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. InJob 41:34we 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).
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 ofchapter 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 inLuke 12:47: “That servant, who knew his lord’s will, and made not ready, nor did accordingto his will, shall be beaten with many stripes.” There is an excusable ignorance or at least a mollifying ignorance (cf.Luke 12:48;Acts 3:17;1 Tim. 1:13). There is palliation for unconscious sins. But James is dealing with failure to obey the will of God. It is conscious and wilful sin, but of the negative kind.
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 (Yomaviii, 6) onZephaniah 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 in1 Samuel 12:23we 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 manto suffer (Luke 10:31 f.). The point that James is anxious to make is that this blindness is sin. The man who has learned how to do the high and noble deed and then falls short has committed a sin. It is a heavy indictment that is here drawn against us. We are charged with not coming up to the standard of our highest knowledge. Plummer comments pertinently on the Roman Catholic doctrine of probabilism, which seeks to excuse the weakness of the flesh and to justify a person in his preference of the lower in the presence of the higher. “So long as it is not certain that the act in question is forbidden it may be permitted.” Plummer adds, “The moral law is not so much explained as explained away.” Alphonse de Sarasa wrote on “The Art of Perpetual Enjoyment” (Ars Semper Gaudendi), a piece of special pleading for the indulgence of the flesh. “The good is the enemy of the best,” and the bad is the enemy of the good. Down the steps we go to the bottom of the ladder.
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 in1-6and that of Christian eschatology in7-11(Oesterley). Note “in the last days” inverse 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.”Inverse 7James seems to contrast “the brethren” with the rich ofverses 1-6. It is worthwhile to quoteIsaiah 33:1: “Woe to thee that spoilest, and thou wast not spoiled; and dealest treacherously, and they dealt not treacherously with thee! when thou shalt cease to spoil, thou shalt be spoiled; and when thou shalt make an end to deal treacherously, they shall deal treacherously with thee” (AV). AndHabakkuk 2:9: “Woe to him that getteth an evil gain for his house, that he may set his nest on high, that he may be delivered from the hand of evil!” Note also the book of Enoch: “Woe to those that build their houses with sin” (94:7); “Woe unto you mighty who violently oppress the righteous, for the day of your destruction will come” (96:8).
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 toacquiesce in it. But what cannot be cured can be endured.
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 in4:13. “Weep and shriek,” Moffatt has it. The word is an onomatopoetic word and is used only of violent grief, as inIsaiah 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 claimscontrol of money and the making of money. The Christian who acts on the “bulkhead,” or compartment, principle of life and keeps his money in a separate bulkhead into which he does not allow Christ to enter is disloyal to Christ. Christ claims the right of a partner in our business, not a silent but an active partner. We are in business with Christ and for Christ. The Christian has no right to have rotten riches. He should have clean money, not filthy lucre. Sound money is more than mere phrase. Money represents labor, and labor is the sweat of brain and brawn. The gambler cannot offer clean money to God. He has robbed a man of his money.
“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 inSirach 12:11of 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.
InJames 3:8this 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).
The God of all the earth will do right. He is not deaf to the cries of those oppressed millions in the ages whose piteousappeals for elemental justice come to him. This is a terrible indictment of Jewish capitalists who withheld the meager wages of the men who gathered the harvests. “Behold, the hire of the laborers who mowed your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth out.” The hire of the laborers reminds one of the proverb, “The laborer is worthy of his hire” (Luke 10:7;1 Tim. 5:18). The word for “hire” occurs sometimes in the sense of reward (e.g.,1 Cor. 3:8, 14), but the original idea is that of pay for work done (e.g.,Matt. 20:8), and so here.
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 alsoMalachi 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, “heaptogether”)[90]their fields had the sad experience of not receiving the wages, “of you kept back by fraud, comes too late from you” (Mayor). The word means to “fall short,” “be too late.”[91]
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.It is only right that social injustice should be rectified here and now and the transgressors punished.
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 shuttheir eyes to the misery all around them due to their own injustice. Christianity endeavors to make this cold cynicism impossible, to persuade to be just and, if need be, go the second mile in eagerness to help rather than to hang back and higgle over the first.
“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 also1 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 boughtwith the price of blood. Economic justice will be won only by tears and blood.
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. SeeWisdom 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 unresistingand allows himself to be robbed. The horrors of war to helpless women and children come before us.
It is curious that in the legendary account[92]of the death of James, who was later called also “the Just,” we are told that the Jews ran upon James, crying, “Oh! oh! even the righteous one.” One of the priests vainly cried out: “Stop! What are you doing? The righteous one is praying for you.” According to this story, James himself finally met the very fate of those unfortunate victims of Jewish greed and hate, of whom Jesus is the chief illustration. Progress in behalf of human rights is won only by slow advances here and there. But in the end of the day the cause wins. The stars in their courses fight against Sisera and all the enemies of man and God.
The purpose of James in writing his epistle comes out clearly in5:7-20. He wishes to hearten the Jewish Christians in the midst of their trials as well as to make a protest against the oppressions to which they were subjected. “The storm of indignation is past, and from this point to the end of the Epistle St. James writes in tones of tenderness and affection” (Plummer). He has denounced the persecutors and now turns to the brethren who are under the heel of the money devil.
“Be patient therefore, brethren, until the coming of the Lord.” Moffatt has it “till the arrival of the Lord.” The example of the righteous man, whether Christ or the typical righteous poor man, argues strongly for long-suffering (“long-tempered” like our “sweet-tempered,” “quick-tempered,” and the opposite of “short-tempered,” according to Mayor). In the Christian race one cannot afford to be short of wind. He has a long run and must hold out until the goal is reached (cf.Heb. 12:1-3).
One is reminded of the opening note of the Epistle of James (1:2-4), where he urged joy in the midst of varied trials. The wicked rich deserve all the fierce denunciation that James has just bestowed and all the penalty that God will inflict, but the suffering Christians must not engage in mererecrimination. James does not discourage protest against wrong or the effort to remove evil. But there is a residuum of suffering and pain in the cup of all of us. When all else is done, in the end of the day we must drink that cup. Let us do it with the spirit of soldiers who fall in the trenches at the post of duty. It is better to do it without flinching and without making a wry face. God is full of long-suffering toward us (Rom. 2:4;1 Peter 3:20), and men have shown the same spirit (James 5:10;2 Cor. 6:6). The patience inJames 1:3 f.is just “remaining under,” but here the point is to do it and make no fuss about it, not to call attention to what one is suffering, to be a martyr without insisting on being recognized as one.
The early Christians were so eager for the second coming of the Lord Jesus that they were impatient for his return and some of them completely upset about it, although Jesus had emphasized the utter uncertainty of the time and had urged watchfulness and readiness. By a skilful turn (Plummer) James “makes the unconscious impatience of primitive Christianity a basis for his exhortation to conscious patience.”
Some of them no longer had a taste for the slow work of plowing, sowing, and reaping, forgetting what Jesus had said of the gradual growth of the kingdom of God from seed to harvest. So James, probably with the words of Jesus in mind, says, “Behold, the husbandman waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth.” The farmer, tiller of the soil, has much to discourage him in the making and selling of his crops. The soil has to be kept up to its level of fertility and must be properly prepared. The seed must be of good quality and has to be sown at the proper season. The weeds will come, and the harvest is dependent on the sun and the rain. He cannot hasten the process. When he has done the most scientific farming, he can only wait in expectancy. Often, perhaps daily, the farmer watches the growth of thegrain, “being patient over it,” bending over it as a fond father. He knows that he cannot hasten the season. The early rain made possible the sowing of the seed. The latter rain will make possible a harvest. Meanwhile, he can do nothing but wait “until it receive” the final touch from God’s hand. By force of circumstances the farmer has to exercise long-suffering toward his crop of wheat.
“Be ye also patient.” James applies his illustration with directness and power. “Ye also,” as well as the husbandman. He does it, for nature has taught him her secrets. “Ye” should do so, for Jesus has shown you the way. “Establish your hearts.” Peter is charged with just this task when he has turned (Luke 22:32). God strengthens us (1 Peter 5:10;1 Thess. 3:13), but we must do our share. “For the coming of the Lord is at hand.”
The phrase “is at hand” is the one that John the Baptist used of the nearness of the kingdom of heaven which had come right upon them (Matt. 3:2). So Peter (1 Peter 4:7) says, “The end of all things is at hand.” Paul (Phil. 4:5) says, “The Lord is at hand.” There is no doubt that the early Christians hoped that Jesus would come back quickly and thus relieve them from the ills of an impossible social system (Rom. 13:11;1 Thess. 4:15;1 John 2:18). But they did not at all feel sure that Jesus was coming right away (1 Thess. 5:2;2 Thess. 3:1 ff.;2 Cor. 5:1-10;Phil. 1:21-23).
When 2 Peter was written, scoffers were already asking, “Where is the promise of his coming?” (2 Peter 3:4). The answer is given that one day with the Lord is as a thousand years and a thousand years as one day. Back to their tasks they must go, back to the building up of the kingdom of God in the midst of a world of woe and sin, on with the conflict till Jesus comes, on with the long siege against human greed and inhumanity to man. Patience is the word—patience and prayer, pluck and praise, power and peace in the end.
If things do not go to suit us, the natural way is to blame somebody else for what has befallen us. We generally exculpate ourselves from all responsibility. A naïve illustration of this propensity is found inJohn 12:19: “Behold how ye prevail nothing; lo, the world is gone after him.” At the triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem the Pharisees, thinking that their cause against Jesus was lost, turned and blamed each other for the outcome. So then “murmur not, brethren, one against another.” Literally it is, “groan not, brothers, against one another.” SeeRomans 8:23: “We ourselves groan within ourselves.” It is the inward and unexpressed feeling rather than the outward expression of dissatisfaction (cf.James 4:11).
The secret grudge is taken out in groans and murmurs. InMark 7:34Jesus is said to have groaned as he looked up to heaven and prayed, perhaps out of sheer weariness at the burden of sin and sorrow that was upon him. It is hard to be content and to smother resentment at known or suspected wrong. The suppressed volcano may easily break out into a violent eruption. “Let them wander up and down for meat, and grudge if they be not satisfied” (Psalm 59:15, AV). The murmur of a mob is often senseless, and in all events we must bear in mind that we bring down condemnation on our own heads.
“That ye be not judged,” says James. He recurs to this point in5:12. Probably the words of Jesus inMatthew 7:1are recalled by James. “Behold, the judge standeth before the door.” He will hear all complaints and set everything right. The picture appears to be that in the MishnahAb.iv. 16: “This world is as if it were a vestibule to the future world; prepare thyself in the vestibule, that thou mayest enter the reception room.” Jesus is the Judge who stands at the doorthrough which all must pass. The conception is eschatological and apocalyptic. SeeMatthew 24:33: “Know ye that he is nigh, even at the doors.” InRevelation 3:20Jesus is represented as saying: “Behold, I stand at the door and knock.” Let him in now, that you and he may sup together. Let him in now, else you may stand before him hereafter as culprit and helpless and hopeless. “Kiss the son, lest he be angry, and ye perish in the way” (Psalm 2:12). Treat kindly one another so that you will not need the Son to act as Judge between you.
James, like a practical preacher, loves to illustrate his points. He has a fitting one at hand in “the prophets who spake in the name of the Lord.” They spoke in the name, with the authority and with the power of the Lord. The idiom is common enough in the Septuagint and, indeed, in the papyri.[93]They spoke as the representatives of Jehovah. Mayor seems a bit perplexed over the failure of James to mention Jesus as the supreme example of suffering, as is done by Peter (1 Peter 2:21), who spoke of Christ’s leaving us an example, by Paul (Phil. 2:5-11), and by the author of Hebrews (12:1-5).
Perhaps James may have thought it was particularly pertinent for these Jewish Christians to be reminded of the prophets as an “example of suffering and of patience.” Certainly they endured evil in abundance and had great need of long-suffering. It was common enough to appeal to them for this purpose. Jesus did it with keenest irony at the mock heroic monuments built later to the memory of the martyred prophets (Matt. 5:12; 23:34, 37). Stephen did it with sosharp a tongue that the Sanhedrin stoned him to death for his courage and proved the truth of his words by their own acts (Acts 7:52). Elijah says to Jehovah, “The children of Israel have ... slain thy prophets with the sword” (1 Kings 19:10, 14). Jeremiah says also, “Your own sword hath devoured your prophets, like a destroying lion” (2:30). As patterns of patience take Noah, Abraham, Jacob, Moses, Isaiah, and Jeremiah. These illustrate in various ways the patience of which the readers of the Epistle of James stand in sore need.
“Behold, we call them blessed that endured.” He had already done that inJames 1:12. Jesus had promised salvation to the one who endured to the end (Matt. 24:13). Men usually felicitate the survivors of a catastrophe. Often they become popular heroes.
In particular, “ye have heard of the patience of Job.” Job was the most frequently quoted instance in Old Testament times and is a perfectly obvious one for James. And yet Job did have passionate outbursts of indignation at the gibes and superfluous advice of his tormenting friends, and even of his wife, when God seemed to have deserted him. But it must be remembered that Job did not curse God and die. He waited for God to speak and make it all plain. Job hardly exhibited long-suffering, but he clearly did show patience. He was not exactly meek, but he revealed the endurance of a sensitive man. Although Job is the most famous instance of patience in the Old Testament, yet he is nowhere else cited as such in the New Testament. We need not discuss the question whether Job is parable or fact, as the point is here precisely the same.
Ye “have seen the end of the Lord, how that the Lord is full of pity, and merciful.” The outcome in the case of Job proves the point. It turned out all right with Job. So he illustrates the pity and mercy of the Lord; “the end of theLord” is seen in the conclusion, like a novel that turns out happily at last. In the midst of the stress and storm of Job’s life and his violent outbursts of emotion and exalted feeling God is sympathetic and compassionate. God has understood Job and watched his endurance all the while. The story is so well known that James does not have to tell it but can depend upon his readers to see the point of the illustration.
This little paragraph seems to come in rather abruptly, with no connection with what precedes. As a result, Oesterley regards it as “a fragment of a larger piece” which James here tears from its context, perhaps a saying from Jesus. But Plummer is more likely correct in thinking of it as an appendix after rounding out the epistle, coming back to the blessedness of trial, with which topic the epistle opens.
The exhortations need not have a close connection with each other. As a matter of fact, James has spoken more against the sins of speech than any other single sin. Plummer well says, “He has spoken against talkativeness, unrestrained speaking, love of correcting others, railing, cursing, boasting, murmuring” (see1:19, 26; 3:1-12; 4:11, 13; 5:9). He now recurs to the sins of speech to say a few words against one of the commonest evils of which he has not spoken specifically. He evidently is thinking of the words of Jesus as we have them inMatthew 5:34-37, though it is not an exact quotation.[94]He may, indeed, as Resch holds, give another version of the same logion (cf.2 Cor. 1:17). But there was ample ground for this prohibition, as the Jews had learned how to split hairs on the subject of profanity.
The Third Commandment was plain enough on the subject, and it was supported by the Pharisees and the Essenes. The Essenes, indeed, opposed all oaths, even before courts, and were said to have been excused by Herod from taking the oath of allegiance (Jos.,Ant.xv. 10.4). And yet, as Mayor notes, this is not consistent with the oath of initiation which the Essenes took (Jos.,Warii. 8.7). The Jewish view is well represented bySirach 23:7-11and by Philo (M. 2, p. 184).
The early Christians found trouble with this verse of James, as with the words of Jesus on the same point. See the list of quotations from the early writers in Mayor. Augustine sees no harm in oaths before courts if it were not for the danger of committing perjury. And yet it may be seriously questioned if Jesus or James is thinking of oaths in courts of justice, since Jesus himself did not refuse to answer when put on oath by the high priest before the Sanhedrin (Matt. 26: 63 f.). Besides, solemn asseveration is allowed in the Old Testament (Deut. 6:13; 10:20;Isa. 65:16). It is far more likely the flippant use of oaths (profanity) that is here condemned. There were, and are still, all sorts of devices by which more or less pious people feel justified in calling on the name of the Lord in ordinary speech. It is today one of the saddest things in life to note how common profanity is in the ordinary speech of men and of boys, mannish boys who imitate the men about them. It is positively disheartening to hear it on the streets, in the streetcars, in the trains.
If one is puzzled, as was Augustine, over the words “above all things,” on the ground that profanity is not worse than adultery and murder, we may take it either as a kind of hyperbole (as did Augustine) or as a sort of elative superlative (not literallybeforeall but only very important), as limited to the forms of impatience in the preceding context, like1 Peter 4:8, where the same idiom occurs (Mayor). But if the strict interpretation be insisted on, one has only toconsider what the sin of profanity really is. It is a blasphemous use of the name of the Most High God. The fact that it is usually done without thinking mitigates the offense, but sometimes the full bitterness of profanity is meant. Few things are worse than sulfurous speech like the very fumes of hell. For my part, I should not press the words “above all things” too far in this context.
“Swear not, neither by the heaven, nor by the earth, nor by any other oath.”[95]Certainly this is plain enough to be understood. It is conclusive and inclusive and leaves no room for the milder forms of profanity for which Christians sometimes excuse themselves. “But let your yea be yea; and your nay, nay;” “let your ‘yes’ be a plain ‘yes,’ your ‘no’ a plain ‘no’” (Moffatt)—this, and nothing more. But there is the trouble. The need for emphasis and the love of strong assertion lead a person so easily to go beyond the bounds of good taste and decency. Edersheim (i. p. 583) has a Midrash quotation: “The good man’s yea is yea, and his nay nay.”
In calmer moments one knows that the value of his statement rests essentially on his own character for veracity. His mere word is enough and, in truth, all that one can offer. Violent expletives throw discredit on a person’s ordinary statements and suspicion on the one that he seeks to bolster up with artificial means. Profanity is one of the worst and most useless of sins. It brings good to none and harm to all, in particular to the one who uses it. “That ye fall not under judgment.” The Judge is at the door (James 5:9), and there is no escape.
Plummer has a very keen and pertinent heading for his chapter on this verse, and it is noteworthy that he devotes an entire chapter to this one verse, a verse that is little understood by most interpreters. His heading is this: “Worship the Best Outlet and Remedy for Excitement. The Connection between Worship and Conduct.” Certainly oaths are not the way to express one’s emotions, whether one be angry or merely excited, least of all when one has the miserable habit of profanity and is unaware of his foul speech. And yet it is not wrong to express one’s feelings. There is no merit in the self-repression of the cynic or the stoic. “Let the expression of strongly excited feelings be an act of worship” (Plummer). This is an intensely practical point.
“Is any among you suffering?” And what church or community does not have one or more of these occasional or chronic sufferers? The word has a wider meaning than mere bodily sickness. Paul uses it for suffering hardship as a good soldier (2 Tim. 2:3, 9; 4:5). It includes any kind of ill of body or mind. It means, literally, having hard experiences, and it refers to natural depression as a result of such misfortunes. The remedy is not in despondency or in suicide. The remedy lies in prayer. “Let him pray,” let him pray as a habit (present tense of durative action). Prayer is a blessing to the heart and to the mental life. It is good to talk with God. The worry disappears in God’s presence and often the very ill itself disappears. But if it does not go, he gives grace sufficient to bear the burden. So then prayer is the proper outlet for the depressed Christian.
Here lies one of the great blessings of public worship in the house of God. The tired soul finds rest in prayer in the house of prayer. There is comfort in secret prayer and in family worship, but the man makes a tremendous psychologicalblunder who cuts himself off from the spiritual tonic of the public worship of God. Those in charge of that worship should never fail to have in mind such persons who come to church seeking comfort and strength.
But some hearts are overjoyed and feel like giving expression to their joy in unusual ways, almost in ecstasy. “Is any cheerful?” There are many in happy mood, in good spirits or “good cheer” (cf.Acts 27:22, 25). These are in good health of soul and perhaps also of body. “Let him sing praise.” The word originally meant to play on a stringed instrument (Sir. 9:4), but it comes to be used also for singing with the voice and the heart (Eph. 5:19;1 Cor. 14:15), making melody with the heart to the Lord.
There is a wondrous exaltation of soul in the public praise of God. The combination of instruments and of voice enables the soul of man to pour itself out toward God in richness of praise. This is far better than the reckless, unrestrained ecstasy of overwrought emotionalism. Plummer notes properly that there is no merit or demerit per se in excitement. The wild dervish commands only astonishment, not sympathy. Religious excitement may become the occasion of bringing discredit upon Christianity, even when it represents real fervor and an element of worship. The spirit of man cannot always be restrained. Under the preaching of Wesley and Whitefield the audiences were sometimes carried to excesses of emotion. But far better this than the deadness and coldness of mere formalism. Revivals occasionally have been marked by such excesses, like the “Jerks” in Kentucky one hundred and fifty years ago when, however, real change of life took place.
There is wisdom in the words of James here. Let the religious emotions find expression in prayer and praise. The effect is not only good for the moment but is good for conduct and life as a whole. If we could only manage somehowto turn some of the energy that goes into our activities into religious worship, certainly the effect would be more wholesome all around. People cannot help a measure of excitement. Some of it is good for them. There is tonic in communion with God, tonic for soul and body.
Few subjects have excited more interest in recent years than the subject here presented. So many subsidiary issues are raised that it is difficult to treat the question adequately in a few pages.
Many varieties of “faith cures” have been before the world. The so-called Christian Science movement is now the most prominent of them all, combining an idealistic philosophy and pantheistic religion. This combination takes up various aspects of Buddhism, Gnosticism, and a dash of Christian verbiage with the vital elements of Christianity gone, and uses some of the well-known ideas of modern psychology as to the influence of the mind on the body. As a whole, it is a hopeless jumble of absurdities and inconsistencies and is hostile to the worship of Jesus. It leads astray a certain type of mind without clear reasoning processes and fattens on the fees for mental healing, a portion of which goes to the mother church in Boston. There is only the most superficial parallel between what James here describes and what the Christian Science “healer” practices.
There is in James an absence of all mercenary ideas. There is no “commercialized use of prayer,” to use the legal phrase of one of the New York courts. There is also the use of olive oil, the best medicine known to the ancient world and still one of the best remedial agencies, whether used internally or externally. The disciples of Jesus on their tour of Galilee had the double ministry of preaching and healing (Matt. 10:7 f.), and they anointed the sick with oil (Mark 6:13).InIsaiah 1:6the prophet says that the bruises were “neither bound up, neither mollified with oil.” So the good Samaritan bound up the wounds of the poor victim of the robbers and poured oil and wine upon him (Luke 10:34).
A number of questions come bristling for discussion as we proceed with this passage in James. The use of the word “church” rather than synagogue, as in2:2, is to be observed. The local church undoubtedly had a close kinship to the Jewish synagogue in origin and worship. The very phrase “elders of the church” occurs also inActs 20:17and in the plural, like bishops at Philippi (Phil. 1:1). There was a council of elders in the synagogue (Luke 7:3), and the word appears in an official sense in the Egyptian papyri.[96]
But a more vital question for our subject is whether these elders come in an official capacity to perform an ecclesiastical “anointing” with oil or whether they come to pray as brothers in Christ and rub with the olive oil (cf.Isa. 1:6) as medicine. Mayor quotes Philo (Sonm, M. i. 666), Pliny (N. H. xxiii. 34-50), and Galen (Med. Temp., book ii) in praise of oil as a medicine. In Herod’s last illness a bath of oil was recommended to him (Jos.,Wari. 33, 5).
There is, therefore, no doubt as to the ancient opinion about, and use of, oil as a medicine. It is probable that each one will decide this question according to his predilections. For my own part, I incline to the view that we have here not a sacramental or priestly function on the part of these elders but the double duty of ministry of the word and of medicine (with prayer). The nearest parallel in modern life is the medical missionary, who goes with the word of life and the healing balm of modern science. He heals the sick with the physician’s skill and the prayer of faith. Paul helped thesick (Acts 20:35) at Ephesus and often healed the sick, and yet he worked side by side with Luke, the beloved physician, as in the island of Melita (Acts 28:8 f.).
There is certainly no indication that what is called “extreme unction” was practiced or urged by James and the apostolic Christians. That was a later development in Greek and Roman Catholic churches that is foreign to the tone of this epistle. There is here no such superstition as sending for a minister when death is at hand to perform a magical ritual ceremony to stave off death. Mayor has a full statement of the chief facts about the sacrament of unction in later centuries. He suggests that the cases of the failure of the simple use of oil as a medicine probably led finally to the special consecration of the oil or the use of relics. But in James we seem to have not a ceremony or ecclesiastical function but rather the simple use of oil as a medicine and prayer “in the name of the Lord.”
Today we have a more advanced medical science which is, however, by no means final and infallible. We separate the functions of the minister and the physician. We prefer the doctor to the oil, but we still need God with the doctor. It is a great error for one to think that God is not to be called upon because we have a skilled physician. The minister still has a place, and a very important place, in the problem of therapeutics, particularly in those many cases of a more or less nervous type when the influence of the mind on the body is very pronounced. Often in the most severe illness the deciding factor is not medicine but hope, as any doctor will say. The minister should make friends with the physician and be at his service and co-operate with him. The minister needs to be careful to be a help and not a hindrance in cases of sickness. He should be a sedative and an inspiration to the patient, not an irritant or an excitant. It is a just ground of complaint that physicians have against those preachers wholend themselves to the schemes of quack doctors with patent medicines for all sorts of ills.
But coming back to the use of prayer, James says, “And the prayer of faith shall save him that is sick, and the Lord shall raise him up.” The credit is here given to prayer and the power of God. One is not to infer that James gives no credit to medicine. The oil was good; God works through medicine and without medicine. The best that we still know on this subject is this: prayer and medicine, or God and the doctor. The promise of James may be compared with those of Jesus inMark 11:24andJohn 14:14. But the very essence of prayer is acquiescence with us. By “save” here James means “cure,” as it often does in the Gospels (Mark 5:23; 6:56; 8:35).
The prayer of faith is the only kind that is real prayer, and it is trust in God with full acknowledgment of God’s power and love. Some men have always had the idea of a God so aloof from the world that he cares nothing about it or is powerless to help. There is nothing in modern scientific knowledge inconsistent with an immanent, yet transcendent, God who holds the key of life in himself. The wondrous laws of nature are all of God, and there are many more that we do not yet understand. Science has vastly increased our sense of wonder about God and his world. We have only skirted the fringes of knowledge. It is idle to say that God, if he really sent his Son to redeem men from sin and all earthly woe, does not care if we suffer in body and mind. The Father’s hand rests upon us all. He can be reached. He is not far from any of us, and he loves us.
“And if he have committed sins, it shall be forgiven him,” not by being healed in body nor because he is healed of his sickness. The two things do not correspond, nor does one follow because of the other. What James means, undoubtedly, is that the cured man, convicted of his sins and out ofgratitude to God for his goodness, repents of his sins and is forgiven.
This is what should always happen in such cases, but often it occurs that men who profess repentance on a bed of sickness forget it when they get up. This is sheer ingratitude and a horrible outcome. But certainly if the sick man is a sinner, he should be prayed for. It is the time of opportunity to get him to listen to the voice of God. No undue advantage need be taken of one’s situation, and yet it is wise to speak plainly then. Sickness is a great leveler and brings us all down. Beyond any doubt, Roman Catholics have made good use of their asylums and hospitals. Other denominations are beginning to take a real interest in this aspect of Christian activity. In the hour of sickness it is a great mercy to fall into the hands of those who love God and where the love of Jesus is mingled with the highest medical science.
During sickness is a good time to confess our sins to one another as well as to God. “Confess therefore your sins one to another.” Clearly if the sick man, conscious now of his own weakness, is not willing to confess his sins against others, God will not forgive him.
As Mayor points out, James expands the words of Jesus about forgiving those who have trespassed against us (Matt. 5:23 f.; 6:14), so as to bring out both sides of the subject. Let the sick man ask forgiveness of those whom he has wronged. Then let them forgive him and pray for him. “Pray one for another.” The Roman Catholics—Bellarmine, for instance—sometimes appeal to this passage as a justification for auricular confession to the priest; but Luther has a pointed answer: “A strange confessor. His name is ‘One Another.’” Cajetan “speaks the language of common sense” (Mayor) and admits that James has no such custom in mind. What James urges is public confession, in particular to those wronged, not private and secret confession to a priest.