Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Acts · About this commentary
One heart and soul: what Barnabas did
Acts 4:32-37
32 The multitude of those who believed were of one heart and soul. Not one of them claimed that anything of the things which he possessed was his own, but they had all things in common. · WEB
The sharing is described again, more fully, and then narrowed to one man's name — which is how the text prepares the contrast that follows.
The description returns to the community's property, and this time the inward fact is stated before the outward one. They were of one heart and soul, and consequently not one of them claimed that what he possessed was his own. The order is not decorative. The unity produced the sharing; the sharing was not a policy adopted to produce unity.
The formula not one of them claimed that anything of the things which he possessed was his own has to be read for what it actually says. It concerns claiming rather than owning. The possessions are still described as things a man possessed; what has gone is the reflex of treating them as unavailable. Two chapters on, Peter will state the legal position without embarrassment — the field was Ananias' to keep and the price was his after the sale Acts 5:4 — which means no one had been divested of anything.
Between the two halves of the description sits a sentence about preaching, and its placement is deliberate. With great power, the apostles gave their testimony of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. Great grace was on them all. The economics of the community and the witness of the apostles are not two subjects in this paragraph. A group whose members will liquidate property to cover one another's needs is itself an argument that something has happened, and the writer sets the two facts side by side without explaining the connection.
The outcome is stated as an absence: neither was there among them any who lacked. That is the same claim the law made for a covenant people keeping the sabbatical provisions Deuteronomy 15:4, and here it is simply reported as the case. The mechanism is described plainly — those who owned lands or houses sold them, brought the proceeds, and laid them at the apostles' feet, and distribution was made according to need. The gesture of laying money at someone's feet is an act of handing over control, and it will be repeated in the next chapter by a man who has kept some of it back.
Then the paragraph narrows to a single case, and the narrowing is the whole point of its position here. A Levite from Cyprus named Joses sold a field and laid the money at the apostles' feet. Nothing is said about the size of the gift or the cost to him. What is recorded is a nickname the apostles had given him: Barnabas, Son of Encouragement.
The name is the most durable thing in the chapter. This man will take a feared convert by the arm and vouch for him when nobody else will Acts 9:27, will be sent to inspect an irregular church at Antioch and will be glad about it Acts 11:22–23, and will lose a colleague rather than abandon a young man who had failed once Acts 15:37–39. He is introduced here with a sold field, and the field turns out to be the least characteristic thing about him.
settled What this mark means