Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadHeinrich Meyer Commentary - Acts 5:1 - 5:10
(Show All Books | Show All Chapters)
This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
Act_5:1-10. Ananias ( çÂðÇðÀéÈä , God pities; Jer_28:1; Dan_1:6; LXX. Tob_5:12[163]) and Sapphira, however, acted quite otherwise. They attempted in deceitful hypocrisy to abuse the community of goods, which, nevertheless, was simply permissive (Act_5:4). For by the sale of the piece of land and the bringing of the money, they in fact declared the whole sum to be a gift of brotherly love to the common stock; but they aimed only at securing for themselves the semblance of holy loving zeal by a portion of the price, and had selfishly embezzled the remainder for themselves. They wished to serve two masters, but to appear to serve only one. With justice, Augustine designates the act as sacrilegium (“quod Deum in pollicitatione fefellerit”) and fraus.
The sudden death of both is to be regarded as a result directly effected through the will of the apostle, by means of the miraculous power imparted to him; and not as a natural stroke of paralysis, independent of Peter, though taking place by divine arrangement (so Ammon, Stolz, Heinrichs, and others). For, apart from the supposition, in this case necessary, of a similar susceptibility in husband and wife for such an impression of sudden terror, the whole narrative is opposed to it; especially Act_5:9, the words of which Peter could only have uttered with the utmost presumption, if he had not the consciousness that his own will was here active. If we should take Act_5:9 to be a mere threat, to which Peter found himself induced by an inference from the fate of Ananias, this would be merely an unwarranted alteration of the simple meaning of the words, and would not diminish the presumptuousness of a threat so expressed. Nearly allied to this natural explanation is the view mingling the divine and the natural, and taking half from each, given by Neander (the holy earnestness of the apostolic words worked so powerfully on the terrified conscience), and by Olshausen (the word of Peter pierced like a sword the alarmed Ananias, and thus his death was the marvel arranged by a higher disposing power). But this view is directly opposed to the contents and the design of the whole representation. According to Baur, nothing remains historical in the whole narrative except that Ananias and his wife had, by their covetousness, made their names so hated, “that people believed that they could see only a divine judgment in their death, in whatever way it occurred;” all the rest is to be explained from the design of representing the πνεῦμα ἅγιον as the divine principle working in the apostles. Comp. Zeller, who, however, despairs of any more exact ascertainment of the state of the case. Baumgarten, as also Lange (comp. Ewald), agrees in the main with Neander; whilst de Wette is content with sceptical questions, although recognising the miraculous element so far as the narrative is concerned. Catholics have used this history in favour of the two swords of the Pope.
The severity of the punishment, with which Porphyry reproached Peter (Jerome, Epp. 8), is justified by the consideration, that here was presented the first open venture of deliberate wickedness, as audacious as it was hypocritical, against the principle of holiness ruling in the church, and particularly in the apostles; and the dignity of that principle, hitherto unoffended, at once required its full satisfaction by the infliction of death upon the violators, by which “awe-inspiring act of divine church-discipline” (Thiersch, Kirche im apost. Zeitalt. p. 46), at the same time, the authority of the apostles, placed in jeopardy, was publicly guaranteed in its inviolableness (“ut poena duorum hominum sit doctrina multorum,” Jerome).
ἐνοσφίσ .] he put aside for himself, purloined. Tit_2:10; 2Ma_4:32; Jos_7:1; Xen. Cyr. iv. 2. 42; Pind. Nem. vi. 106; Valck. p. 395 f.
ἈΠῸ Τ . ΤΙΜῆς ] sc. τι . See Fritzsche, Conject. p. 36; Buttm. neut. Gr. p. 139 [E. T. 159]. Comp. Athen. vi. p. 234 A: νοσφ . ἐκ τοῦ χρήματος .
[163] It may, however, be the Hebrew name òÂðÇðÀéÈä (Neh_3:23, LXX.), i.e. God covers.—The name Σαπφείρη is apparently the Aramaic ùôéøà , formosa. Derived from the Greek σάπφειρος , sapphire, it would have probably been Σαπφειρίνη .