Acts 7:6

δέ : not in contrast to the fact just mentioned that Abraham had no child, but introducing a fuller account of God's promise. The quotation is from LXX, Genesis 15:13, with a few alterations; in LXX and Heb., the second person, not the third, is used; instead of οὐκ ἰδίᾳ in LXX, ἀλλοτρίᾳ, cf. Hebrews 11:9; and instead of αὐτούς, αὐτό corresponding to σπέρμα. Wendt takes ὅτι as “recitantis,” and not with Meyer as a constituent part of the quotation itself, LXX: Γιγνώσκων γνώσῃ ὅτι κ. τ. λ. πάροικον in LXX as a stranger or so journer in a country not one's own, several times in combination with ἐν γῇ ἀλλοτρίᾳ, cf. Genesis 21:23; Genesis 21:34; Genesis 26:3, and in N.T. cf. this passage and Acts 7:29. In Ephesians 2:19; 1 Peter 2:11, the word is also used, but metaphorically, although the usage may be said to be based on that of the LXX; cf. Epist. ad Diognet. v., 5, and Polycarp, Phil., inscript. See Kennedy, Sources of N. T. Greek, p. 102. ἔτη τετρακόσια : so too Genesis 15:13. The period named belongs not only to κακώσουσιν but also to ἔσται, as Meyer rightly observes. But in Exodus 12:40 four hundred and thirty years are mentioned as the sojourning which Israel sojourned in Egypt, and in both passages the whole space of time is so occupied; or, at all events it may be fairly said that this is implied in the Hebrew text in both Genesis 15:13 and Exodus 12:40 : cf. also for the same mode of reckoning Philo, Quis rer. div. her., 54, p. 511, Mang. But neither here nor in Galatians 3:17 is the argument in the least degree affected by the precise period, or by the adoption of one of the two chronological systems in preference to the other, and in a speech round numbers would be quite sufficient to mark the progressive stages in the history of the nation and of God's dealings with them. For an explanation of the point see Lightfoot, Galatians 3:17, who regards the number in Genesis as given in round numbers, but in Exodus with historical exactness (to the same effect Wendt, Felten, Zöckler). But in the LXX version, Exodus 12:40, the four hundred and thirty years cover the sojourn both in Egypt and in Canaan, thus including the sojourn of the Patriarchs in Canaan before the migration, and reducing the actual residence in Egypt to about half this period, the Vatican MS. reading four hundred and thirty-five years after adding καὶ ἐν γῇ Χαναὰν (the word five, however, πέντε, being erased), and the Alexandrian MS. reading after ἐν Χαναὰν the words αὐτοὶ καὶ οἱ πατέρες αὐτῶν, making the revision in the chronology more decisive. This is the chronology adopted in Galatians 3:17, and by Josephus, Ant., ii., 15, 2; but the latter writer in other passages, Ant., ii., 9, 1, and B.J., v., 9, 4, adopts the same reckoning as we find here in Acts. But see also Charles, Assumption of Moses, Philippians 3:4 (1897).