Attributed commentary excerpt
John Gill's Exposition on Acts 7:30
A historical reference excerpt for this verse. Read it alongside the biblical text and other available sources.
Exposition of the Old and New Testament
John Gill (1697–1771) · 18th-century historical commentary
Source: BibleWord.ai's local reference edition of this named work.
And when forty years were expired, etc.] “Forty other years” the Arabic version reads; for so long the Jews f343 say Moses kept Jethro’s flock, and so many years he lived in Midian; and so the Syriac version, “when then he had filled up forty years”; which agrees exactly with the account of the Jewish writers observed on (<440723>Acts 7:23) who say, that he was forty years in Pharaoh’s court, and forty years in Midian; so that he was now, as they f344 elsewhere justly observe, fourscore years of age: there appeared to him in the wilderness of Mount Sinai; the same with Horeb, (<020301>Exodus 3:1) where it is said, “Moses came to the mountain of God, even to Horeb”; where he saw the sight of the burning bush, and out of which the angel appeared to him: and Stephen is to be justified in calling it Mount Sinai; the account which Jerom f345 gives of it is this; “Horeb is the Mount of God in the land of Midian, by Mount Sinai, above Arabia, in the desert, to which is joined the mountain and desert of the Saracenes, called Pharan: but to me it seems, that the same mountain was called by two names, sometimes Sinai, and sometimes Horeb;” and in which he was right. Some think the same mountain had two tops, and one went by one name, and the other by another; or one side of the mountain was called Horeb, from its being dry and desolate; and the other Sinai, from the bushes and brambles which grew upon it. So ˆynys, “Sinin”, in the Misna f346, signifies the thin barks of bramble bushes; and the bush hereafter mentioned, in the Hebrew language, is called hns, “Seneh”; from whence, with the Jews, it is said to have its name. “Says f347 R. Eliezer, from the day the heavens and the earth were created, the name of this mountain was called Horeb; but after the holy blessed God appeared to Moses out of the midst of the bush, from the name of the bush “(Seneh)”, Horeb was called Sinai.” Some say the stones of this mountain, when broken, had the resemblance of bramble bushes f348 in them. Add to this, that Josephus f349 calls this mountain by the same name as Stephen does, when he is reciting the same history. Moses, he says, “led the flock to the Sinaean mountain, as it is called: this is the highest mountain in that country, and best for pasture, abounding in good herbage; and because it was commonly believed the Divine Being dwelt there, it was not before fed upon, the shepherds not daring to go up to it.” Here Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law; for to such a life did he condescend, who for forty years had been brought up in the court of Pharaoh, king of Egypt. Here appeared to him an angel of the Lord, and who was no other than the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, as appears from (<440732>Acts 7:32) and was the second person in the Trinity, the Son of God, the angel of the divine presence, and of the covenant, an uncreated angel. And this is the sense of many of the Jewish writers, who interpret it of the angel the Redeemer, the God of Bethel f350; though Jonathan the paraphrast seems to understand it of a created angel, whose name he calls Zagnugael f351, and some say it was Michael, and some Gabriel f352. In a flame of fire in a bush; and which yet was not consumed by it. This bush was a bramble bush, or thorn; so Aben Ezra f353 says it was a kind of thorn, and observes, that in the Ishmaelitish or Turkish language, the word signifies a kind of dry thorn; and so Philo the Jew says f354, it was a thorny plant, and very weak; and the…
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