Acts 7
The full text of Acts 7 in the Trinity Bible Version — clear modern English, translated from the original Greek. Free to read.
1 Then the high priest asked, "Is this true?"
2 And Stephen said: "Brothers and fathers, listen to me. The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham while he was in Mesopotamia, before he settled in Haran,
3 and said to him, 'Leave your country and your relatives, and go to the land I will show you.'
4 So he left the land of the Chaldeans and settled in Haran. After his father died, God moved him from there into this land where you now live.
5 He gave him no inheritance here, not even a foot of ground, yet he promised to give it to him as a possession, and to his descendants after him, even though Abraham had no child.
6 God spoke to this effect: that his descendants would be strangers in a foreign land, and that its people would enslave and mistreat them for four hundred years.
7 'But I will judge the nation they serve as slaves,' God said, 'and afterward they will come out and worship me in this place.'
8 Then he gave Abraham the covenant of circumcision. And so Abraham became the father of Isaac and circumcised him on the eighth day, and Isaac became the father of Jacob, and Jacob of the twelve patriarchs.
9 "Because the patriarchs were jealous of Joseph, they sold him into Egypt. But God was with him
10 and rescued him from all his troubles. He gave him favor and wisdom before Pharaoh king of Egypt, who made him ruler over Egypt and over all his household.
11 Then a famine struck all of Egypt and Canaan, bringing great suffering, and our ancestors could find no food.
12 When Jacob heard that there was grain in Egypt, he sent our ancestors there on their first visit.
13 On the second visit Joseph made himself known to his brothers, and Pharaoh learned about Joseph's family.
14 Then Joseph sent for his father Jacob and his whole family, seventy-five people in all.
15 So Jacob went down to Egypt, where he and our ancestors died.
16 Their bodies were brought back to Shechem and laid in the tomb that Abraham had bought for a sum of silver from the sons of Hamor at Shechem.
17 "As the time drew near for God to fulfill the promise he had made to Abraham, the people grew and multiplied in Egypt,
18 until another king, who knew nothing of Joseph, rose to power over Egypt.
19 He dealt deceitfully with our people and oppressed our ancestors, forcing them to abandon their infants so they would not survive.
20 At that time Moses was born, and he was beautiful in God's sight. For three months he was cared for in his father's house,
21 and when he was abandoned, Pharaoh's daughter took him and raised him as her own son.
22 So Moses was trained in all the wisdom of the Egyptians and was powerful in his words and actions.
23 "When Moses was forty years old, he decided to visit his own people, the Israelites.
24 Seeing one of them being mistreated, he came to his defense and avenged the man by striking down the Egyptian.
25 He assumed his own people would understand that God was using him to rescue them, but they did not.
26 The next day he came upon two of them fighting and tried to reconcile them, saying, 'Men, you are brothers. Why are you hurting each other?'
27 But the man who was mistreating his neighbor pushed Moses aside and said, 'Who made you ruler and judge over us?
28 Do you want to kill me the way you killed the Egyptian yesterday?'
29 At this Moses fled and lived as a foreigner in the land of Midian, where he had two sons.
30 "After forty years had passed, an angel appeared to him in the desert near Mount Sinai, in the flames of a burning bush.
31 When Moses saw it, he was amazed at the sight. As he went closer to look, the voice of the Lord came:
32 'I am the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.' Moses trembled with fear and did not dare to look.
33 Then the Lord said to him, 'Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.
34 I have surely seen the suffering of my people in Egypt. I have heard their groaning and have come down to set them free. Now come, I am sending you to Egypt.'
35 "This same Moses, whom they rejected with the words, 'Who made you ruler and judge?'—this is the one God sent to be both ruler and deliverer, with the help of the angel who appeared to him in the bush.
36 He led them out, performing wonders and signs in Egypt, at the Red Sea, and in the desert for forty years.
37 "This is the same Moses who told the Israelites, 'God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your own people.'
38 He was in the assembly in the desert, with the angel who spoke to him on Mount Sinai and with our ancestors, and he received living words to pass on to us.
39 "But our ancestors refused to obey him. Instead, they rejected him and in their hearts turned back to Egypt.
40 They said to Aaron, 'Make us gods who will lead us. As for this Moses who brought us out of Egypt—we have no idea what has happened to him.'
41 That was when they made an idol shaped like a calf. They brought a sacrifice to it and held a celebration over the work of their own hands.
42 So God turned away and gave them over to worship the host of heaven, as it is written in the book of the prophets: "Did you bring me sacrifices and offerings forty years in the desert, house of Israel?
43 You took up the tent of Moloch and the star of your god Rephan, the images you made to worship. So I will send you into exile beyond Babylon."
44 "Our ancestors had the tent of the testimony in the desert. It was made just as God directed Moses, according to the pattern he had seen.
45 Our ancestors who received it brought it in with Joshua when they took the land from the nations God drove out before them. It remained until the time of David,
46 who enjoyed God's favor and asked to provide a dwelling place for the God of Jacob.
47 But it was Solomon who built a house for him.
48 Yet the Most High does not live in houses made by human hands. As the prophet says:
49 "Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool. What kind of house will you build for me, says the Lord, or where is my resting place?
50 Did not my own hand make all these things?"
51 "You stiff-necked people, with uncircumcised hearts and ears! You always resist the Holy Spirit, just as your ancestors did.
52 Which of the prophets did your ancestors not persecute? They killed those who foretold the coming of the Righteous One, and now you have betrayed and murdered him—
53 you who received the law as ordained through angels but have not kept it."
54 When they heard this, they were furious and ground their teeth at him.
55 But Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit, looked up to heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at God's right hand.
56 "Look," he said, "I see heaven open and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God."
57 At this they covered their ears, and with a loud shout they all rushed at him together.
58 They dragged him out of the city and began to stone him. Meanwhile the witnesses laid their cloaks at the feet of a young man named Saul.
59 While they were stoning him, Stephen prayed, "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit."
60 Then he fell to his knees and cried out, "Lord, do not hold this sin against them." And when he had said this, he fell asleep.
Translation notes (13)
- Acts 7:14a Stephen's figure follows the Septuagint of Genesis 46:27 and Exodus 1:5, which reads hebdomekonta pente, 'seventy-five', including five additional descendants of Joseph; the Masoretic Text of both passages gives seventy. A Dead Sea Scrolls copy of Exodus (4QExodus-b) likewise reads seventy-five, showing the figure circulated in Hebrew as well as Greek.
- Acts 7:16a Stephen's summary compresses two burial traditions: Abraham purchased the cave of Machpelah near Hebron from Ephron the Hittite (Genesis 23), while Jacob bought the plot at Shechem from the sons of Hamor (Genesis 33:19), where Joseph was later buried (Joshua 24:32). Such telescoping of the patriarchal narratives is characteristic of the speech's rapid survey of Israel's history.
- Acts 7:23a Exodus does not give Moses' age at this event; the figure of forty years reflects Jewish tradition dividing his one hundred twenty years (Deuteronomy 34:7) into three equal periods. The Greek behind 'he decided' is the Hebraic idiom anebē epi tēn kardian autou, literally 'it came up upon his heart', rendered here functionally.
- Acts 7:30a Exodus 3:1 places the burning bush at Horeb; Stephen names Sinai, the two being identified in Jewish tradition and in passages such as Malachi 4:4. The forty years are likewise not stated in Exodus but reflect the traditional division of Moses' one hundred twenty years into three equal periods (compare Acts 7:23). Greek en phlogi pyros batou, literally 'in a flame of fire of a bush'.
- Acts 7:36a Erythra thalassa (ἐρυθρὰ θάλασσα), 'Red Sea', is the Greek name Stephen uses, following the Septuagint's standard rendering of the Hebrew yam suph, literally 'sea of reeds'. The Greek text of Acts thus preserves the traditional name rather than translating the Hebrew place-name directly.
- Acts 7:37a Stephen quotes Deuteronomy 18:15, where Moses promises a prophet like himself, Greek prophētēn hōs eme, 'a prophet like me'. Peter cites the same passage in Acts 3:22, showing that the earliest church read it as a messianic promise fulfilled in Jesus, a point central to Stephen's argument that Moses himself testified to one greater to come.
- Acts 7:38a Greek ekklēsia (ἐκκλησία), the word later used for the Christian church, here describes Israel gathered at Sinai and is rendered 'assembly' to reflect its older sense of a summoned congregation. The phrase logia zōnta, 'living oracles', echoes Septuagint usage for divine utterances, presenting the law as God's own speech rather than a dead code.
- Acts 7:42a Stephen quotes Amos 5:25-27 in its Septuagint form, which differs at points from the Masoretic Text, as verse 43 shows. Greek paredoken (παρέδωκεν), 'gave over', presents the judgment as abandonment to the sin already chosen; the phrase stratia tou ouranou, 'host of heaven', denotes the heavenly bodies as objects of idolatrous worship.
- Acts 7:43a Stephen quotes Amos 5:26–27 in the form of the Septuagint, which reads Rhaiphan, 'Rephan', where the Masoretic Text has Kiyyun, likely a name for the planet Saturn worshiped as a deity. Amos says the exile will be 'beyond Damascus'; Stephen, speaking after the fact, extends it 'beyond Babylon'.
- Acts 7:48a The Greek adjective cheiropoiētos, 'made by hands', is used in the Septuagint almost exclusively of idols and their shrines, so Stephen's word choice carries a pointed edge: to treat the temple as God's dwelling risks idolatry. The quotation that follows in verses 49-50 is from Isaiah 66:1-2.
- Acts 7:53a The Greek phrase eis diatagas angelon, literally 'as ordinances of angels', reflects a Jewish tradition that angels mediated the giving of the law at Sinai. The tradition appears in the Septuagint of Deuteronomy 33:2 and in Josephus (Antiquities 15.136), and is echoed elsewhere in the New Testament at Galatians 3:19 and Hebrews 2:2.
- Acts 7:56a Ton huion tou anthrōpou, 'the Son of Man', occurs here on the lips of someone other than Jesus, the only such instance in the New Testament apart from quotation. The title recalls the figure of Daniel 7:13 who approaches the Ancient of Days. The participle hestōta, 'standing', is striking, since Psalm 110:1 pictures the exalted one seated at God's right hand.
- Acts 7:58a The imperfect verb elithoboloun (ἐλιθοβόλουν), 'began to stone' or 'were stoning', presents the execution as extended action. Deuteronomy 17:7 required the witnesses to cast the first stones, which explains their shedding of their himatia, 'cloaks'. Saul, here called a neanias, 'young man', reappears under his Roman name Paul from Acts 13:9 onward.
About this translation
The Trinity Bible Version (TBV) is Trinity Bible's own modern English translation, worked directly from the original Greek and honest to the earliest manuscripts. It was completed in 2026 — the most modern English Bible translation — and is exclusive to Trinity Bible. Every chapter, including all of Acts, is free to read here on the web.
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