Machpelah
13 for his sons carried him [Jacob] to the land of Canaan and buried him in the cave of the field of Machpelah before Mamre, which Abraham had bought along with the field for a burial site from Ephron the Hittite.
NASB Genesis 50:13
Shechem
15 And Jacob went down to Egypt and there he and our fathers died.
16 From there they were removed to Shechem and laid in the tomb which Abraham had purchased for a sum of money from the sons of Hamor in Shechem.
NASB Acts 7:15-16
The Problem
Jacob was buried in Machpelah according to Moses (Genesis), but according to Stephen (Acts) it seems that he was buried in Shechem. What now?
Correct translation
Acts 7:15 "And Jacob went down to Egypt and he died; likewise/also our fathers 16 and they were removed to Shechem and laid in the tomb which Abraham had purchased for a sum of money from the sons of Hamor in Shechem."
– In most translations (as in NASBu) ‘died’ is a plural form, but in the Greek ‘died’ is a singular form with ‘Jacob’ as subject, not ‘Jacob and the fathers’ as subject. And so ‘they were removed’ refers to the last mentioned plural form, i.e. ‘the fathers’ and not to ‘Jacob and the fathers’. That’s all. This mistake was made in the King James Version first.
Lack of Courage
Most translators thereafter lacked the courage to break away from this old and respected version of the Bible and so we inherited an old problem. Anyway, it is said here in Acts that only the sons of Jacob were buried in a sepulchre which was bought earlier by Abraham. This is not strange, as Abraham had many people in his clan and he needed several burial places in the land. These included others in addition to Machpelah where Rachel was buried and also Jacob later on.
Answering the Skeptic
A Bible Contradiction? Yes in many versions of the Bible, but not in the original text of Acts. Jacob was buried in Machpelah, not in Shechem.
No Bible Contradiction