Acts 7:19
The same dealt subtilly with our kindred, and evil entreated our fathers, so that they cast out their young children, to the end they might not live. The same dealt subtilly with our kindred, and evil entreated our fathers, so that they cast out their young children, to the end they might not live.
Acts 7:19 is part of Stephen's defense before the council in answer to the charge of blasphemy, spoken in a clear, thrilling voice that held the assembly spellbound. Within that defense it belongs to a rehearsal of the history of the chosen people of God, beginning with Abraham and tracing down from generation to generation through the national records of Israel to Solomon. That rehearsal shows thorough knowledge of the Jewish economy and the spiritual interpretation of it now made manifest through Christ, taking up the most impressive points of that history to vindicate his cause.
The verse describes how the Egyptians dealt craftily with Israel's kindred and cruelly mistreated their fathers, ordering and forcing them to cast out and abandon their newborn children so that they would die. The prophetic evidence presented in Stephen's defense was also used afterward by Paul to show that Jesus was the Son of God. The verse belongs to Stephen's testimony and record that ended with his stoning, in which Saul acted a part by standing by consenting. Saul was a rabbi and statesman educated by Gamaliel and a member of the Sanhedrin, very zealous for the suppression of Christianity and making havoc of the church by entering every house and committing men and women to prison, until on the way to Damascus to arrest Christians he was stopped by a light from heaven and the voice of Jesus, was blinded and led by the hand into Damascus, and was converted to be called Paul, uniting with the disciples as chief among the apostles. Saul was not content to leave the people of God undisturbed after consenting to the stoning, but while uttering threats and slaughter against the disciples went out to persecute them.