Acts 5:5

ταῦτα omitted with אABD. So also Vulg. and other versions.

5. ἀκούων. The present tense seems to indicate the immediate result of the Apostle’s words, spoken in the power of the Spirit with which he was filled. Here is no description of a death from apoplexy or mental excitement under the rebuke of the Apostle, but a direct intervention of the divine power.

Terrible as this divine judgment was, we cannot wonder that it should be inflicted, for it was so done to check that kind of offence which brought in all the troubles of the early Church, and which though they be not so punished now, when Christ’s Church has attained more firm hold on the world, yet would, if not terribly visited in these earlier days, have overthrown the whole work of the Apostles. Of a like character is the apparent severity of the penalty inflicted on Aaron’s sons, Nadab and Abihu, at the commencement of the Jewish priesthood (Leviticus 10:2); and the way in which Aaron and his family are forbidden to mourn for those whom God so punished may teach us what interpretation to put upon the judgment inflicted on Ananias and Sapphira. For they were of the members of the infant Church; they had presumed to come nigh unto God and in a wrong spirit. On them, we may conclude, some gifts had been bestowed, and in this they differed from Simon Magus (Acts 8:20) and Elymas (Acts 13:11), with whom they are sometimes compared. So that the words which God spake of Nadab and Abihu may be used of these offenders, ‘I will be sanctified in them that come nigh Me.’ We see what evils the spirit of greed and hypocrisy wrought in the Corinthian Church, even to the profanation of the Lord’s Supper (1 Corinthians 11:17-21). Every good institution would have been thus perverted and, as is said of some in later times (Jude 1:4), they would have ‘turned the grace of God into lasciviousness.’ The very community of goods which here was instituted for a time, was in this way perverted and turned into an argument for a community of all things, which resulted in the vices for which the Nicolaitans are so severely censured (Revelation 2:6; Revelation 2:15). The death of Ananias and his wife is the finger of God interposed to save His Church from danger, just as He interposed to build it up by stretching forth His hand to heal, and that through the name of His Servant Jesus mighty works might be wrought by the first preachers.

ἐξέψυξεν, gave up the ghost, ἐκψύχω is not classical, but is found in LXX. (of some MSS.) in Judges 4:21 and in Ezekiel 21:7. It is only used in the N.T. concerning the death of this husband and wife, and of the end of Herod Agrippa (Acts 12:23), but is found Acta Andr. et Matth. Apocr. 19 used of men suddenly falling down dead.

φόβος μέγας. A great fear, which would deter those who were not sincere from making a profession of Christianity. This result would help the stability of the young community, which would have been sorely hindered by hypocritical members.