Acts 7:5-27

⁵God didn’t give any of this country to Abraham to be his own land, not even a little bit of it. But God promised that some time later his grand-kids to come will own all of this land, even though Abraham didn’t even have any kids at that time.

⁶But God told Abraham, ‘Your grand-kids will live in a country that belongs to other people. Those people will treat your grand-kids really bad and make them work hard for no pay. They will do that for 400 years.

⁷But after that I will pay back those other people for treating your grand-kids bad. Then your grand-kids will come out from that country and they will show respect to me here in this place.’

⁸Then God promised to look after Abraham, and Abraham agreed to follow him. God told Abraham, ‘Your mob will always have to do a young man’s operation on their boys, to show that they agree with God.’ After that Abraham had a son called Isaac, and 8 days later Abraham did a young man’s operation on him. After that Isaac grew up and had a son called Jacob, and he did that operation on him too. And Jacob did the same for his 12 sons, and those 12 men became our grand-fathers of a long time ago.

⁹Joseph was one of them. His brothers were jealous of him and sold him to some people that took him to Egypt. He had to work there for no pay. But God was with Joseph there in Egypt.

¹⁰Joseph got big trouble there, but God saved him from all that trouble. God helped Joseph to think properly about everything. The big boss of Egypt was called Pharaoh. God showed Pharaoh that Joseph was really good. He made Joseph the boss over all the people in Egypt, and he made him boss over Pharaoh’s own big house.

¹¹After a long time there was a dry time for all those countries. There was no rain, so no food grew in Egypt or in Canaan, the country that our grand-fathers were living in. They had no food and they were very hungry.

¹²Then Jacob heard that there was food in Egypt. So he sent his sons to Egypt to get food. They were our grand-fathers of a long time ago. They met Joseph there but he looked so different that they didn’t know him. Then they took that food home.

¹³After that, Jacob sent them to Egypt again to get more food, and this time Joseph told them, ‘I am your brother.’ And Pharaoh heard that Joseph had some brothers.

¹⁴Then Joseph sent his brothers to get his father Jacob, and all his family, to go and live in Egypt. So all 75 of them went to Egypt.

¹⁵That’s the way Jacob and his family went to Egypt, and after that they died there.

¹⁶Later their grand-kids took their bodies back to the place called Shechem and buried them in a cave. A long time before that their grand-father Abraham bought that cave from Hamor’s family. He paid the full price for that cave.”

¹⁷Stephen said to the Jewish council men, “Remember, a long time before that God told Abraham, ‘Your family will live in Egypt for a long time.’ And when it was almost time for God to bring them back from Egypt, they had lots of kids and grand-kids till they grew into a big mob of people.

¹⁸Then, a new man became the big boss of Egypt, and he didn’t know anything about Joseph.

¹⁹That big boss tricked our family and was very hard on them. He made our mob throw their baby boys into the river to kill them.

²⁰Moses was born while that man was the big boss. Moses was a very good little baby, and his mother and father looked after him in their house for 3 months.

²¹After that they had to leave Moses out at the river, but just then the big boss’s daughter came along and found him, and she took him home and called him her own son.

²²So Moses grew up in the big boss’s family, and the Egyptian teachers taught him a lot of things. Moses became an important man. He did everything powerfully and he talked powerfully too.

²³Moses kept living in the big boss’s family until he was 40 years old, then one day he went to visit his own people, us Israel mob.

²⁴While he was there he saw an Egyptian boss beating up an Israel man. So Moses killed that Egyptian boss.

²⁵Moses reckoned, ‘Now my people will understand about me, and God will use me to save them.’ But they didn’t understand anything about Moses.

²⁶The next day Moses saw 2 of his own people fighting and he tried to get them to stop fighting. He said, ‘You 2 men, you are both family. Why do you hit each other?’

²⁷But the man that started the fight pushed Moses away. He said, ‘Nobody said you can be our boss or our judge.