Acts 7:1-16

Modern English Version

Stephen’s Speech

7 Then the high priest said, “Are these things so?”

² He said, “Brothers and fathers, listen! The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham, when he was in Mesopotamia, before he lived in Harran, ³ and said to him, ‘Leave your country and your relatives, and come to the land which I will show you.’^[a]

⁴ “Then he departed from the land of the Chaldeans and lived in Harran. When his father died, He removed him from there to this land in which you now live. ⁵ He gave him no inheritance in it, nor a foothold, and promised to give it to him as a possession and to his descendants after him while he had no child. ⁶ God spoke in this way, ‘Your descendants shall be sojourners in a land belonging to others, who will enslave them and mistreat them four hundred years.^{[b] 7} And I will judge the nation to whom they will be enslaved,’^[c] said God. ‘After that they shall come out and worship Me in this place.’^{[d] 8} Then He gave him the covenant of circumcision. And 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 “The patriarchs, moved with envy, sold Joseph into Egypt. But God was with him, ¹⁰ and delivered him out of all his afflictions, and gave him favor and wisdom before Pharaoh, king of Egypt, who appointed him governor over Egypt and all his house.

¹¹ “Then a famine came over all Egypt and Canaan with great affliction, and our fathers found no sustenance. ¹² But when Jacob heard that there was grain in Egypt, he sent out our fathers the first time. ¹³ During the second time Joseph was made known to his brothers, and Joseph’s family became known to Pharaoh. ¹⁴ Then Joseph sent and called for his father Jacob and all his kindred, seventy-five souls. ¹⁵ Then Jacob went down into Egypt. And he and our fathers died, ¹⁶ and were carried to Shechem and put in the tomb that Abraham had bought for a price of silver from the sons of Hamor, the father of Shechem.