This question completes the thought of Acts 7:49. "All these things" are heaven and earth, just named as God's throne and footstool. If God's own hand made them all, nothing people build can serve as His home. Barnes asks, "What house or temple can be large or magnificent enough for the dwelling of Him who made all things?" Gill takes "all these things" as the heaven and the earth "and all that is in them," and draws the conclusion: "what can be made for God?" For a council zealous for "this holy place" (Acts 6:13), the question moved attention from the building to the Builder. It also showed that Stephen's view of the temple came from their own prophet, not from blasphemy.

The answer is plain: yes, God's hand made all things. In Isaiah the same truth is stated outright: "For all those things hath mine hand made" (Isaiah 66:2). Stephen does not pause for a reply. He moves straight to his charge: "Ye stiffnecked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, ye do always resist the Holy Ghost: as your fathers did, so do ye" (Acts 7:51). The council responded with rage, then "cast him out of the city, and stoned him" (Acts 7:54, 58).

In Isaiah 66:2 these words are a statement, not a question. Stephen gives them as a question, which presses the hearer to answer for himself. Barnes says that in this quotation "the sense is given" rather than the exact wording. Gill mentions that the Arabic version (an early Arabic translation of the New Testament) renders the phrase "all these creatures." The accusation Stephen faced was that he had said Jesus would "destroy this place" and "change the customs which Moses delivered us" (Acts 6:14).

God is the Maker, and everything else is made. That is the simple truth this question rests on. Matthew Henry draws out what it means for worship: "as heaven is his throne, and the earth his footstool, so none of our services can profit Him who made all things." God does not need what we build or bring.

Yet Isaiah's sentence does not stop there. It goes on: "but to this man will I look, even to him that is poor and of a contrite spirit, and trembleth at my word" (Isaiah 66:2). Henry puts it this way: "Next to the human nature of Christ, the broken and spiritual heart is his most valued temple." The God who cannot be housed by heaven and earth chooses to look upon a humble heart.