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NASB (UPDATED) TEXT: Act_7:35-43
35This Moses whom they disowned, saying, "Who made you a ruler and a judge?" Is the one whom God sent to be both a ruler and a deliverer with the help of the angel who appeared to him in the thorn bush. 36This man led them out, performing wonders and signs in the land of Egypt and in the Red Sea and in the wilderness for forty years. 37This is the Moses who said to the sons of Israel, "God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your brethren." 38This is the one who was in the congregation in the wilderness together with the angel who was speaking to him on Mount Sinai, and who was with our fathers; and he received living oracles to pass on to you. 39Our fathers were unwilling to be obedient to him, but repudiated him and in their hearts turned back to Egypt, 40saying to Aaron, "Make for us gods who will go before us; for this Moses who led us out of the land of Egypt—we do not know what happened to him." 41At that time they made a calf and brought a sacrifice to the idol, and were rejoicing in the works of their hands. 42But God turned away and delivered them up to serve the host of heaven; as it is written in the book of the prophets, "It was not to Me that you offered victims and sacrifices forty years in the wilderness, was it, O house of Israel? 43You also took along the tabernacle of Moloch and the star of the god Rompha, the images which you made to worship. I also will remove you beyond Babylon."
Act_7:35 "This Moses whom they disowned" God's people regularly reject God's spokesperson (cf. Act_7:51-52). This may even be the purpose of Act_7:27!
▣ "with the help of the angel who appeared to him in the thorn bush" Again God came to an Israelite outside the Promised Land. God's activity was not limited to any locality. Much of Israel's history occurred outside Canaan and before the Temple in Jerusalem. All through the Israelites' history God's leaders were rejected by their peers (cf. Act_7:9; Act_7:27-28; Act_7:35; Act_7:39). This is a recurrent theme.
This angel is depicted as deity (cf. Exo_3:2; Exo_3:4). This divine physical manifestation can also be seen in Gen_16:7-13; Gen_22:11-15; Gen_31:11; Gen_31:13; Gen_48:15-16; Exo_13:21; Exo_14:19; Jdg_2:1; Jdg_6:22-23; Jdg_13:3-22; Zec_3:1-2. However, it must be stated that "the angel of the Lord" is not always a divine physical manifestation; sometimes he is just an angel, a messenger, (cf. Gen_24:7; Gen_24:40; Exo_23:20-23; Exo_32:34; Num_22:22; Jdg_5:23; 2Sa_24:16; 1Ch_21:15 ff; Zec_1:11; Zechariah 12-13).
Act_7:36 This is a summary of God's miraculous power (i.e., Moses' staff) through Moses and Aaron.
Act_7:37-38 This is a Messianic quote from Deu_18:15. Stephen is identifying God's presence during the Exodus and Wilderness Wandering Period as both God's angel and God's special successor of Moses (i.e., the Messiah, the Prophet). Stephen is not depreciating Moses, but truly listening to Moses!
Act_7:38 "congregation" This is the Greek term ekklesia, but it is used in the sense of assembly, not church. See Special Topic: Church at Act_5:11.
▣ "the angel who was speaking to him on Mount Sinai" Rabbinical theology asserted that angels were mediators between YHWH and the giving of the Law (see note at Act_7:53). It is also possible that the angel refers to YHWH Himself (cf. Exo_3:21 compared to Act_14:19; and also Exo_32:34; Num_20:16; Jdg_2:1).
Act_7:39 "our fathers were unwilling to be obedient to him" Stephen is connecting the dots of OT rebellion. His implication is that the Jews have always rejected God's leaders, and now they have rejected the Messiah.
▣ "repudiated him" This account is found in Num_14:3-4.
Act_7:40-41 This account is found in Exodus 32. This was not idolatry, but the creation of a physical image of God. It later turned into fertility worship.
Act_7:41 Stephen interprets the golden calf as an idol and uses this historical event to introduce a quote from Amos 5, which implies that Israel, even as far back as the Exodus and Wilderness Wandering, was idolatrous and rebellious.
Act_7:42 "God turned away and delivered them up to serve" Act_7:42-43 are quotes from Amo_5:25-27 where Amos asserts that Israel was always offering sacrifices to foreign gods. It was a regular, and early, pattern of their history (cf. Jos_24:20). This reminds one of the drastic statements of rejection in Rom_1:24; Rom_1:26; Rom_1:28.
▣ "the host of heaven" This refers to Assyrian and Babylonian astral worship (cf. Deu_17:3; 2Ki_17:16; 27:3; 2Ch_33:3; 2Ch_33:5; Jer_8:2; Jer_19:13). There are several textual problems between the Hebrew text (MT) of Amo_5:25-27, the Greek text (LXX) and Stephen's quote:
1. the name of the star god. The MT has kywn or kaiwann, the Assyrian name for the planet Saturn. The LXX has rypn or raiphan, which may be repa, the Egyptian name for the planetary god of Saturn.
2. the Hebrew text (MT) and the Greek text (LXX) have "beyond Damascus," while Stephen quotes "beyond Babylon."
There is no known manuscript of Amos that has the reading. Stephen may have been combining the Assyrians exile, of which Amos speaks, with the later Babylonian exile of Judah, but substituting the place of exile.
The worship of astral deities began in Mesopotamia, but spread into Syria and Canaan (cf. Job_31:26-27). The archaeological discovery at Tell El-Amarna, which included hundreds of letters from Canaan to Egypt in the 14th century b.c. also uses these astral deities as place names.
▣ "in the book of the prophets" This refers to the scroll that contained the twelve minor prophets (cf. Act_13:40). The quote in Act_7:42-43 is from the Septuagint of Amo_5:25-27.
The next phrase in Act_7:42 is a question that expects a "no" answer.
Act_7:43 "Moloch" The Hebrew consonants for the word king are mlk (BDB 574). There are several Canaanite gods whose names are a play on these three consonants, Milcom, Molech, or Moloch. Moloch was the chief fertility god of the Amorites to whom children were offered to ensure the health and prosperity of the community or nation (cf. Lev_20:2-5; Deu_12:31; 1Ki_11:5; 1Ki_11:7; 1Ki_11:33; 2Ki_23:10; 2Ki_23:13-14; Jer_7:31; Jer_32:35). A. T. Robertson, Word Pictures In the New Testament, vol. 3, p. 93, says Moloch was "an ox-headed image with arms outstretched in which children were placed and hollow underneath so that fire could burn underneath." The mention of the term Molech in Lev_18:21 in context of inappropriate sexual unions, has caused some scholars to assume that children were not sacrificed to Molech, but dedicated to him as temple prostitutes, male and female. The concept fits in the general practices of fertility worship.
▣ "images" See Special Topic following.
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