Chapter 7, verses 16-52
16
and they were brought back to Shechem, and laid in the tomb that Abraham bought for a price in silver from the children of Hamor of Shechem.
17
“But as the time of the promise came close which God had sworn to Abraham, the people grew and multiplied in Egypt,
18
until there arose a different king, who didn’t know Joseph.
19
The same took advantage of our race, and mistreated our fathers, and forced them to throw out their babies, so that they wouldn’t stay alive.
20
At that time Moses was born, and was exceedingly handsome. He was nourished three months in his father’s house.
21
When he was thrown out, Pharaoh’s daughter took him up, and reared him as her own son.
22
Moses was instructed in all the wisdom of the Egyptians. He was mighty in his words and works.
23
But when he was forty years old, it came into his heart to visit his brothers, the children of Israel.
24
Seeing one of them suffer wrong, he defended him, and avenged him who was oppressed, striking the Egyptian.
25
He supposed that his brothers understood that God, by his hand, was giving them deliverance
26
“The day following, he appeared to them as they fought, and urged them to be at peace again, saying, ‘Sirs, you are brothers. Why do you wrong one another?’
27
But he who did his neighbor wrong pushed him away, saying, ‘Who made you a ruler and a judge over us?
28
Do you want to kill me, as you killed the Egyptian yesterday?’
29
Moses fled at this saying, and became a stranger in the land of Midian, where he became the father of two sons.
30
“When forty years were fulfilled, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in the wilderness of Mount Sinai, in a flame of fire in a bush.
31
When Moses saw it, he wondered at the sight. As he came close to see, a voice of the Lord came to him,
32
‘I am the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.’ Moses trembled, and dared not look.
33
The Lord said to him, ‘Take your sandals off of your feet, for the place where you stand is holy ground.
34
I have surely seen the affliction of my people that is in Egypt, and have heard their groaning. I have come down to deliver them. Now come, I will send you into Egypt.’
35
“This Moses, whom they refused, saying, ‘Who made you a ruler and a judge?’—God has sent him as both a ruler and a deliverer by the hand of the angel who appeared to him in the bush.
36
This man led them out, having worked wonders and signs in Egypt, in the Red Sea, and in the wilderness for forty years.
37
This is that Moses, who said to the children of Israel, ‘The Lord our God will raise up a prophet for you from among your brothers, like me.’
38
This 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 oracles to give to us,
39
to whom our fathers wouldn’t be obedient, but rejected him, and turned back in their hearts to Egypt,
40
saying to Aaron, ‘Make us gods that will go before us, for as for this Moses, who led us out of the land of Egypt, we don’t know what has become of him.’
41
They made a calf in those days, and brought a sacrifice to the idol, and rejoiced in the works of their hands.
42
But God turned, and gave them up to serve the army of the sky, as it is written in the book of the prophets, ‘Did you offer to me slain animals and sacrifices forty years in the wilderness, O house of Israel?
43
You took up the tabernacle of Moloch, the star of your god Rephan, the figures which you made to worship. I will carry you away beyond Babylon.’
44
“Our fathers had the tabernacle of the testimony in the wilderness, even as he who spoke to Moses commanded him to make it according to the pattern that he had seen
45
which also our fathers, in their turn, brought in with Joshua when they entered into the possession of the nations, whom God drove out before the face of our fathers, to the days of David,
46
who found favor in the sight of God, and asked to find a habitation for the God of Jacob.
47
But Solomon built him a house.
48
However, the Most High doesn’t dwell in temples made with hands, as the prophet says,
49
‘heaven is my throne, and the earth a footstool for my feet. What kind of house will you build me?’ says the Lord
50
Didn’t my hand make all these things?’
51
“You stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, you always resist the Holy Spirit! As your fathers did, so you do.
52
Which of the prophets didn’t your fathers persecute? They killed those who foretold the coming of the Righteous One, of whom you have now become betrayers and murderers.
