Why did Ananias die? In Acts 4:32-5:11, Ananias dies when Peter asks him why he has held some of the proceeds of the sale of his property back from the communal pot. However, it is not made clear that he promised to give them all the money in the first place.

Is this simply implied by the later lie of Sapphira who claims that this was the whole price? Is there anything illuminating from tradition or external Biblical sources? Should this passage be interpretted entirely differently?

So, why did Ananias die?
Perhaps the first failure in the churches was that of hypocrisy (Acts 5:1-11). Hypocrisy is a matter of pretending to be somebody in order to get a name that they may have vainglory. It could be ambition was the seed of the failures in the churches. 

Ananias and his wife Sapphira was probably seeking a position. They wanted to be somebody and to have a name so that they could enjoy vainglory. They did not offer everything to the church for the Lord’s sake but pretended to do this.

Acts 5:4 indicates that selling possessions and distributing them to others was not considered by the apostles a practice of legality. The believers were not required to have all things common. That was something that should have been done willingly. 

If Ananias and Sapphira did not want to sell their property, they were not required to do so. It would not have been sinful for them to keep their property or to keep the proceeds from the sale of the property. Their sin consisted in lying to the Holy Spirit. Their intention was to cheat the church and to get a name for themselves by lying.