Acts 7:2-31

²He said, “Brothers and fathers, listen. The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia, before he lived in Haran,

³and said to him, ‘Get out of your land and away from your relatives, and come into a land which I will show you.’

⁴Then he came out of the land of the Chaldaeans and lived in Haran. From there, when his father was dead, God moved him into this land where you are now living.

⁵He gave him no inheritance in it, no, not so much as to set his foot on. He promised that he would give it to him for a possession, and to his offspring after him, when he still had no child.

⁶God spoke in this way: that his offspring would live as aliens in a strange land, and that they would be enslaved and mistreated for four hundred years.

⁷‘I will judge the nation to which they will be in bondage,’ said God, ‘and after that they will come out and serve me in this place.’

⁸He gave him the covenant of circumcision. So Abraham became the father of Isaac, and circumcised him the eighth day. Isaac became the father of Jacob, and Jacob became the father of the twelve patriarchs.

⁹“The patriarchs, moved with jealousy against Joseph, sold him into Egypt. God was with him

¹⁰and delivered him out of all his afflictions, and gave him favour and wisdom before Pharaoh, king of Egypt. He made him governor over Egypt and all his house.

¹¹Now a famine came over all the land of Egypt and Canaan, and great affliction. Our fathers found no food.

¹²But when Jacob heard that there was grain in Egypt, he sent out our fathers the first time.

¹³On the second time Joseph was made known to his brothers, and Joseph’s family was revealed to Pharaoh.

¹⁴Joseph sent and summoned Jacob his father and all his relatives, seventy-five souls.

¹⁵Jacob went down into Egypt and he died, himself and our fathers;

¹⁶and they were brought back to Shechem and laid in the tomb that Abraham bought for a price in silver from the children of Hamor of Shechem.

¹⁷“But as the time of the promise came close which God had sworn to Abraham, the people grew and multiplied in Egypt,

¹⁸until there arose a different king who didn’t know Joseph.

¹⁹The same took advantage of our race and mistreated our fathers, and forced them to abandon their babies, so that they wouldn’t stay alive.

²⁰At that time Moses was born, and was exceedingly handsome to God. He was nourished three months in his father’s house.

²¹When he was abandoned, Pharaoh’s daughter took him up and reared him as her own son.

²²Moses was instructed in all the wisdom of the Egyptians. He was mighty in his words and works.

²³But when he was forty years old, it came into his heart to visit his brothers, the children of Israel.

²⁴Seeing one of them suffer wrong, he defended him and avenged him who was oppressed, striking the Egyptian.

²⁵He supposed that his brothers understood that God, by his hand, was giving them deliverance; but they didn’t understand.

²⁶“The day following, he appeared to them as they fought, and urged them to be at peace again, saying, ‘Sirs, you are brothers. Why do you wrong one another?’

²⁷But he who did his neighbour wrong pushed him away, saying, ‘Who made you a ruler and a judge over us?

²⁸Do you want to kill me as you killed the Egyptian yesterday?’

²⁹Moses fled at this saying, and became a stranger in the land of Midian, where he became the father of two sons.

³⁰“When forty years were fulfilled, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in the wilderness of Mount Sinai, in a flame of fire in a bush.

³¹When Moses saw it, he wondered at the sight. As he came close to see, the voice of the Lord came to him,