What Does Acts 5:4 Mean?
While it remained with you, was it not yours? And when it was sold, was it not in your own power? Why have you set this deed in your heart? You have not lied to humankind, but to God.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
Whiles it remained, was it not thine own? and after it was sold, was it not in thine own power? why hast thou conceived this thing in thine heart? thou hast not lied unto men, but unto God.THE KEY
The verse locates the breach not in keeping what is yours, but in setting a lie within your heart.
THE MEANING
Your choice over what you own remains real; keeping it is not named as the wrong. The breach lies in the deed you set within your heart: a lie to people is already a lie before God.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that withholding what you own is itself the offense: Peter says the property and its proceeds remain under your authority, and names the lie as the breach.
THE ROOT
ἔθου
ethou
GROWS FROM
τίθημι (tithēmi), Greek verb stem θε- (the-)
To put, place, or set.
The Greek verb translated “conceived” literally means “put” or “set”: the deed is something you place inside your heart. The verse presents the deception as an inwardly set act, not merely a thought that happens to you.
ALSO GROWS
epitithēmi: Put or lay upon.
ἐπιτίθημι
This branch makes the root’s concrete sense of placing visible: something is deliberately set onto something else.
apotithēmi: Put away or lay aside.
ἀποτίθημι
This branch shows that the same root can describe deliberately setting something aside, underscoring the choice within the verse.
ἐξουσίᾳ
exousia
GROWS FROM
ἐξουσία
exousia
Right, authority, or freedom to act.
“power” in this verse is exousia. The word names genuine authority over the property and its proceeds. Peter recognizes that the choice to give was Ananias’s; the lie arises within that freedom.
ALSO GROWS
exousiazō: Exercise authority or power.
ἐξουσιάζω
The verb turns the right named by exousia into its active exercise.
katexousiazō: Exercise authority over or dominate.
κατεξουσιάζω
This compound carries the same authority word into a relationship of power over another.
καρδίᾳ
kardia
GROWS FROM
καρδία
kardia
The heart as the inner center of thought, intention, and desire.
The deed is located in the heart, the inward center where intention takes shape. Joined to the verb “put,” the phrase depicts the lie as something deliberately set within you.
ALSO GROWS
kardiognōstēs: One who knows hearts.
καρδιογνώστης
This compound uses the same heart word for the inward place God knows.
sklērokardia: Hardness of heart.
σκληροκαρδία
This compound shows the heart word describing an inward disposition, not merely an emotion.
THE PATTERN
What is privately set in the heart remains open before God, regardless of its outward cover.
But the LORD said to Samuel, Do not look at his appearance or at the height of his stature, for I have pushed him away. The LORD does not see as the human sees. The human sees what is outside, but the LORD sees the heart.Will not God search this out? For he perceives the hidden places of the heart.And no creation is hidden before him, but all things are naked and bared at the throat to the eyes of him to whom our account belongs.THE THREAD
For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.Both verses use καρδία (kardia, heart): Acts describes a deed put there, while Matthew connects the heart with what a person treasures. The shared word makes the concealed transaction a window into inward direction, not simply a question of how much money is given.
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