Acts 7:4

μετὰ τὸ ἀποθανεῖν : St. Stephen apparently falls into the same chronological mistake as is made in the Pentateuch and by Philo (De Migr. Abrah., i., 463, Mang.). According to Genesis 11:26 Terah lived seventy years and begat Abraham, Nahor, Haran; in Genesis 11:32 it is said that Terah's age was 205 years when he died in Haran; in Genesis 12:4 it is said that Abraham was seventy-five years old when he left Haran. But since 70 + 75 = 145, it would seem that Terah must have lived some sixty years after Abraham's departure. Perhaps the circumstance that Terah's death was mentioned, in Genesis 11:32, before the command to Abraham to leave Haran, Acts 12:1, may be the cause of the mistake, as it was not observed that the mention of Terah's death was anticipatory (so Alford). Blass seems to adopt a somewhat similar view, as he commends the reading in Gigas: “priusquam mortuus est pater ejus,” for the obedience of the patriarch, who did not hesitate to leave even his father, is opposed to the obstinacy of the Jewish people (see Blass, in loco). Other attempts at explanation are that reference is made to spiritual death of Terah, who is supposed to have relapsed into idolatry at Haran, a view which appears to have originated with the Rabbis, probably to get rid of the chronological difficulty (Lightfoot, Hor. Heb.; Meyer-Wendt, in loco), but for which there is absolutely no justification in the context; or that Abraham need not have been the eldest son of Terah, but that he was mentioned first because he was the most famous, a view adopted with more or less variation by Wordsworth, Hackett, and recently by Felten (see too B.D. 2, p. 16, note), but apparently in opposition to the authority of Hamburger, who states that Terah was seventy years old when Abraham was born, that he was alive when Abraham departed at the age of seventy-five, being released from the duty of caring for his father by the more imperative command to obey the call of God. Lumby quotes from Midrash Rabbah, on Genesis, cap. 39, that God absolved Abraham from the care of his father, and yet, lest Abraham's departure from Terah should lead others to claim the same relaxation of a commandment for themselves, Terah's death is mentioned in holy Holy Scripture before Abraham's departure, cf. Genesis 11:32; Genesis 12:1. One other solution has been attempted by maintaining that μετῴκισεν does not refer to the removal, but only to the quiet and abiding settlement which Abraham gained after his father's death, but this view, although supported by Augustine and Bengel, amongst others, is justly condemned by Alford and Wendt. The Samaritan Pentateuch reads in Genesis 11:32, 145 instead of 205, probably an alteration to meet the apparent contradiction. But it is quite possible that here, as elsewhere in the speech, Stephen followed some special tradition (so Zöckler). μετά with infinitive as a temporal proposition frequent in Luke (analogous construction in Hebrew), cf. Luke 12:5; Luke 22:20, etc., cf. LXX, Bar 1:9; Viteau, Le Grec du N. T., p. 165 (1893). μετῴκισεν, subject ὁ Θεός : cf. for a similar quick change of subject Acts 6:6. Weiss sees in this the hand of a reviser, but the fact that Stephen was speaking under such circumstances would easily account for a rapid change of subject, which would easily be supplied by his hearers; verb only in Acts 7:43 elsewhere, in a quotation found several times in LXX, and also in use in classical Greek.