You received the law as it was ordained by angels, and didn’t keep it!”
Parallel translations
- KJV Who have received the law by the disposition of angels, and have not kept it.
- BSB you who received the law ordained by angels, yet have not kept it.”
- NKJV who have received the law by the direction of angels and have not kept it.”
- NASB you who received the Law as ordained by angels, and yet did not keep it.”
- NLT You deliberately disobeyed God’s law, even though you received it from the hands of angels.”
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995, 2020 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. lockman.org
Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
Quick answer
They received the law given through angels yet failed to keep it. Their boast in the law is empty because of their disobedience.
Overview
Stephen concludes that, despite receiving the law ordained through angels (Galatians 3:19; Hebrews 2:2), they did not obey it. This refutes any claim that Stephen dishonored the law; rather, his accusers are the lawbreakers. The greatest violation is their rejection of the One the law and prophets foretold.
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 10
- Heb 2:2For if the word spoken through angels proved steadfast, and every transgression and disobedience received a just recompense;
- Gal 3:19What then is the law? It was added because of transgressions, until the offspring should come to whom the promise has been made. It was ordained through angels by the hand of a mediator.
- Acts 7:38This is he who was in the assembly in the wilderness with the angel that spoke to him on Mount Sinai, and with our fathers, who received living revelations to give to us,
- Deut 33:2He said, “Yahweh came from Sinai, and rose from Seir to them. He shone from Mount Paran. He came from the ten thousands of holy ones. At his right hand was a fiery law for them.
- John 7:19Didn’t Moses give you the law, and yet none of you keeps the law? Why do you seek to kill me?”
- Gal 6:13For even they who receive circumcision don’t keep the law themselves, but they desire to have you circumcised, that they may boast in your flesh.
- Ezek 20:18–21I said to their children in the wilderness, ‘Don’t walk in the statutes of your fathers, neither observe their ordinances, nor defile yourselves with their idols.
- Rom 2:23–25You who glory in the law, through your disobedience of the law do you dishonor God?
- Ps 68:17The chariots of God are tens of thousands and thousands of thousands. The Lord is among them, from Sinai, into the sanctuary.
- Exod 19:1–20In the third month after the children of Israel had gone out of the land of Egypt, on that same day they came into the wilderness of Sinai.
Themes, concepts, people & topics
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Christ at the center
Acts is the risen Christ continuing his work by the Spirit through the church, as the apostles preach that there is salvation in no other name under heaven.
How Acts 7:53 points to him is part of the one story that runs through all Scripture — meet Jesus at the heart of the web, or follow a trail that traces him from Genesis to Revelation.
Original language
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