Acts 7:1-36

Then the kohen gadol said, “Are these things so?” Stephen declared, “Brothers and fathers, listen. The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia, before he lived in Haran. He said to him, ‘Leave your country and your relatives, and come here to the land that I will show you.’ Then he left the land of the Chaldeans and settled in Haran. From there, after his father died, God moved him to this land where you now live. He gave him no inheritance in it—not even a foothold—yet He promised ‘to give it to him as a possession to him and to his descendants after him,’ even though he had no child. “But God spoke in this way, that his ‘descendants would be foreigners in a land belonging to others, and they would enslave and mistreat them for four hundred years. But I will judge the nation they serve as slaves,’ God said, ‘and afterward they shall come out and serve Me in this place.’ “Then God gave Abraham the covenant of circumcision. So he became the father of Isaac and circumcised him on the eighth day, and so Isaac with Jacob, and Jacob with the twelve patriarchs. The patriarchs became jealous of Joseph and sold him into Egypt. Yet God was with him. He rescued him out of all his troubles and granted him favor and wisdom before Pharaoh, king of Egypt, who made him governor over Egypt and all his household. “Famine and great suffering came over all Egypt and Canaan, and our fathers could find no food. But when Jacob heard that there was grain in Egypt, he sent our fathers there the first time. On the second visit, Joseph made himself known to his brothers, and his family became known to Pharaoh. So Joseph sent and called for Jacob and all his relatives—seventy-five persons. Jacob went down to Egypt and died, he and our fathers. They were carried to Shechem and laid in the tomb that Abraham had bought for a sum of money from the sons of Hamor in Shechem. “But as the time drew near for the promise God had sworn to Abraham, the people increased and multiplied in Egypt— until ‘there arose another king over Egypt who knew nothing about Joseph.’ Dealing with our people with cruel cunning, this king mistreated our fathers and forced them to abandon their infants so they would not survive. “At this time Moses was born—extraordinary before God. For three months he was nurtured in his father’s house. And when he was set outside, Pharaoh’s daughter took him and raised him as her own son. Moses was educated in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and he was powerful in his words and deeds. “When he was approaching forty years of age, it came into his heart to visit his brothers, Bnei-Yisrael. When he saw one of them being treated unjustly, he went to the defense of the oppressed man and avenged him by striking down the Egyptian. He was assuming that his brothers understood that by his hand God was delivering them, but they did not understand. So on the next day he appeared to them as they were fighting. He tried to reconcile them in shalom, saying, ‘Men, you are brothers. Why do you wrong one another?’ “But the one doing wrong to his neighbor pushed him away, saying, ‘Who appointed you ruler and judge over us? You don’t want to kill me as you killed the Egyptian yesterday, do you?’ At this remark, Moses fled and became an exile in the land of Midian, where he became the father of two sons. “When forty years had passed, an angel appeared to him in the wilderness of Mount Sinai in the flame of a burning bush. When Moses saw it, he was amazed at the sight. But when he came up to look, there came the voice of ADONAI: ‘I am the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob.’ “Moses trembled in fear and did not dare to look. But ADONAI said to him, ‘Take the sandals off your feet, for the place where you are standing is holy ground. I have surely seen the oppression of my people in Egypt and have heard their groaning, and I have come down to deliver them. Now come—let Me send you to Egypt.’ “This Moses—whom they rejected, saying, ‘Who appointed you as ruler and judge?’—is the one whom God sent as both ruler and redeemer, by the hand of the angel who appeared to him in the bush. This man led them out, performing wonders and signs in the land of Egypt, and at the Red Sea, and in the wilderness for forty years.