5:2a
With his wife’s full knowledge: The Greek is more literally “the wife also knew with (him).” This indicates that Ananias’ wife knew the same thing about the money from the sale of the land that Ananias did. Here are some other ways to translate this phrase:
his wife also knew
-or-
his wife also knew ⌊this:⌋
5:8 indicates that she knew that Ananias kept back a part of the money and that he would lie to Peter about part of the money being the whole amount.
he kept back some of the proceeds for himself: The Greek is more literally “he put aside from the price/value.” This Greek verb indicates that Ananias did something wrong in regard to the price of the land.
It is clear from 5:2b that he kept part of the money for himself. 5:3a also tells us that Ananias lied to the Holy Spirit, which implies that he lied to Peter. It was clear how much money he gave to Peter. So the lie must have been that he told Peter that the money in front of him was the whole amount from the sale of the land. In that way he was doing something wrong about what he said was the price of the land.
Here are some other ways to translate this clause:
he removed part of the money for himself
-or-
he divided the amount and hid part of it
5:2b
but: The Greek word can also mean “and.” In many languages 5:2b would not be considered to contrast to 5:2a. For example:
and (Revised Standard Version)
brought a portion: The Greek is more literally “bringing a certain part.” It indicates that Ananias brought some of the money from the sale of the land. The word “certain” here indicates that how much of a part (like ‘half’ or ‘quarter’) is not stated. Here are some other ways to translate this:
brought a certain part (King James Version)
-or-
brought only a part (Revised Standard Version)
laid it at the apostles’ feet: This clause indicates that Ananias put the money under the control of the apostles. See how you translated this clause in 4:37.
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