and kept back part of the price, his wife also being aware of it, then brought a certain part and laid it at the apostles’ feet.
ExplanationCommentary
Verse 2. By fraud kept part. [1] Ananias, and his wife Saphira, had made a promise or vow, to put into the common stock the price of what they had to sell. When they had sold the field, they resolved by mutual consent to keep for their private use part of the money, and to bring in the rest, as if they had received no more. The whole price being promised, and by that means consecrated to God, Saint Augustine calls it a sacrilegious fraud, and Saint John Chrysostom a theft of what was already made sacred to God. Witham.