Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadPaul Kretzmann Commentary - Acts 7:35 - 7:36
(Show All Books | Show All Chapters)
This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
Moses the deliverer:
v. 35. This Moses whom they refused, saying, Who made thee a ruler and a judge? the same did God send to be a ruler and a deliverer by the hand of the angel which appeared to him in the bush.
v. 36. He brought them out after that he had showed wonders and signs in the land of Egypt and in the Red Sea and in the wilderness forty years.
For the sake of characterizing the Jews and emphasizing his point that they had always been a disobedient and obstinate people, Stephen here represents the whole nation as being involved in the first rejection of Moses. They had denied, had refused to acknowledge him as much as a ruler and a judge; but God, in taking the matter in hand, had made him not only the leader, or ruler, but in addition had given him more than the functions of a mere judge: He had sent him as their deliverer, with the helping and protecting hand of that Angel to assist him that had appeared to him in the bush. And Moses had performed his work as deliverer well. He had led the Israelites forth out of Egypt, after having performed wonders and signs in Egypt, as a judgment upon Pharaoh, just as he continued performing them at the Red Sea and during the entire journey through the wilderness which lasted forty years. The very person whom the Israelites had rejected and practically delivered up into the hands of Pharaoh to be slain was the one person by whom they were redeemed from their Egyptian bondage. The application to the parallel case of Jesus, which Stephen probably had in mind, may readily be made.