The man in the wrong did not want to be corrected, so he attacked Moses' right to speak. Barnes describes him as "filled with rage and passion," rejecting "all interference, and all attempts at peace." Barnes adds, "It is usually the man that does the injury that is unwilling to be reconciled." Matthew Henry says he "would not bear the reproof" and that "Proud and litigious spirits are impatient of check and control." His question meant: you have no office over us, so you have no say.

Moses gave no reply. The man went on with a second question about the Egyptian (Acts 7:28), and "Then fled Moses at this saying" (Acts 7:29). Stephen answers the question himself later in the speech. The one they refused, saying, "Who made thee a ruler and a judge?" was the very one "God send to be a ruler and a deliverer by the hand of the angel which appeared to him in the bush" (Acts 7:35).

Stephen is quoting Exodus 2:14, where the man asks, "Who made thee a prince and a judge over us?" The two Greek nouns in Acts 7:27 are archonta, a ruler or chief, and dikasten, a judge.

Moses had grown up as the son of Pharaoh's daughter and was "learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and was mighty in words and in deeds" (Acts 7:21-22). He had standing in Egypt, but no one among the Hebrews had given him any office over them.

The question has a true answer the man did not know: God made Moses ruler. Stephen presses this point in Acts 7:35, repeating the very question and answering it with God's sending.

Stephen also shows that this one man's response became the nation's pattern. The Greek verb for "thrust him away" here (aposato) appears again in Acts 7:39, where "our fathers would not obey, but thrust him from them" in the wilderness. What one man did in Egypt, the people did after the exodus. Stephen ends by telling the council, "as your fathers did, so do ye" (Acts 7:51).