  The arrogance of the sinful heart is clearly shown in 4:13 to 5:6. Such a heart prefers worldliness to the worship of God (see 4:1-10) and flippantly criticizes one’s neighbors with lighthearted satisfaction with self and a positive love of faultfinding (4:11 f.). This easy arrogance faces the future with unconcern. No look Godward is taken in business ventures. James “opposes the irreligious sense of travelling merchants” (Windisch). These Jews of the Diaspora had come to have a considerable part of the business of the Roman Empire. They professed to be servants of God, but in practice they often denied and ignored the God of their fathers. Leaving God Out (4:13-15)One may hope that James alludes to the Jewish merchants, not Jewish Christians. Certainly those Jewish merchants who became Christians continued their business, though not in a godless fashion. The merchant has one of the most useful and most honorable of all callings, but it seems clear that some of the Jewish merchants had already brought disfavor upon the business by their sharp practices. See Sirach 26:29. “A merchant will hardly keep himself from doing wrong; and a huckster will not be declared free from sin.” This piece of moralizing is evidently occasioned by some tricks in trade indulged in by Jewish merchants. One is bound to admit But the point that James makes is a peril to Christian merchants also. The keen competition in all kinds of business is a constant temptation to violate the Golden Rule and to ignore God as well as the welfare of one’s customers in order to make money and to meet a rival who is unscrupulous in trade. The Christian businessman today can do business on a high plane. Hustle and enterprise need not condescend to underhand methods. It is a pleasure to note the activity of the Gideons, an organization of Christian men who, besides doing other useful things, have placed copies of the Bible in the rooms of most American hotels. These men have not left God out. In Palestine the Jews held on to the agricultural life, but in the Diaspora they were merchants and bankers. Philo (In Flaccum VIII) gives a picture of the Jewish merchants and bankers in Alexandria. Josephus (Ant. XII, 2-5) alludes to the Jewish traveling merchant about 175 B.C. One of the wonders of history is how the Jews, scattered over the world, finally without a land of their own, have yet by their wits maintained themselves as a race and a religion and have been leaders in business, in art, in music, in politics, in literature. “Come now, ye that say” is the impatient challenge of James to those who leave God out of account in their plans for the future. The tone of impatience is due to the conviction that one should be so conscious of his own weakness as not to boast about the future. “To-day or tomorrow we will go into this city, and spend a year there, and trade, and get gain.” And then we shall move on to the next town and work that with our wares, for all the world like a modern “fire sale” or secondhand clothing store with its bankruptcy or fire features. The picture is drawn from life. The use of “this city” is In James 1:11 we read that the rich man shall “fade away in his goings,” an allusion to the travels of the rich merchants. We see the rapid movements of the Jewish Christians illustrated by the travels of Aquila and Priscilla, who came from Rome to Corinth (Acts 18:1 f.), then to Ephesus (18:18), to Rome again (Rom. 16:3), and back to Ephesus (2 Tim. 4:19). The phrase “spend a year there” is literally “do a year there,” and the idiom occurs also in Acts 15:33; 20:3 (cf. Prov. 13:23). The wide dispersion of the Jews all over the Roman Empire gave them business connections that made it easy to get new business and to hold the old trade. The very word here for “trade” means to travel into a region to get business, just like a modern commercial traveler. Our word “emporium” is just this word. The Jews made the very Temple itself “a house of merchandise.” So then trading implied traveling for business (Matt. 22:5). In 2 Peter 2:3 a somber light is thrown by this same word: “And in covetousness shall they with feigned words make merchandise of you.” “And get gain.” This is the climax of the whole, the aim of the journeys and the trading. “The frequent conjunctions separate the different items of the plan, which are rehearsed thus one by one with manifest satisfaction. The speakers gloat over the different steps of the programme which they have arranged for themselves” (Plummer). There is no harm in planning to make money or in travel for that purpose. The harm lies in the complete ignoring of God in all their plans. “Whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow,” This was the worldly-wise view of the Cyrenaics and the Epicureans, and it is the standpoint of multitudes of modern men who under the influence of monism (like Haeckel) deny the existence of a personal God or who act as if there were no God (Psalm 14:1). But God replies to the fool, “Thou foolish one, this night is thy soul required of thee; and the things which thou hast prepared, whose shall they be?” Jesus does not contradict this position when he says: “Be not therefore anxious for the morrow: for the morrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof” (Matt. 6:34). He is here condemning overanxiety, that is as distrustful of God as reckless unconcern. There is the golden mean of calm trust in God. We are not to live in a haphazard manner, without plan or purpose. We are to make plans, but we must put God into our preparations. It is cowardly to be superstitious in the anticipation of evil. Some people knock on wood if they happen to boast a bit. Others are superstitious about the number thirteen, about Friday, about the moon, and a hundred other hallucinations. The point with these Jews is not worry or superstition but irreligion. There are multitudes of practical As a matter of fact, we are ignorant of the morrow. We do not know the weather of the morrow with certainty, in spite of our gauges and forecasts. Many railroad accidents are due to the unknown elements in the problems of travel. A faulty rail, a broken tie, a weakened wheel, a rolling stone, a careless brakeman, a sleeping switchman, a malicious robber—a hundred and one things may happen, any one of which will cause death to helpless victims. “The best laid schemes o’ mice and men gang aft a-gley.” The uncertainty of life is one of the things that a wise man must consider and face. A clot of blood on the brain may cause instant and unexpected death. The heart, driven too hard, may suddenly cease to beat. “What is your life?” He does not mean manner of life or the life principle or eternal life. The question concerns all, the good and the wicked alike. The question as to the character of life pertains to its brevity and uncertainty on earth. “For ye are a vapor,” “you are but a mist” (Moffatt). The word is common for smoke, as the “smoke of a furnace” (Gen. 19:28), “vapor of smoke” (Acts 2:19; from Joel 2:30), steam or breath; so our “atmosphere.” Job lamented (7:7): “Oh remember that my life is a breath.” We are “a vapor that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away.” Aristotle (Hist. An. vi. 7) uses these two verbs of the appearance and the disappearance of a flock of birds as they sweep across the sky. The usage occurs also of the eclipse of the sun. The transitoriness of human life should lead to full and hearty recognition of God, not to careless slighting of him. “For that ye ought to say” (more exactly, “instead of your The Jews made a point not to use the name of God too familiarly. They often used “the Name” for God, and Christians came to refer to Christ in the same way, “for the Name” (Acts 5:41). The late Jews came, perhaps under Mohammedan influence, to use the formula “if the Name wills” when about to start upon a journey (Oesterley). The rabbis (Plummer) have a story of a Jewish father who, at the circumcision of his son, boasts that with seven-year-old wine he would celebrate for a long time the birth of his son. That night Rabbi Simeon meets the Angel of Death and asks him, “Why art thou thus wandering about?” The angel replies: “Because I slay those who say, ‘We will do this or that,’ and think not how soon death may come upon them.” The thing that matters is for us to have the right attitude of heart toward God, not the chattering of a formula. God does not have to be propitiated by a charm or amulet. God should be the silent partner in all our plans and work, to be consulted, to be followed whenever his will is made known. Paul frequently spoke of his plans, sometimes mentioning God, as in Acts 18:21 (God willing), 1 Corinthians 4:19 (if the Lord will), and 1 Corinthians 16:7 (if the Lord permit); but also with no mention of God in words, as in Acts 19:21; Romans 15:28; 1 Corinthians 16:5. But always Paul felt that his movements were “in the Lord,” as in Philippians 2:24. He never left God out of his life. Indeed, he practiced the presence of God. Conscious Opposition (4:16)It is bad enough to ignore God, as so many men do. A slight is almost as hard to bear as an insult. However, a positive refusal to do God’s known will is worse. “But now,” as is really the case (cf. 1 Cor. 14:6), “But here you are” (Moffatt), instead of your trust in God, “ye glory in your vauntings.” In their pride of life (1 John 2:16) they practically defied God. The word meant originally a wanderer about the country, a vagabond, a Scottish landlouper, a swaggerer, an imposter, a braggart. In Job 41:34 we find the “sons of pride.” “And I exalted not myself in arrogance” (Test. Joseph XVII, 8). And Jesus said, “I am among you as he that serveth” (Luke 22:27, AV). These men were exalting themselves at the expense of God. They were running against the known will of God. One of the rabbis says, “It is revealed and known before Thee that our will is to do Thy will” (Berachoth, 17a). “All such glorying is evil,” says James. It is not wicked per se to boast (cf. 1:9), but such boasting as mentioned is wicked. It is not impossible to know the will of God if one will pay the price. “If any man willeth to do his will, he shall know of the teaching, whether it is of God” (John 7:17). The way opens to the one who is willing to put God to the test. “The boaster forgets that life depends on the will of God” (Mayor). Negative Sin (4:17)In a way this verse is a summary of the entire epistle (cf. 1:22; 2:14; 3:1, 13; 4:11). Hence James’s “therefore” is quite in point. Moffatt places this verse at the end of chapter 2. Spitta, however, finds no connection in the context and takes it as a familiar quotation. This may indeed be a reference to the words of Jesus in Luke 12:47: “That servant, who knew his lord’s will, and made not ready, nor did according These sins of omission (peccata omissionis) are treated lightly by many people. The Talmud in general takes this easy position on the subject. Oesterley quotes the Jerusalem Talmud (Yoma viii, 6) on Zephaniah 1:12: “I will search Jerusalem with candles, and I will punish the men,” which adds: “not by daylight, nor with the torch, but with candles, so as not to detect venial sins.” But he adds this also (Shabbath, 54b): “Whosoever is in a position to prevent sins being committed in his household, but refrains from doing so, becomes liable for their sins.” And in 1 Samuel 12:23 we read, “God forbid that I should sin against the Lord in ceasing to pray for you” (AV). Jesus made it plain that he considered sins of omission as real sins: “These ye ought to have done, and not to have left the other undone” (Matt. 23:23). Hear his tragic words to the deluded sinner at the judgment bar: “I was hungry, and ye did not give me to eat; I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink; I was a stranger, and ye took me not in; naked, and ye clothed me not; sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not” (Matt. 25:42 f.). The repetition of “not” here is like the tolling of a bell. Hear then James: “To him therefore that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin.” So also Paul urged the Galatians not to grow weary in doing the good or beautiful (Gal. 6:9). It is so easy to shut one’s eyes and not to see the opportunities for service. It is so easy to let prejudice blind us to the needs of the real neighbor, as the priest and the Levite passed by on the other side and left the poor wounded man Tainted Wealth (5:1-3)Oesterley finds proof of the “patchwork” character of the epistle in the five paragraphs of the closing chapter. But in a “wisdom” book one does not expect direct connection between the paragraphs. That is not true of the practical portions of the Pauline epistles. In the first eleven verses of this chapter the eschatological standpoint is occupied, possibly that of Jewish eschatology in 1-6 and that of Christian eschatology in 7-11 (Oesterley). Note “in the last days” in verse 3. James is familiar with the prophetic imagery of the messianic times in apocalyptic style but is very pointed in his courageous indictment of the follies and iniquities of the wicked rich. Johnstone entitles this paragraph “the woes of the wicked rich.” Mayor says, “It is not the careless worldliness of the bustling trader which is condemned, but the more deadly worldliness of the unjust capitalist or landlord.” Perhaps there is an allusion to the words of Jesus against the Pharisees (Matt. 23:13-36). The Gospel of Luke is held by some to have an Ebionitic tendency because it preserves some plain words of Jesus to, and about, the rich (6:24; 18:24). But Jesus is not hostile toward the rich, for he had friends and followers from the wealthy classes, although he dealt very squarely and honestly with them. Some Jews held that all the rich were wicked, as some modern socialists and anarchists do. But certainly Jesus did not fawn upon the rich or curry favor with them by flattery or compromise. It is easy to denounce classes of men en masse. It requires perspicacity and courage to discriminate, to be just, and to seek to remedy real ills. The rich Jews had already oppressed the Christians and made the conditions of life hard. The Christians were helpless for any immediate relief. They had little or no power in government and had to live in the social and economic atmosphere created by those hostile to them. It was not a democratic but an imperialistic age. In holding out the consolation that rectification of these grave evils will take place at the second coming of Christ, James does not mean to condone the present situation or to Christianity has had a long and hard fight in the effort to alleviate the sufferings of the poor. Ofttimes grasping men of money have used the very church itself as a means of oppression instead of an agent of blessing. It is a sad state when men and women with real social wrongs come to feel that Christianity is a negative factor in their struggle or a positive hindrance to success. James turns upon these oppressors: “Come now, ye rich, weep and howl for your miseries that are coming upon you.” This “come now” is like that in 4:13. “Weep and shriek,” Moffatt has it. The word is an onomatopoetic word and is used only of violent grief, as in Isaiah 13:6; 4:31. It does not occur elsewhere in the New Testament. The apocalyptic writings have a good deal to say about the miseries that were coming upon them (cf. Joel 2:10 ff.; Zech. 14:6 ff.; Dan. 12:1). The Gospels connect them also with the Day of the Lord (Matt. 24-25; Mark 13:14-27; Luke 21:9-19). Part of the Gospel prophecies were fulfilled in the destruction of Jerusalem. “Your riches are corrupted,” “your wealth lies rotting” (Moffatt). The perfect tense presents the state of rottenness. This ill-gotten gain will not keep; it is already putrid. There is such a thing as tainted money—blood money wrung from the oppressed toilers; money gained by financial legerdemain (high finance) at the expense of helpless stockholders, whose stock is watered for the benefit of the few in control; money made out of the souls and bodies of men and women in the saloon and the white slave traffic. The ethics of money-making is a large question and a vital one in modern life. It is raised in an acute form by this passage. Christians cannot afford to make money by crushing the life out of business rivals on the juggernaut principle. The Golden Rule ought to work in business. Christ claims “Your garments are moth-eaten.” We have the prophetic perfect here, and James sees the outcome as a reality in a state of completion. It is a vivid picture of fine clothes eaten by moths and full of holes, ruined beyond repair. In the East these rich garments were handed down as heirlooms from generation to generation and often formed a considerable part of the wealth of a rich man. Paul refers to this when he said, “I coveted no man’s silver, or gold, or apparel” (Acts 20:33). The picture of an old moth-eaten garment is forlorn in the extreme. “Though I am like a rotten thing that consumeth, like a garment that is moth-eaten” (Job 13:28). A plutocrat is subject to the fate of all mortals. “Your gold and your silver are rusted,” “lie rusted over” (Moffatt). As a matter of fact, gold does not rust in the ordinary sense, except by chemicals, though silver tarnishes rather easily. However, this verb is used in Sirach 12:11 of a mirror dimmed with rust; but the Hebrew word is used also of filth. A dirty mirror is one of the ugliest sights. James is using popular language, to be sure, and is not to be held to the terminology of science. But scientists themselves hardly know how to use language accurately, since radium is found to break down the lines between metals and transmutation actually occurs like the alchemy of the ancients. In James 3:8 this word for “rust” is used for poison. At any rate, decay rests on all mortal things. It is not necessary to wait for the Day of the Lord to see this fact. “Their rust shall be for a testimony against you.” There will be no escape from this telltale rust which, like gray hairs, betrays age and the approach of death. “And shall eat your flesh as fire.” Westcott and Hort place “as fire” with the next sentence. Either punctuation makes good sense, but it is a bolder figure used as mentioned, for nothing eats up what it seizes upon more rapidly or completely than fire. Feeding the flames of a furnace, as a stoker in a great ship, is one of the most exhaustive of all tasks. Fire licks up all in its reach and will gut modern fireproof buildings (iron and concrete) when once it gets started. The plural here emphasizes the completeness of the work of destruction. “Ye have laid up your treasure in the last days.” These wicked rich have heaped up treasure like a thesaurus and in the end of the day have seen it turn to dust and ashes, crumbling between their fingers. There is no vault on earth secure against moth, rust, and thieves (Matt. 6:19). Those who set their hearts upon the wealth of earth are bound to come to grief. Pitiful is the state of the man “that layeth up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God” (Luke 12:21). The only wealth that lasts is riches toward God, and this is open to us all. The only wise use of money is in making friends who will welcome us (Luke 16:9) into the eternal tabernacles. The mammon of unrighteousness may be so employed. If it is not, one will find that he has simply treasured up wrath against the day of wrath, to be paid at last with compound interest (Rom. 2:5). Wronged Workers (5:4)The God of all the earth will do right. He is not deaf to the cries of those oppressed millions in the ages whose piteous The word for laborer means any kind of workman, but it is common in the New Testament for agricultural workers. “The harvest indeed is plenteous, but the laborers are few” (Matt. 9:37). When the work is done, it is only simple justice for the workman to receive his pay, for the hungry mouths at home have to be filled. In the Old Testament the cause of the workman was guarded with special care: “Thou shalt not oppress a hired servant that is poor and needy, whether he be of thy brethren, or of thy sojourners that are in thy land within thy gates: in his day thou shalt give him his hire, neither shall the sun go down upon it ... lest he cry against thee unto Jehovah, and it be sin unto thee” (Deut. 24:14 f.). See also Malachi 3:5: “I will be a swift witness against ... those that oppress the hireling in his wages.” Tobit charges his son Tobias, “Let not the wages of any man, which hath wrought for thee, tarry with thee, but give him it out of hand” (Tobit 4:14). Sirach (34:21 f.) says, “The bread of the needy is the life of the poor: he that defraudeth him thereof is a man of blood. He that taketh away his neighbor’s living slayeth him; and he that defraudeth a laborer of his hire is a blood-shedder.” Certainly, therefore, the Jews were not without explicit teaching on this vital point of elemental social justice. And yet these men “who mowed” (literally, “heap The honest laborers who form the foundation of our industrial system are not to be treated as beggars or hobos. They are not subjects for charity. They are the human element in the industrial problem. Blood is thicker than water and is more valuable than gold. The horror of war is that it treats men as fodder for cannon, regardless of the result to the man or those dependent on him. This stolen pay “cries out” and ought to cry out, whether the hire is kept back after the work is done or whether the employer purposely squeezes the laborer down to starvation wages in order to make more money for himself. There is a just balance to be struck by which both capital and labor may receive fair remuneration. “The cries of them that reaped have entered into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth.” “The cries of the harvesters” (Moffatt) are musical when they sing together as they work, content with their wages and joyous in their work. But the cries here heard are of a very different sort. They are the angry, resentful outcries of men who have been wronged in their very souls by those who should have been their protectors and friends, those for whom the harvesters have worked. These men cry to heaven, and they ought to do so. Mayor notes four sins that cry to heaven: a brother’s blood (Gen. 4:10), the sin of Sodom (Gen. 18:20), the oppressed hireling (Deut. 24:15), and the cry of Job for justice (Job 16:18 f.). But men ought to hear the cry of the laborers before they become too clamorous. The social test of modern Christianity is to do justice to the laboring men without doing injustice to the capitalists. The conditions of life must be made easier. If corporations have no souls, the men who toil at the forge have. Men are entitled to a bit of heaven here and now at their own hearth and home. Somehow, many of the laborers have come to feel that the churches do not sympathize with the struggles of the laboring classes to better their hard lot but fawn upon the very rich who sometimes grind the toilers to the earth. It is easy to be extreme and unjust to one side or the other. The main thing is to be faithful to God and man, to man as man. The poorest of men is worth more than a sheep, yes, than gold and silver. The soul is without price, and the soul dwells in the body. We must shake the shackles free from men and women who cry out to God. The Lord God of Sabaoth has heard their cries and will punish the offenders in due time, but that fact does not absolve us from our present duty in the midst of conditions that call for action. Wronged workers have a right to a hearing at the bar of public opinion. They will cry on until they are heard. Evidently James is all ablaze as he faces the situation of his readers. These Jewish plutocrats, some of them shysters, have made their money out of the blood and sweat of the toiling poor. And then they spend it in a way to anger the wronged workers still more. They live in the most luxurious extravagance and waste of money while the cold, half-naked, hungry toilers who made the wealth go unpaid. It is no wonder that such laborers grow bitter at heart. It is a vivid and even ghastly picture of the wicked rich who revel at the cost of human happiness, who with careless indifference shut “Ye have lived delicately on the earth, and taken your pleasure, ye have revelled on earth and plunged into dissipation” (Moffatt). The sound of revelry by night has no melody to the ears of the man whose wife and children are starving because he does not get a square deal from his employer. In Hermas (Sim. 7. 1) both of these verbs are used together (“reminiscence of this passage,” Mayor) of those who gave themselves up to the lusts of the world. See also 1 Timothy 5:6: “She that giveth herself to pleasure is dead while she liveth.” One is reminded of the picture of the beggar Lazarus who lay at the rich man’s gate while the man feasted within. The conditions will be reversed in heaven if the poor are Christians and the rich man is unsaved (Luke 16:25). That hope is not to be despised, but James is not content to spare the rich now while they inflict such wrongs on men whom they employ. “Ye have nourished your hearts in a day of slaughter.” We have here a hard phrase to understand. Homer uses the verb meaning to turn milk into cheese (Od. ix. 246). But we cannot feel sure (cf. Luke 21:34). And what is “the day of slaughter”? Moffatt boldly renders it thus: “You have fattened yourselves as for the Day of Slaughter.” That is at least comprehensible. At any rate, when Jerusalem was destroyed, the Romans slew the rich Jews indiscriminately, whether they remained in the city or flew in despair to the Romans who were bent on plunder (cf. Josephus, War, v. 10, 2). The pious poor in all the ages have suffered at the hands of the rich and the mighty. Even in America religious liberty came as the result of fierce struggle. Political freedom was bought The very limit is reached. “Ye have condemned, ye have killed the righteous one; he doth not resist you.” Many take these words to refer to the death of Jesus as the culmination of iniquity, when the rich Pharisees and Sadducees obtained the death of the poor Carpenter of Nazareth. In these words Peter charged that the Jews had been guilty of Christ’s death: “But ye denied the Holy and Righteous One, and asked for a murderer to be granted unto you, and killed the Prince of life” (Acts 3:14 f.). Certainly the application to Jesus has a deal of verisimilitude. Stephen used similar language: “And they killed them that showed before of the coming of the Righteous One; of whom ye have now become betrayers and murderers” (Acts 7:52). “The Righteous One” is thus seen to be one of the titles given Jesus by the early disciples. There is no reason why James should not have referred to the death of Jesus in those words. But the book of Wisdom has similar language about the righteous poor who are oppressed by the wicked rich, and the parallel is so clear that probably James refers directly to it. See Wisdom 2:10 ff.: “Let us oppress the poor righteous man; let us not spare the widow, nor reverence the ancient grey hairs of the aged.... Let us lie in wait for the righteous; because he is not for our turn, and he is clear contrary to our doings; he upbraideth us with our offending the law.” It was so in the days of the prophets. Hear Amos (2:6 f.) as he thunders against the evils of his day: “They have sold the righteous for silver, and the needy for a pair of shoes—they that pant after the dust of the earth on the head of the poor” (surely the most greedy of men for real estate, if they even seek that on top of the head of the poor!). The picture is one of the oppression of the good man who is unresisting It is curious that in the legendary account |
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