Acts 7:15
So Jacob went down into Egypt; and he died, and our fathers.
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- Vulgate (Clementine)
- Et descendit Jacob in Ægyptum : et defunctus est ipse, et patres nostri.
- Greek New Testament (SBLGNT)
- καὶ κατέβη Ἰακὼβ εἰς Αἴγυπτον. καὶ ἐτελεύτησεν αὐτὸς καὶ οἱ πατέρες ἡμῶν,
The Fathers on this verse
St John Chrysostom A Commentary on the Acts of the Apostles, Homily XVI on Acts vii. 6, 7
See, what a number of years the Promise has been given, and the manner of the Promise, and nowhere sacrifice, nowhere circumcision! He here shows, how God Himself suffered them to be afflicted, not that He had anything to lay to their charge. “And they shall bring them into bondage,” etc. But nevertheless, they did not these things with impunity. “And the nation to whom they shall be in bondage I will judge, said God.” For, to show that they are not to go by this, in estimating who are pious (by reason of their saying, “He trusted in God, let Him deliver Him,”) ( Matt. xxvii. 43 ). He, the Same that promised, He that gave the land, first permits the evils. So also now, though He has promised a Kingdom, yet He suffers us to be exercised in temptations. …
St John Chrysostom A Commentary on the Acts of the Apostles, Homily XVI on Acts vii. 6, 7
“And God spake on this wise,” etc. (Recapitulation, v. 6, 7 .) This is suitable to be said here also: that God is rich in ways and means to bring us up from hence. For this above all showed the riches of God’s resources, that in its very reverses ( ἀποστροφῇ ) the nation increased, while enslaved, while evil-entreated, and sought to be exterminated. And this is the greatness of the Promise. For had it increased in its own land, it had not been so wonderful. And besides, it was not for a short time, either, that they were in the strange land: but for four hundred years. …
St Jerome The Letters of St. Jerome, To Pammachius on the Best Method of Translating
10. Luke the evangelist and companion of apostles describes Christ’s first martyr Stephen as relating what follows in a Jewish assembly. “With threescore and fifteen souls Jacob went down into Egypt, and died himself, and our fathers were carried over into Sychem, and laid in the sepulchre that Abraham bought for a sum of money of the sons of Emmor the father of Sychem.” In Genesis this passage is quite differently given, for it is Abraham that buys of Ephron the Hittite, the son of Zohar, near Hebron, for four hundred shekels of silver, a double cave, and the field that is about it, and that buries in it Sarah his wife. …
The Fathers are given as they wrote. Where a passage lays the Passion on the Jewish people, the Church teaches that it cannot be charged against all the Jews then living, nor against the Jews of today, and that all sinners were its authors (CCC 597, 598).