Acts 7:59

Acts 7:59. And they stoned Stephen. Twice the writer of the ‘Acts' tells us this, a remarkable repetition in a history usually so sparing in its details. It would seem to point (as perhaps also does the tense of the Greek verb used here) to a somewhat lengthened duration of the agony. No mortal injury was probably inflicted for a time; so they kept on stoning the martyr, who in the cruel storm was all the while

Calling upon GOD. In the original we have simply ε ̓ πικαλου ́ μενον, invoking or calling upon . The word to be supplied is evidently ‘the Lord,' from the next clause, ‘Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.' This is better than supplying ‘God,' as in the English Version, which slightly confuses the reader. Stephen here prays with his latest breath to Jesus, and all attempts to explain this momentous fact away are utterly useless. This is allowed now by the best critics of the various schools, De Wette, Meyer, Ewald, Lange, Alford, Gloag, etc.

The martyr's last cry was a prayer to our Lord, moulded upon two of the seven sayings of the Redeemer on the cross. But while the dying prayer of Jesus was addressed to His Father, Stephen, in his supreme agony, turns to Jesus; and to Jesus as King of the world of spirits, he commends his parting soul, to Jesus as Lord of all he prays for pardon on his murderers. Commenting on this primitive instance of prayer being offered to the Crucified, Canon Liddon well says, ‘Dying men do not cling to devotional fancies or to precarious opinions: the soul in its last agony instinctively falls back upon its deepest certainties' (Divinity of Christ, Lecture vii.). St. Augustine points to the striking fulfilment of Stephen's prayer for his enemies, in the conversion of one of the chiefest of them: ‘If Stephen had not prayed, never would the Church have possessed Paul.'