<p>7:24<i>And seeing one of them suffer wrong, he defended him, and avenged him that was oppressed</i>- It was God who delivered Israel from their Egyptian oppressors (1 Sam. 10:18); but He did so through Moses. Yet Israel would only be oppressed by Gentiles if they were disobedient to the covenant (Dt. 28:29,33, and the word is often used about their punishments at Gentile hands during the period of the judges). But despite that, the God of all grace through Moses avenged His people who were justly suffering for their sins. Stephen is seeking to remove from Israel any sense of national pride at their Exodus from Egypt, and instead see it as a parade example of God's pure grace through the raising up of a Saviour in Moses, who looked ahead to Messiah. And yet the profound truth was that it was through the 'oppression' of that Messianic Suffering Servant on the cross that Israel's salvation would be enabled (Is. 53:7). And no wonder then that the brief summary of the Gospel in Acts 10:38 uses the word to summarize the work of the Lord Jesus as delivering the oppressed. Stephen, or the Lord speaking through Stephen, was appealing to the audience on all levels. There were many Rabbinic-trained minds there like Saul's, who thought constantly on the level of Scriptural allusion, type and antitype. And these words of Stephen, spoken in perhaps his last minutes of mortal life, succeeded in converting at least Saul.</p><p><em>Striking the Egyptian</em>- The same word used of how the Jews 'smote' the Lord with death (Mt. 26:31). The point is being developed, as with the language of 'oppression', that it was through the Lord's smiting that He smote the oppressors of His people.</p>