Acts 7:30–50

³⁰“After forty years had passed, an angel appeared to Moses in the flames of a burning bush in the desert near Mount Sinai. ³¹When he saw this, he was amazed at the sight. As he went over to get a closer look, he heard the Lord say:^{o 32}‘I am the God of your fathers,^p the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.’^f Moses trembled with fear and did not dare to look.^q

³³“Then the Lord said to him, ‘Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.^{r 34}I have indeed seen the oppression of my people in Egypt. I have heard their groaning and have come down to set them free. Now come, I will send you back to Egypt.’^gs

³⁵“This is the same Moses they had rejected with the words, ‘Who made you ruler and judge?’^t He was sent to be their ruler and deliverer by God himself, through the angel who appeared to him in the bush. ³⁶He led them out of Egypt^u and performed wonders and signs^v in Egypt, at the Red Sea^w and for forty years in the wilderness.^x

³⁷“This is the Moses who told the Israelites, ‘God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your own people.’^{hy 38}He was in the assembly in the wilderness, with the angel^z who spoke to him on Mount Sinai, and with our ancestors;^a and he received living words^b to pass on to us.^c

³⁹“But our ancestors refused to obey him. Instead, they rejected him and in their hearts turned back to Egypt.^{d 40}They told Aaron, ‘Make us gods who will go before us. As for this fellow Moses who led us out of Egypt—we don’t know what has happened to him!’^{ie 41}That was the time they made an idol in the form of a calf. They brought sacrifices to it and reveled in what their own hands had made.^{f 42}But God turned away from them^g and gave them over to the worship of the sun, moon and stars.^h This agrees with what is written in the book of the prophets:

“ ‘Did you bring me sacrifices and offerings

forty years in the wilderness, people of Israel?

⁴³You have taken up the tabernacle of Molek

and the star of your god Rephan,

the idols you made to worship.

Therefore I will send you into exile’^ji beyond Babylon.

⁴⁴“Our ancestors had the tabernacle of the covenant law^j with them in the wilderness. It had been made as God directed Moses, according to the pattern he had seen.^{k 45}After receiving the tabernacle, our ancestors under Joshua brought it with them when they took the land from the nations God drove out before them.^l It remained in the land until the time of David,^{m 46}who enjoyed God’s favor and asked that he might provide a dwelling place for the God of Jacob.^{kn 47}But it was Solomon who built a house for him.^o

⁴⁸“However, the Most High^p does not live in houses made by human hands.^q As the prophet says:

⁴⁹“ ‘Heaven is my throne,

and the earth is my footstool.^r

What kind of house will you build for me?

says the Lord.

Or where will my resting place be?

⁵⁰Has not my hand made all these things?’^ls