KJV - 1 But a certain man named Ananias, with Sapphira his wife, sold a possession, 2 And kept back part of the price, his wife also being privy to it, and brought a certain part, and laid it at the apostles' feet. 3 But Peter said, Ananias, why hath Satan filled thine heart to lie to the Holy Ghost, and to keep back part of the price of the land? 4 Whiles it remained, was it not thine own? and after it was sold, was it not in thine own power? why hast thou conceived this thing in thine heart? thou hast not lied unto men, but unto God. 5 And Ananias hearing these words fell down, and gave up the ghost: and great fear came on all them that heard these things.

NRSV - 1 But a man named Ananias, with the consent of his wife Sapphira, sold a piece of property; 2 with his wife's knowledge, he kept back some of the proceeds, and brought only a part and laid it at the apostles' feet. 3 "Ananias," Peter asked, "why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and to keep back part of the proceeds of the land? 4 While it remained unsold, did it not remain your own? And after it was sold, were not the proceeds at your disposal? How is it that you have contrived this deed in your heart? You did not lie to us but to God!" 5 Now when Ananias heard these words, he fell down and died. And great fear seized all who heard of it.

TEV - "Ananias and Sapphira" - 1 But there was a man named Ananias, who with his wife Sapphira sold some property that belonged to them. 2 But with his wife's agreement he kept part of the money for himself and turned the rest over to the apostles. 3 Peter said to him, "Ananias, why did you let Satan take control of you and make you lie to the Holy Spirit by keeping part of the money you received for the property? 4 Before you sold the property, it belonged to you; and after you sold it, the money was yours. Why, then, did you decide to do such a thing? You have not lied to men -- you have lied to God!" 5 As soon as Ananias heard this, he fell down dead; and all who heard about it were terrified. 6 The young men came in, wrapped up his body, carried him out, and buried him.

BibleTexts.com Commentary

by Robert Nguyen Cramer

There is much evidence that in the early Christian period, sharing money and other property with the Christian community was normal and entirely voluntary. To further explore early Christian practices regarding sharing, browse http://www.bibletexts.com/terms/sharing.htm.

According to this account Ananias' misdeed was the deceitful motive and method by which he withheld part of the proceeds of the sale of a particular piece of his property. He previously had committed "to the Holy Spirit" to selling off and to giving the entire proceeds to the Christian community. Then by misrepresenting himself to the church as righteously having completely fulfilled his commitment, he not only had lied to Peter and the church, but worst of all he had "lied to God."

Additional detailed commentaries from a variety of perspectives on these verses are found below.

Anchor Bible: The Acts of the Apostles

by Johannes Munch (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1967, page 40-41)

v 1-2. A married couple, Ananias and Sapphira, names in common use at the time, sold a plot of land, but without telling anybody they put aside for their own use part of the sum received, before they brought the remainder to the apostles. A just parallel is that of Achan who, according to Josh. vii 1 ff., misappropriated (here the same Greek word is used in the LXX [the Greek Septuagint Old Testament, the Bible used by the earliest Christian church]) what had been dedicated to God and was killed together with his family.

3-6. In receiving the gift of money, Peter accused Ananias of having been lured by Satan into lying against the Holy Spirit (cf. vs. 9) and keeping back part of the money for the field. He had full possession of his land and the money paid for it at the sale. For the primitive church sinning against the Holy Spirit is the greatest sin. It would be forgiven neither in this world nor in the world to come (Matt xii 31-32 par.). Satan was behind this sin just as it was he who had entered into Judas Iscariot before the betrayal ( Luk xxii 3; John xii 2, 27). This was also the reason why church discipline was mainted by handing the guilty one over to Satan (I Cor v 5); in Acts there is no mention -- as there was in I Cor v -- of the possibility of salvation for the guilty one. In Corinth, death had snatched several people away because they had taken part unworthily in the Holy Communion (I Cor xi 27-30). With regard to this matter, see also Paul's severe words in II Cor xii 2-7.

HarperCollins Bible Commentary, Revised Edition

edited by James L. Mays with the Society of Biblical Literature (SF: HarperCollins, 2000, page 993-994)

...Their [Ananias' and Sapphira's] fatal mistake was in their failure to recognize the church as a Spirit-filled community and in failing to see that deceiving the church -- and themselves -- was tantamount to deceiving the Spirit...

The Acts of the Apostles: A Commentary

by Ernst Haenchen (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1971, pages 236-241)

This story seems an exact parallel of Achan's (Joshua, Ch. 7); like him Ananias has misappropriated something which belongs to God (part of the promised money) and is punished with death for it. Here, however, it is not a question of booty consecrated to Yahweh [Jehovah, the Lord], but of a voluntary gift of money to the community, and Ananias is not stoned by the the community but Peter's accusation causes him to fall dead. The end of his wife Sapphira resembles Achan's more closely: Peter kills her by announcing her husband's demise and her own imminent death... [Hans Hinrich] Wendt [in his book, Die Apostelgeschichte] has already asked (p. 121) why Peter did not give the couple a chance (after all, according to Matt. 18:15 one first talks to the sinner in private: the questions coram publico in verses 3 and 8 are anything but a 'last chance' offer!). [C.V.] Rieu [in his book, The Acts of the Apostles] accordingly accuses Peter outright: what he did was a sin, at least by the standard of Jesus, who did not kill Judas at the Last Supper! [P.H.] Menoud [in Aux Sources de la Tradition Chretienne] therefore (p. 153f.) takes this story to be a legend: Ananias and Sapphira were the first persons to die in the primitive community; people had forgotten the cause of their death, but legend insisted on knowing, and Luke connected it with the communal-property system... [J.] Schmitt [in his book] finds the Sitz im Leben: it was a cautionary tale told to the newly-baptized for catechetic purposes, to make it clear that God watches over the purity of the community and exacts vengeance for its violation...

Schmitt too is right in detecting a cautionary tale in this episode. Whatever did occur, it could not have developed in the way reported by verses 6-11. That after three hours the Apostles should still be sitting as before, with the money at their feet, is the least objection to be made. But that the Christiains should simply have buried the corpse of Ananias, without a word to his wife -- even if this is indispensable to Sapphira's own story -- sins against all objective and subjective plausibility.

The story of Ananias himself is another matter: it presupposes that a Christian filled with the Spirit has the power of looking into the heart of a sinner (cf. I Cor. 14:24f.) and that a deceiver so convicted simply collapses at the exposure of his guilt. Why should the traditions of the Jerusalem community not have contained such a story? If they did, however, there is no denying that Luke must have reworked an already expanded version, bringing the theme of 'not men, but God' to the fore. The original story probably closed with the judgment which befell the sinner and its effect on those who heard it. It was not concerned with what became of the corpse. All that mattered has been said: God visits a dreadful vengeance on deceivers. With that the narrative has reached its goal.

The New International Commentary on the New Testament: The Book of the Acts

by F.F. Bruce (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1979, pages 110-116)

The story of Ananias is to the book of Acts what the story of Achan is to the book of Joshua. In both narratives an act of deceit interrupts the victorious progress of the people of God. It may be that the author of Acts himself wished to point this comparison...

The incident of Ananias and Sapphira is felt by many readers to present a stumblingblock partly ethical and partly intellectual. The intellectual difficulty is not really so great as is commonly supposed. We know very little about the private beliefs of Ananias and his wife, but at a certain stage of religious awareness sudden death is a well-known sequel to the realization that one has unwittingly infringed a taboo... As for the following death of Sapphira, .. we must consider that she sustained the added shock of learning of her husband's sudden death...

A much more serious matter is the impression which the narrative gives us of the personality of Peter. It is absurd to try to make him directly responsible for the death of the couple, but his language to them, or more particularly to Sapphira, has seemed to many readers to reflect the spirit of Elijah calling down fire from heaven on the soldiers who came to arrest him, or Elisha pronouncing sentence of perpetual leprosy on Gehazi, than the spirit of their Master. "It could not of course be laid as a charge against St. Peter that after his stern rebuke of Ananias the offender fell down dead suddenly, though one would have expected St. Peter in future to be more careful in rebuking the sinful members of the congregation..." (L.E. Browne...).

What this narrative does emphasize is the reality of the Holy Spirit's indwelling presence in the church, and the solemn practical implications of that fact. So early was it necessary to enforce the lesson later formulated by Paul: "Know ye not that ye are a temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you? If any man destroyeth the temple of God, him shall God destroy; for the temple of God is holy, and such are ye" (1 Cor. 3:16f.).

The incident shows us, too, that even in the earliest days the church was not a society of perfect people. The narrator refuses to idealize this picture of the primitive community, and lest his readers should over-estimate the unity and sanctity of the the Christian body in those early days, he has put on record here one of those accounts which not only illustrate the honest realism of the Bible but serve as salutary warnings to its readers.

1-2 ... Two members of the community, Ananias and his wife Sapphira, like many other members, sold a piece of land which they possessed. They retained part of the price for their private use (as they had every right to do), and Ananias brought the balance to the apostles to be used for community purposes, but represented this balance as being the total purchase-price that they had received.

3-4 Peter, perceiving the truth of the situation, broke out upon Ananias in words which conveyed to the wretched man the enormity of his sin. Sharp practice in the ordinary commerce of life was as common then as now, but a higher ethical standard must prevail among the followers of Christ. Ananias, in the effort to gain a reputation for greater generosity than he actually deserved, tried to deceive the believing community, but in trying to deceive the community he was really trying to deceive the Holy Spirit, whose life-giving power had created the community and maintained it in being. So real was the apostles' appreciation of the presence and authority of the Spirit in their midst. A lie told to Peter as private man would have been relatively venial, but this -- whether Annias knew it or not -- was a lie told to God, something suggested by none other than the great adversary [Satan] of God and man...

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