New Testament in a Year

7 Then the High Priest asked him, “Are these accusations true?”

² This was Stephen’s lengthy reply: “The glorious God appeared to our ancestor Abraham in Iraq^[a] before he moved to Syria, ³ and told him to leave his native land, to say good-bye to his relatives and to start out for a country that God would direct him to. ⁴ So he left the land of the Chaldeans and lived in Haran, in Syria, until his father died. Then God brought him here to the land of Israel, ⁵ but gave him no property of his own, not one little tract of land.

“However, God promised that eventually the whole country would belong to him and his descendants—though as yet he had no children! ⁶ But God also told him that these descendants of his would leave the land and live in a foreign country and there become slaves for 400 years. ⁷ ‘But I will punish the nation that enslaves them,’ God told him, ‘and afterwards my people will return to this land of Israel and worship me here.’

⁸ “God also gave Abraham the ceremony of circumcision at that time, as evidence of the covenant between God and the people of Abraham. And so Isaac, Abraham’s son, was circumcised when he was eight days old. Isaac became the father of Jacob, and Jacob was the father of the twelve patriarchs of the Jewish nation. ⁹ These men were very jealous of Joseph and sold him to be a slave in Egypt. But God was with him, ¹⁰ and delivered him out of all of his anguish, and gave him favor before Pharaoh, king of Egypt. God also gave Joseph unusual wisdom so that Pharaoh appointed him governor over all Egypt, as well as putting him in charge of all the affairs of the palace.

¹¹ “But a famine developed in Egypt and Canaan, and there was great misery for our ancestors. When their food was gone, ¹² Jacob heard that there was still grain in Egypt, so he sent his sons^[b] to buy some. ¹³ The second time they went, Joseph revealed his identity to his brothers, and they were introduced to Pharaoh. ¹⁴ Then Joseph sent for his father Jacob and all his brothers’ families to come to Egypt, seventy-five persons in all. ¹⁵ So Jacob came to Egypt, where he died, and all his sons. ¹⁶ All of them were taken to Shechem and buried in the tomb Abraham bought from the sons of Hamor, Shechem’s father.

^17-18 “As the time drew near when God would fulfill his promise to Abraham to free his descendants from slavery, the Jewish people greatly multiplied in Egypt; but then a king was crowned who had no respect for Joseph’s memory. ¹⁹ This king plotted against our race, forcing parents to abandon their children in the fields.

²⁰ “About that time Moses was born—a child of divine beauty. His parents hid him at home for three months, ²¹ and when at last they could no longer keep him hidden and had to abandon him, Pharaoh’s daughter found him and adopted him as her own son,