Acts 7:16

From Egypt the chosen people eventually returned to the Promised Land. God had been with them out of the land, and He now returned them to the land. Believers in Jesus will end up in the final resting place of Jesus, heaven.

Shechem was of special interest to Stephen. The Israelites buried Joseph’s bones there after their initial conquest of the land (Joshua 24:32). Stephen’s allusion to this event was his way of concluding this period of Israel’s history. Moses wrote that Jacob, not Abraham, had purchased the tomb from Hamor in Shechem (Genesis 33:19; cf. Genesis 23:16; Genesis 50:13). This is probably a case of attributing to an ancestor what one of his descendants did (cf. Hebrews 7:9-10). In the ancient Near Eastern view of things, people regarded an ancestor as in one sense participating in the actions of his descendants (Genesis 9:25; Genesis 25:23; cf. Malachi 1:2-3; Romans 9:11-13). Abraham had purchased Joseph’s burial site in the sense that his grandson Jacob had purchased it (cf. Hebrews 7:9-10). Stephen probably intended that his reference to Abraham rather than to Jacob would remind his hearers of God’s faithfulness in fulfilling the promises God gave to Abraham. He did this in one sense when Israel possessed Canaan under Joshua’s leadership. Israel will experience the ultimate fulfillment of God’s land promises to Abraham when she enters rest under Jesus’ messianic rule in the Millennium.

Two other explanations of this apparent error are these. Stephen telescoped two events into one: Abraham’s purchase from Ephron in Hebron (Genesis 23:1-20), and Jacob’s purchase from Hamor in Shechem. [Note: Bruce, Commentary on . . ., p. 149, n. 39.] Second, Abraham really did purchase the plot in Shechem, though Moses did not record that (cf. Genesis 12:6-7), and Jacob repurchased it later because the Canaanites had retaken it. [Note: J. Rawson Lumby, The Acts of the Apostles, pp. 164-65. See also Wiersbe, 1:431.]

In Stephen’s day Shechem was in Samaritan territory. He reminded the Sanhedrin that their ancestral deliverer was buried in the land that orthodox Jews despised and avoided. This was another instance of helping them see that they should not think that the only place God worked was in the Promised Land. Stephen had already referred to Mesopotamia as where God had revealed Himself to Abraham (Acts 7:2).