Acts 5:11

Acts 5:11. And great fear came upon all the church, and upon as many as heard these things. Within and without the story was told. On the Church, in all the city and neighbourhood, on many an indifferent and careless citizen outside the Church's pale, fell the shadow of that great fear fear, however, in its best and noblest sense better, perhaps, expressed as ‘a deep awe.' ‘The rulers of the Jews,' says Bengel, ‘without doubt heard of these things, and yet they did not institute proceedings on that account against Peter.' The immediate effect within and without was one of the ends which the terrible judgment was intended to produce; it was not meant as an example of the way in which the varied communities of the Church of Jesus were to be governed in the future. As in the older dispensation the fire which consumed Nadab and Abihu burned no more after that first awful judgment, and the earth which opened to swallow up Korah and his impious company remained for ever closed, though seemingly worse acts dishonoured the Land of Promise, so the deaths of Ananias and Sapphira were never repeated: the mercy, not the severity of God, was henceforth shown to those men who professed His high service, and at times, alas I dishonoured it, in a way less visibly awful.

Such an event was in fact only possible then, in those first days, in the early morning of the faith, when the Spirit of the Lord ever dwelt with the disciples, when still every thought and act and word was prompted and guided by His sweet and blessed influence only possible when the old world love of self, bringing cheerless doubt and accursed deceit in its train, for the first time polluted that holy atmosphere.

The name Ananias is the same as Ananiah mentioned in the catalogue of the builders of the wall of Jerusalem (Nehemiah 3:23), and signifies the ‘cloud of gold,' or possibly is identical with Hananiah, one of the companions of Daniel (Daniel 1:6). The meaning of Hananiah is ‘mercy of God.' Sapphira is derived from the Greek σάπφειρος, sapphire, or directly from the Syriac שׂ פירא, beautiful.