“He brought them out, after that he had shewed wonders and signs in the land of Egypt, and in the Red sea, and in the wilderness forty years.”
'Has not my hand made all these things?' So you stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears! You are just like your fathers: You always resist the Holy Spirit!' - Isaiah's question 'Has not my hand made all these things?' asserts God's absolute creative ownership and sufficiency. Stephen now turns to direct accusation: 'stiff-necked' (sklērotrachēloi, hard-necked) echoes Exodus 33:3 and 34:9, Israel's resistance to God's will. 'Uncircumcised in heart and ears' (aperitmētoi kardiais kai tois ōsin) is a spiritual metaphor: physically circumcised but spiritually unreceptive to God's word. The accusation 'You always resist the Holy Spirit' (humeis aei tō pneumati tō hagiō antipiptete) is the climactic charge.
Church Fathers on Acts 7:36
This is very suitable to the matter in hand. This Moses, he says. This, the man who had been in danger of losing his life; the man who had been set at naught by them; this the man whom they had declined: this same, God having raised up, sent unto them. Whom they refused, saying, Who made you a ruler? just as they themselves (the hearers) said, We have no king, but Cæsar. John 19:15 He here shows also, that what was then done, was done by Christ. The same did God send by the…
Nicene & Post-Nicene / Ante-Nicene Fathers translations · public domain
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