Part LXX on The Study of Galatians

Genesis 15:13
"And he said unto Abram, Know of a surety that thy seed (now here seed is plural, God is talking about the whole Nation of Israel.) shall be a stranger in a land that is not theirs, (speaking of Egypt) and shall serve them; (in slavery) and they shall afflict them four hundred years:"

Now let's come over to Exodus chapter 12:40.


Exodus 12:40-42a
"Now the sojourning of the children of Israel, who dwelt in Egypt, was four hundred and thirty years. 41. And it came to pass at the end of the four hundred and thirty years, even the selfsame day it came to pass, that all the hosts of the LORD went out from the land of Egypt. 42a It is a night to be much observed..."  Now that was the night of the Passover when Israel begins the exodus out of Egypt. Now we would like for us to come back to the Book of Acts chapter 7. Stephen in this chapter is rehearsing the whole history of Israel. Just like Paul does a little later on in the Book of Acts. 


Acts 7:6
"And God spake on this wise, That his seed (the offspring of Abraham) should sojourn in a strange land; and they should bring into bondage, and entreat them evil (not 430 but now it's) four hundred years."
Is that a contradiction? No! It's just simply a benchmark from where they measured time. Remember at Ur when God first spoke to Abraham it would seem that Abraham was at that time 50 years old. So he leaves Ur and migrates all the way up the Euphrates valley to this place in Syria call Haran. And there they stop until his father Terah dies. Then after Terah dies we find Abraham and Lot, and Sarah are now ready to move down into the land of Canaan. Now we can pretty much figure out from Scripture that when he left Haran he was 75 years old. So 25 years after the promise God made to Abraham, he still doesn't have a child. Now when we start going back on the chronology of all of this the 430 years we find that it begins from the time he left Haran and came down to Canaan until Moses led the children out in what we call the Exodus for a total of 430 years. Now the 400 years that Stephen spoke of is from the time that Isaac was 5 years old and Ishmael is sent out into the wilderness till Moses leads the people out. So it's just a matter of a benchmark of time. It depends on from what event we began counting. Are we going to start from Haran or when Isaac is 5 years old? Back to Galatians chapter 3 verse 18.