Section 5:1–11
God judged Ananias and Sapphira
In this section Ananias and Sapphira sold some land. They kept some of the money for themselves and gave the rest to the apostles. First Ananias went to Peter. The context seems to imply that he lied to Peter and said it was the whole amount. The Holy Spirit told Peter what Ananias had done and Peter rebuked him. Immediately Ananias died by the hand of God. Later Sapphira lied to Peter and he rebuked her. Immediately she died. The rest of the believers became very afraid.
Here are other possible headings for this section:
Ananias and Sapphira lied to the Holy Spirit and died
-or-
Ananias and Sapphira’s bad example
Paragraph 5:1–2
5:1
It is not known how much time after Barnabas sold his land (4:36–37) that Ananias and Sapphira sold their land. Also, you should not begin this verse with “Therefore.”
Now: The Greek word here often indicates contrast. The deeds of Ananias and his wife in 5:1–2 clearly contrast with what Barnabas did in 4:36–37. For example:
But (Good News Translation)
Here the English word Now introduces a new part of the story. It does not mean “at this moment” here.
a man named Ananias: The Greek is more literally “a certain man, Ananias by name.” It indicates that Ananias was a new person in this story. For example:
there was a man named Ananias (Good News Translation)
also sold: The Berean Standard Bible adds the word also. It indicates that this was the second example of someone selling property and giving the money to the apostles. The first example is in Acts 4:36–37.
a piece of property: This phrase is an idiom that refers to some amount of land. It does not say how much. It may have been only a part of all of his land but this phrase does not tell us that. Here are some other ways to translate this phrase:
some land (New Century Version)
-or-
some property (New Living Translation (2004))
-or-
an amount of land
-or-
a property (New Jerusalem Bible)
© 2001, 2021 by SIL International®
Made available under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License (CC BY-SA) creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0.
All Scripture quotations in this publication, unless otherwise indicated, are from The Holy Bible, Berean Standard Bible.
BSB is produced in cooperation with Bible Hub, Discovery Bible, OpenBible.com, and the Berean Bible Translation Committee.