Acts 7:33
And the Lord said to him: Loose the shoes from thy feet, for the place wherein thou standest, is holy ground.
Open Acts 7:33 in the Motif Searcher, word by word across all five texts →Show on the spiral →The verse in its languages
- Vulgate (Clementine)
- Dixit autem illi Dominus : Solve calceamentum pedum tuorum : locus enim in quo stas, terra sancta est.
- Greek New Testament (SBLGNT)
- εἶπεν δὲ αὐτῷ ὁ κύριος· Λῦσον τὸ ὑπόδημα τῶν ποδῶν σου, ὁ γὰρ τόπος ἐφʼ ᾧ ἕστηκας γῆ ἁγία ἐστίν.
Haydock's commentary
Loose the shoes. This was a method of testifying respect among the eastern nations. The Mahometans do not wear their shoes in their mosques. The Jewish priests served in the temple with their shoes off. The angel who appeared to Josue ordered him also to take off his shoes. (Josue v. 16.) If the apparition of an angel, or of God himself, could make the place and ground holy so as to deserve external signs of respect, and veneration from Moses; how much more the corporal birth, abode, and miracles of the Son of God in Jewry, and the blessed Sacrament, must make that country, and all Catholic chapels and altars, holy? Is it not then the height of blindness to tax with superstition, the reverence Christians pay to things or places, rendered holy by the presence, or wonderful operations of God.
From Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary, 1859, in the transcription made by Todd Easton and kept online by John Paul Wohlschied at johnblood.gitlab.io/haydock.
The Fathers on this verse
St John Chrysostom A Commentary on the Acts of the Apostles, Homily XVI on Acts vii. 6, 7
“And when forty years were expired, there appeared to him in the wilderness of mount Sinai an angel of the Lord in a flame of fire in a bush.” ( v. 30 .) Do you mark that it is not hindered by lapse of time? For when he was an exile, when a stranger, when he had now passed much time in a foreign land, so as to have two sons, when he no longer expected to return, then does the Angel appear to him. The Son of God he calls an Angel, as also he calls Him man. (Appears) in the desert, not in a temple. See how many miracles are taking place, and no word of Temple, no word of Sacrifice. And here also not simply in the desert, but in the bush. “When Moses saw it, he wondered at the sight: and as he drew near to behold it, the voice of the Lord came unto him.” ( v. 31 .) Lo! he was deemed worthy of the Voice also. …