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4-8a That was how he came to leave the land of the Chaldeans and settle in Haran. And it was from there after his father’s death that God moved him into this very land where you are living today. Yet God gave him no part of it as an inheritance, not a foot that he could call his own, and yet promised that it should eventually belong to him and his descendants—even though at the time he had no descendant at all. And this is the way in which God spoke to him: he told him that his descendants should live as strangers in a foreign land where they would become slaves and be ill-treated for four hundred years, ‘And the nation to whom they will be in bondage I will judge,’ said God: ‘and after that they shall come out and serve me in this place.’ “Further, he gave him the agreement of circumcision, so that when Abraham became the father of Isaac he circumcised him on the eighth day.

Stephen’s defence:

ii. THE PATRIARCHS

8b-10 “Isaac became the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of the twelve patriarchs. Then the patriarchs in their jealousy of Joseph sold him as a slave into Egypt. But God was with him and saved him from all his troubles and gave him favour and wisdom in the eyes of Pharaoh the king of Egypt. Pharaoh made him governor of Egypt and put him in charge of his own entire household.

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He gave him no inheritance here,(A) not even enough ground to set his foot on. But God promised him that he and his descendants after him would possess the land,(B) even though at that time Abraham had no child. God spoke to him in this way: ‘For four hundred years your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own, and they will be enslaved and mistreated.(C) But I will punish the nation they serve as slaves,’ God said, ‘and afterward they will come out of that country and worship me in this place.’[a](D)

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Footnotes

  1. Acts 7:7 Gen. 15:13,14