1. The high priest said to Stephen, “Are these things true?”
2. Stephen answered, “Brothers and fathers, listen to me. Our glorious God appeared to Abraham, our ancestor. Abraham was in Mesopotamia before he lived in Haran.
3. God said to Abraham, ‘Leave your country and your relatives. Go to the land I will show you.’
4. So Abraham left the country of Chaldea and went to live in Haran. After Abraham’s father died, God sent him to this place where you now live.
5. God did not give Abraham any of this land, not even a foot of it. But God promised that he would give him and his descendants this land. (This was before Abraham had any descendants.)
6. This is what God said to him: ‘Your descendants will be strangers in a land they don’t own. The people there will make them slaves. And they will do cruel things to them for 400 years.
7. But I will punish the nation where they are slaves. Then your descendants will leave that land. Then they will worship me in this place.’
8. God made an agreement with Abraham; the sign for this agreement was circumcision. And so when Abraham had his son Isaac, Abraham circumcised him when he was eight days old. Isaac also circumcised his son Jacob. And Jacob did the same for his sons, the 12 ancestors of our people.
9. “These sons became jealous of Joseph. They sold him to be a slave in Egypt. But God was with him.
10. Joseph had many troubles there, but God saved him from all those troubles. The king of Egypt liked Joseph and respected him because of the wisdom that God gave him. The king made him governor of Egypt. He put Joseph in charge of all the people in his palace.
11. “Then all the land of Egypt and of Canaan became so dry that nothing would grow there. This made the people suffer very much. The sons could not find anything to eat.
12. But when Jacob heard that there was grain in Egypt, he sent his sons, our ancestors, there. This was their first trip to Egypt.