Acts 7:23-43

²³“Now when he had turned forty years old, it came into his heart to look upon his brothers, the sons of Israel.

²⁴And seeing someone being wronged, he retaliated, and avenged him who was being oppressed, and struck the Egyptian.

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

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

²⁷But the one wronging his neighbor pushed him away, saying, ‘Who appointed you a ruler and a judge over us?

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

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

³⁰“And forty years having been fulfilled, an Angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire in a bush, in the wilderness of Mount Sinai.

³¹And Moses, seeing it, marveled at the sight; and as he approached it to observe closely, the voice of the Lord came to him,

³²saying, ‘I am the God of your fathers—the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.’ And Moses was trembling and was not bold enough to look closely.

³³Then the Lord said to him, ‘Remove your sandals from your feet, for the place where you stand is holy ground.

³⁴I have certainly seen the mistreatment of My people in Egypt. I have heard their groaning and I have come down to deliver them. And now come, I will send you to Egypt.’

³⁵“This Moses whom they denied, saying, ‘Who appointed you a ruler and a judge?’ This man God sent as a ruler and redeemer by the hand of the Angel who appeared to him in the bush.

³⁶He led them out, and did wonders and signs in the land of Egypt, and at the Red Sea, and in the wilderness forty years.

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

³⁸“This is he who was in the congregation in the wilderness with the Angel who was speaking to him on Mount Sinai, and with our fathers, the one who received the living oracles to give to us,

³⁹whom our fathers did not desire to be obedient, but they rejected him and returned in their heart back to Egypt,

⁴⁰saying to Aaron, ‘Make for us gods who will go before us: as for this Moses who led us out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has happened to him.’

⁴¹And they made a calf in those days, offered a sacrifice to the idol, and were rejoicing in the works of their hands.

⁴²But God turned away and gave them over to serve the host of heaven, just as it is written in the book of the Prophets: ‘Did you offer Me slaughtered animals and sacrifices during forty years in the wilderness, O house of Israel?

⁴³Indeed you carried up the tabernacle of Moloch, and the star of your god Remphan, the images which you made to worship them; and I will relocate you beyond Babylon.’