15:13-14
[3] {7:23} The word for "brothers" here and where the context allows
may be also correctly translated "brothers and sisters" or "siblings."
[4] {7:28} Exodus 2:14
[5] {7:32} Exodus 3:6
[6] {7:34} Exodus 3:5,7-8,10
[7] {7:36} also called the Sea of Suf
[8] {7:37} TR adds "You shall listen to him."
[9] {7:37} Deuteronomy 18:15
[10] {7:40} Exodus 32:1
[11] {7:42} This idiom could also be translated "host of heaven," or
"angelic beings," or "heavenly bodies."
[12] {7:43} Amos 5:25-27
[13] {7:50} Isaiah 66:1-2
________________________________________________________________________
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