A False Gift and an Empty Prison

Ananias is the Hebrew Hananiah, “the LORD is gracious”, and Sapphira is Aramaic for beautiful, a name found on ossuaries in Jerusalem. “Possession” is ktema, a piece of property; verse 3 calls it land. The opening “But” sets the couple directly against Barnabas.

“Kept back” is nosphizomai, to pilfer or embezzle, the verb the Greek Old Testament uses of Achan, who secretly kept part of the plunder devoted to God at Jericho (Joshua 7:1). Both accounts stand at the start of a new life for God’s people, and both end in death. “Privy” means she knew and shared the plan.

“Filled” is the verb of 4:31, “they were all filled with the Holy Ghost”. Two fillings stand side by side, as when Satan entered Judas at the start of the passion (Luke 22:3). “Keep back” repeats the embezzling verb of verse 2.

Peter says “lie to the Holy Ghost” in verse 3 and “lied... unto God” here, and Basil of Caesarea later used the pair to argue that the Spirit is God. “Conceived this thing in thine heart” is literally “put this deed in your heart”, the Hebrew idiom for resolving on a plan.

“Gave up the ghost” is ekpsycho, to breathe one’s last, a verb the New Testament uses only three times: of Ananias, of Sapphira in verse 10, and of Herod Agrippa, struck down by an angel in 12:23. All three deaths are presented as God’s judgment.

Burial on the day of death was the custom in Jerusalem, often within hours, without a coffin. “Wound him up” is systello, to wrap or shroud. “The young men” may be the younger members acting as a matter of course. No lament is recorded, in contrast to the “great lamentation” made over Stephen (8:2).

Three hours was long enough to carry a body out of the city to a tomb and return. Nobody in the community has told his wife. She walks in not knowing that she is already a widow, and in time to be asked a question.

“For so much” is tosoutou, “for this much”, which reads as if Peter names or points to the sum that had been laid down. The question gives her a chance to tell the truth that her husband was never directly offered; she repeats the figure.

“Agreed together” is symphoneo, the root of “symphony”: they sounded together, in tune with one another. “Tempt” is to put to the test, as Israel tested the LORD at Massah, “Is the LORD among us, or not?” (Exodus 17:7), a place Deuteronomy 6:16 forbids repeating.

“Straightway” is parachrema, the word Luke uses for instant healings (Luke 4:39; 5:25), and the word for the lame man’s ankles strengthening in 3:7. The same immediacy that marked the first healing marks this judgment. She falls at Peter’s feet, where the money had been laid.

The Greek Old Testament uses ekklesia for the assembly of Israel gathered before God, as on “the day of the assembly” at Sinai (Deuteronomy 9:10), while in Greek cities it meant the citizens’ assembly (19:39). The fear that fell on the first assembly of the Book of Acts is this one.

The believers had prayed for God to stretch out his hand “that signs and wonders may be done” (4:30); here they are, “by the hands of the apostles”. The King James puts the rest of this verse and the next two in brackets, an aside about the community before the healing scenes resume.

“Join himself” is kollao, to glue or stick fast, the verb used when Philip is told to “join thyself to this chariot” (8:29) and when Saul “assayed to join himself to the disciples” (9:26). Who “the rest” are is debated: outsiders in general, or, as some suggest, the rulers.

The Book of Acts takes care to name women among the converts (8:12; 17:4, 12), where the count in 4:4 was given in men. The Greek can also be read “believers in the Lord were added”, which is how many modern versions take it.

“Overshadow” is episkiazo, the verb of the Spirit overshadowing Mary (Luke 1:35) and of the cloud at the transfiguration (Luke 9:34). The “couches” are krabattoi, the poor man’s pallet, like the one the paralytic took up and carried (Mark 2:11). Handkerchiefs from Paul will be carried to the sick in 19:12.

“Vexed” is ochleo, to trouble or harass, built on ochlos, a crowd, as if the unclean spirits were a mob pressing on the sufferer. Luke used the same phrase of the crowds who came to Jesus from Judaea and the coast of Tyre and Sidon (Luke 6:18).

“Sect” is hairesis, a school or party, used neutrally in the Book of Acts of the Sadducees, of the Pharisees (15:5; 26:5), and of the believers themselves, “the sect of the Nazarenes” (24:5). Only later did it come to mean heresy. “Indignation” is zelos, zeal or jealousy.

“Common prison” can also be read “put them publicly in prison”: the Greek demosia is either the public jail or the public manner of the arrest. This time all the apostles are taken, not only Peter and John.

The Sadducees, who led this arrest, said there was no angel (23:8), and it is an angel who opens their prison. “The angel of the Lord” is an Old Testament phrase that Luke uses in the birth accounts (Luke 1:11; 2:9); in Acts the angel will open a prison again for Peter (12:7).

“Stand” is stathentes, take your stand, deliberately and in plain view. “All the words of this life” means the message of life through resurrection, the very thing the Sadducees deny, much as Peter once said to Jesus, “thou hast the words of eternal life” (John 6:68).

“Early in the morning” is literally at daybreak, when the temple gates opened and people came for the morning prayers. “The senate” is gerousia, the council of elders, found only here in the New Testament; the “and” probably explains the council rather than adding a second body.

The “officers” are hyperetai, the attendants who served the council and the temple, the word Luke uses for the synagogue attendant who took the scroll back from Jesus at Nazareth (Luke 4:20). They go to fetch prisoners and come back with a report instead.

The Book of Acts will tell a similar escape in chapter 12, with chains, guards and gates all still in place. There Herod examines the keepers and has them put to death (12:19). Here the guards are left standing outside an empty cell and the Book of Acts says nothing of their fate.

“Whereunto this would grow” is literally “what this would become”. At Pentecost the bewildered crowd asked “what meaneth this?” (2:12), and now the rulers, with the same bewilderment, ask where it will end.

The report uses the angel’s word: the men are “standing” in the temple, exactly as they were told to “go, stand and speak” (verse 20). The messenger is anonymous, and the prisoners have hidden nowhere.

The officers fear being stoned by the crowd. Two chapters later the stones will fly at a believer instead, when Stephen is dragged out of the city (7:58). For now public favour protects the apostles.

Joachim Jeremias argued that later Jewish law required a formal warning before a first offence could be punished, so that chapter 4 served as the warning and this second hearing could impose penalties. Whether that rule applied this early is disputed, but the escalation fits the pattern.

The high priest again avoids the name: “this name”, “this man”. Several manuscripts read the first clause as a statement, “We straitly commanded you”, rather than a question. The fear of “this man’s blood upon us” echoes the cry in Matthew 27:25, “His blood be on us, and on our children.”

“Obey” is peitharcheo, a verb for obeying a ruler or an authority, the word Paul uses when he tells Titus that believers should “obey magistrates” (Titus 3:1). The apostles take the ordinary vocabulary of civic duty and aim it at God.

“Hanged on a tree” is the language of Deuteronomy 21:22-23, which says “he that is hanged is accursed of God”; Peter uses it again in 10:39, and Paul quotes the curse in Galatians 3:13. “Slew” is diacheirizomai, to lay violent hands on, used only here and in 26:21.

Stephen will call Moses “a ruler and a deliverer” (7:35), a close pair to “a Prince and a Saviour” here. Repentance is spoken of as something God gives, not only something he demands, and it is given “to Israel”, the council’s own people.

The Law required two or three witnesses to establish a matter (Deuteronomy 19:15). The apostles name themselves and the Holy Ghost as their pair. “Them that obey him” uses peitharcheo again, the verb of verse 29: those who obey God, not men, have the Spirit.

“Cut to the heart” is diaprio, literally sawn in two, a word used only here and of Stephen’s hearers in 7:54. At Pentecost the hearers were “pricked”, stabbed, and asked what to do; here they are sawn through with rage and plan a killing.

This is Gamaliel the Elder, by tradition a grandson of Hillel, at whose feet Paul was trained (22:3). The Mishnah says that when he died “the glory of the Law ceased” (Sotah 9:15). “Doctor of the law” is nomodidaskalos, teacher of the Law.

Gamaliel uses the same address Peter used to the crowds, “Ye men of Israel” (2:22; 3:12). “Take heed to yourselves” turns the question away from what the apostles deserve to what the council is about to do to itself.

Josephus tells of a Theudas who led a crowd to the Jordan, claiming he would divide it, and was beheaded under the governor Cuspius Fadus, about AD 44-46, some ten years after this speech. Either Gamaliel means an earlier Theudas, a common enough name, or there is a problem of dating; scholars are divided.

Judas of Galilee led a revolt against the census of Quirinius in AD 6, which Josephus describes as the start of a “fourth philosophy” that fed the later Zealots. “Taxing” is apographe, registration, the word of Luke 2:2. His sons Jacob and Simon were later crucified, so the movement had not entirely perished.

“Come to nought” is kataluo, to dissolve or pull down, the verb used of destroying the temple (Mark 14:58). The Greek sets the two conditions differently: “if it be of men” is a hypothetical, while “if it be of God” in the next verse uses a form closer to “if, as may be the case”. Some read Gamaliel as leaning.

“Fight against God” is one word, theomachoi, God-fighters, found only here in the New Testament. It comes from Greek tragedy: in Euripides’ Bacchae, Pentheus is called a theomachos for resisting the god Dionysus, and it ends badly for him.

The beating was probably the synagogue flogging of the Law, limited to forty stripes, and in practice thirty-nine (Deuteronomy 25:3). Paul would later write that he received it five times from the Jews (2 Corinthians 11:24). The council accepts Gamaliel’s advice about killing and ignores its spirit.

The Greek is a deliberate paradox: they were “counted worthy to be dishonoured”, katexiothesan atimasthenai, honoured with disgrace. The best manuscripts read simply “for the Name”, with no “his”, the absolute use that echoes the Jewish reverent way of speaking of God as “the Name”.

The last clause can be read “proclaiming the good news that the Christ is Jesus”, which makes the content an identification: the long-awaited Messiah has a name. “Ceased not” is in the imperfect, a practice that kept going day after day, and it answers the command of verse 40 without a word.