Acts 7:28 is a question asked by the man who had been wronged, pushing away Moses as he tried to stop a fight between two Hebrews. The speaker is an Israelite who had been wronging his neighbor, and he is asking Moses whether he intends to kill him the way Moses had killed an Egyptian the day before. Stephen, in his speech to the council, uses this moment to show how Israel repeatedly rejected the one God sent to them.
Do you want to kill me, as you killed the Egyptian yesterday?’
Acts 7:28 (WEB)
What Acts 7:28 Means
The verse opens with “Do you want to kill me,” which is a direct, sharp challenge. The man is not asking for information. He is accusing Moses of intending the same violence he had shown toward the Egyptian. The phrase “as you killed the Egyptian yesterday” refers back to Exodus 2, where Moses struck down an Egyptian who was beating a Hebrew and then hid the body in the sand. The witness is public enough that this Hebrew man knows about it.
The verse does not promise anything directly. It is a rebuke within a story, and its force lies in the way it exposes Moses’s situation. Moses meant to act as a deliverer, but his own people did not recognize him as one. The verse describes a rejection, and Stephen reads that rejection as a pattern that runs through Israel’s history.
The Context of Acts 7:28
Acts was written by Luke, the same author who wrote the third Gospel, and it records the early growth of the church after Jesus’s ascension. Luke’s audience appears to be Gentile believers, possibly including a figure named Theophilus, so the book explains Jewish history in a way outsiders can follow. Stephen’s speech in chapter 7 is the longest in Acts, and it is delivered just before his martyrdom by stoning.
The verses just before this one, Acts 7:25 to 27, show Moses trying to reconcile two Hebrew men who are fighting, and the verses after it describe Moses fleeing to Midian and then encountering God at the burning bush. Read in that setting, the question is not a random insult. It is the moment when Moses’s attempt at leadership fails, and it sets up his forty years in the wilderness before God sends him back to Egypt.
Key Phrases in Acts 7:28
Exodus 2:14
He said, “Who made you a prince and a judge over us? Do you plan to kill me, as you killed the Egyptian?” Moses was afraid, and said, “Surely this thing is known.”
(WEB)
This verse records the same rebuke in the original account, where the Hebrew man asks Moses who made him a ruler and judge. Reading it alongside Acts 7:28 shows how Stephen draws directly from the Exodus story and confirms the details he recounts.
Acts 7:35
“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.
(WEB)
Stephen repeats the same rejection a few verses later, using nearly the same words about the people refusing Moses. Reading the two together shows how the speech returns to this moment to make its larger point about Israel’s pattern of rejecting God’s chosen deliverers.
A Short Prayer From Acts 7:28
Lord, when people push me away even though I am trying to do what is right, help me to stay steady and not return their hostility. Remind me that you saw Moses through his years of rejection and kept preparing him for your purpose. Give me patience with those who misread my motives, and keep my heart free from the anger that tempts me to strike back. Let my actions speak honestly over time, and let me trust that you are still at work even when I am not understood. Amen.
