Acts 7:23-41

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

²⁴Well seeing one of them being wronged, he defended and avenged the one being oppressed, striking down the Egyptian.

²⁵Now he supposed that his brothers understood that God was giving them deliverance by his hand, but they did not understand.

²⁶The next day he appeared to them as they were fighting and tried to reconcile them, saying, ‘Men, you are brothers; why do you wrong one another?’

²⁷But the one who was wronging his neighbor pushed Moses away, saying: ‘Who made you a ruler and a judge over us?

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

²⁹Well Moses fled at that word, and became a stranger in the land of Midian, where he begot two sons.

³⁰“And when another forty years had passed, Angel of the Lord appeared to him in the wilderness of Mount Sinai, in a flame of fire in a bush.

³¹Well upon seeing it Moses was amazed at the sight, but as he approached for a closer look the voice of the Lord came to him:

³²‘I am the God of your fathers—the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.’ Moses started trembling and did not dare to look.

³³So the Lord said to him: ‘Take your sandals off your feet, for the place where you stand is holy ground.

³⁴I have definitely seen the mistreatment of my people in Egypt, and have heard their groaning; and I have come down to deliver them. So now come, I will send you to Egypt.’

³⁵“This Moses whom they refused, saying, ‘Who made you a ruler and a judge?’—God sent him as leader and deliverer by the hand of the Angel who appeared to him in the bush.

³⁶This man led them out, performing wonders and signs in the land of Egypt and in the Red Sea, and for forty years in the wilderness.

³⁷“This is the Moses who said to the sons of Israel, ‘The Lord our God will raise up to you a Prophet from among your brothers, like me.’

³⁸This is he who was in the assembly in the wilderness, who was with the Angel who spoke with him on Mount Sinai and was with our fathers, who received living oracles to give to us;

³⁹to whom our fathers did not want to be obedient; rather they rejected him and turned back in their heart to Egypt,

⁴⁰saying to Aaron, ‘Make us gods that will go before us; because this Moses, who led us out of the land of Egypt—we do not know what has become of him.’

⁴¹Well they made a calf in those days and brought a sacrifice to the idol, and started rejoicing in the works of their hands.