Acts 7:3-25

³God said to him, ‘Leave this land where you (sg) and your relatives are living, and go into the land to which I will lead you.’

⁴So Abraham left that land, which was also called Chaldea, and he arrived in Haran and lived there. After his father died, God told him to move to this land in which you and I are now living.”

⁵“ At that time God did not give Abraham any land here, not even a small plot of this land that would belong to him. God promised that he would later give this land to him and his descendants, and that it would always belong to them. However, at that time Abraham did not have any children who would ◄ inherit it/receive it after he died►.”

⁶“ Later God told Abraham, ‘Your descendants will go and live in a foreign country. They will live there for four hundred years, and during that time their leaders will mistreat your descendants and force them to work as slaves.’

⁷But God also said, ‘I will punish the people who make them work as slaves. Then, after that, your descendants will leave that land and they will come and worship me in this land.’ ”

⁸“Then God commanded Abraham that every male in his household and all of his male descendants should be circumcised to show that they all belonged to God and that they would obey what he had told Abraham to do. Later Abraham's son, Isaac, was born, and when Isaac was eight days old, Abraham circumcised him. Later Isaac's son, Jacob, was born, and Isaac similarly circumcised him. And Jacob similarly circumcised his twelve sons. They are the twelve men from whom we(inc) Jews have all descended.”

⁹“ You know that Jacob's older sons became jealous because their father favored their younger brother Joseph. So they sold him to merchants/traders who took him MTY to Egypt. There he became a slave of an official who lived there. But God helped Joseph.

¹⁰He protected him whenever people caused him to suffer. He enabled Joseph to be wise; and he caused Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, to think well of Joseph. So Pharaoh appointed him to rule over Egypt and to look after all of Pharaoh's property MTY.”

¹¹“ While Joseph was doing that work, there was a time ◄when there was very little food/of famine► throughout Egypt and also throughout Canaan. People did not have enough food to eat. People were suffering. At that time Jacob and his sons in Canaan also could not find enough food.

¹²When Jacob heard people report that there was grain/food that people could buy in Egypt, he sent Joseph's older brothers to go there to buy grain. They went and bought grain from Joseph, but they did not recognize him. Then they returned home.

¹³When Joseph's brothers went to Egypt the second time, they again bought grain from Joseph. But this time he told them who he was. And people told Pharaoh that Joseph's people were Hebrews and that those men who had come from Canaan were his brothers.

¹⁴Then after Joseph sent his brothers back home, they told their father Jacob that Joseph wanted him and his entire family to come to Egypt. At that time ◄ Jacob's family consisted of seventy-five people/there were seventy-five people in Jacob's family► SYN.

¹⁵So when Jacob heard that, he and all his family went to live in Egypt.” Acts 7:15b-16 “ Later on, Jacob died there, and our other ancestors, his sons, also died there.

¹⁶But the bodies of Jacob and Joseph were brought { they brought the bodies of Jacob and Joseph} back to our land, and Jacob's body was buried {they buried Jacob's body} in the tomb that Abraham had bought, and they buried Joseph's body in Shechem in the ground that Jacob had bought from Hamor's sons.”

¹⁷“Our ancestors had become very numerous when it was almost time for God to rescue them from Egypt, as he had promised Abraham that he would do.

¹⁸Another king had begun to rule in Egypt. He did not know that Joseph, long before that time, had greatly helped the people of Egypt MTY.

¹⁹That king cruelly tried to get rid of our ancestors. He oppressed them and caused them to suffer greatly. He even commanded them to leave their baby boys outside their homes so that they would die.”

²⁰“During that time Moses was born, and he was a very beautiful LIT child. So his parents secretly cared for him in their house for three months.

²¹Then they had to put him outside the house, but Pharaoh's daughter found him and adopted him and cared for him as though he were her own son.

²²Moses was taught { The Egyptian teachers taught Moses} many kinds of wise things HYP that the people in Egypt knew, and when he grew up, he spoke powerfully and did things powerfully.”

²³“ One day when Moses was about forty years old, he decided that he would go and see his fellow Israelis. So he went to the place where they worked.

²⁴He saw an Egyptian beating one of the Israels. So he went over to help MTY the Israeli man who was being hurt/beat {whom the Egyptian was hurting/beating}, and he ◄got revenge on/paid back► the Israeli man by killing the Egyptian who was hurting/beating him.

²⁵Moses was thinking that his fellow Israelis would understand that God had sent him to free them from being slaves. But they did not understand that.