Acts 7:43

The name of a god in Acts 7:43, which Israel had worshipped (but some Greek manuscripts read Rephan). Stephen was quoting Amos 5:25-26 from the Septuagint, which has Raephan. In the Hebrew the name of the god is Chiun, but why the translators changed the name is not known.

When the Spirit of prophecy announced their coming captivity, He does not go back to the wicked kings of Israel. Nor does He go back to the shameless sons of David who ruled Judah. He goes back to the idolatry in the wilderness. On the outside, at that very time, they honoured the tabernacle of Jehovah and the priesthood of Aaron. But God saw all along how hollow their offerings and sacrifices in His name were. In their hearts, out of sight, they took up the tent of Moloch and the star of the god Raiphan. They had made these forms to worship them.

Worshipping God by the ritual of the law was no security against idolatry. Stephen proved it from the words of Amos the prophet. Amos goes back to the days of Moses in the wilderness. There he finds the sin that carried them off, after long patience, to the lands of captivity. "The holy place and the law" did nothing for God's glory then, and they do nothing now. This was his answer to their boast, and his defence against their accusation.

Man, unbelieving man, is so quick to abandon the living God. He does it despite the daily standing witness of His power and grace. He does it despite the solemn judgments God sends before all eyes from time to time. He is just as quick to take up the idolatry that he had known, only a short time before, to rule the high and mighty, the refined and learned — the world, in short, where he himself had been a slave… The calf, the abomination of Egypt, did not satisfy Israel either. They craved objects higher than the works of their own hands, whatever the charm of those works to man's vain heart. Once they yielded to the snare, Israel had to outdo Egypt. So "God turned away and gave them over to worship the host of heaven."

The prophet reminds them when and where their idolatry began: in the wilderness… Stephen says beyond Babylon, and so it turned out, perhaps to mark it off from the Babylonian captivity. Such was the result of the old sin in the wilderness. No doubt that sin was worse at the end. The dark stream kept gathering more water as it flowed… Still, God always goes back to the source. At last He declares that the final blow came because of the first departure.

The failure in the wilderness is connected here with the Babylonian captivity, though a great number of years came in between. The whole thing failed there. Babylon was the necessary result of that failure in the wilderness.

The Israelites had not worshipped Jehovah for forty years in the wilderness; but they had carried symbols of Molech and Chiun (or Remphan) and worshipped them. The root of their idolatrous course was that they had never in heart made a clean break from Egypt.