Acts 7:15Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

"And he died, he and our fathers, and they were brought to Shechem." Abraham with his family and the patriarchs were buried in Shechem, which perhaps was called Sychema. Abraham himself purchased this place in order to bury Sarah.

Scripture relates only of Joseph that his bones were carried out of Egypt and buried in Shechem (Josh. 24:32).

Yet from these words of blessed Stephen, and from the writings of St. Jerome, who lived in those places, one may observe that the other patriarchs also were buried there.

Still, Joseph’s memory is deservedly more famous, because he himself commanded that this should happen to his bones, and the city itself belonged to his tribe.

Jerome says this in his account of blessed Paula: “She passed through Shechem, not Sychar, as many wrongly assert, which is now called Neapolis.

“From the side of Mount Gerizim she entered the church built beside Jacob’s well, where the Lord sat” (Jn 4:5-6).

And a little further on: “Turning from there, she saw the tombs of the twelve patriarchs.”

Likewise, in the book On the Best Method of Translating, Jerome says: “The twelve patriarchs were buried not in Arbok, but in Shechem.”

In the speech which Stephen delivered in the hall of the Sanhedrin, in answer to the high priest’s interrogation, he recalled before his judges the history of the people of God. He began with their forefather Abraham and ended with Solomon (vv. 1-50).

In conclusion he reproached the persecutors of Christians for their resistance to the Holy Spirit, Who was calling them to salvation (vv. 51-53).

Stephen’s speech is both defensive and accusatory. The accusation reported that he had spoken blasphemous words against the Law of Moses and the Jerusalem temple, and against Moses and God.

"And our fathers" means the sons of Jacob, who were called patriarchs above as the progenitors of the twelve tribes of Israel.

The death of the patriarchs and their burial in Shechem, in the place bought by Abraham, together with Stephen’s calling the patriarchs “our fathers,” shows the deep kinship of all the Jews.

Archdeacon Stephen evidently honored this kinship deeply. Therefore he considered it necessary to say that even in the joining of fathers to fathers, the great sacred unity of the God-chosen people was manifested.

At the same time, he did not keep silent about how little place of their own the patriarchs possessed. They were buried not quite in their own place, but in Shechem’s.

They, like Abraham, did not possess the promised land even to the extent of having a secure place to bury the dead, not even a foot’s breadth. For everything bought is less secure than what is given by God.