James 4: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

James traces the fights among his readers back to their own desires, and says their prayers go unanswered when they ask only so they can spend on their pleasures. He calls friendship with the world hostility toward God, then tells them to submit to God, resist the devil, come near to God, and humble themselves. He forbids speaking against and judging one another, since there is only one lawgiver. He closes by warning people who plan a year of business travel that they do not know what tomorrow holds, and says that knowing the good and not doing it is sin.

Claim by Claim

1. 4:1
   • Wars among you come from somewhere, and the question is asked where.
   • Fightings among you come from somewhere, and the question is asked where.
   • They come from your lusts.
   • Your lusts wage war in your members.
2. 4:2
   • You lust and do not have.
   • You kill.
   • You desire to have and cannot obtain.
   • You fight and war.
   • You do not have.
   • You do not have because you do not ask.
3. 4:3
   • You ask and do not receive.
   • You do not receive because you ask wrongly.
   • You ask wrongly so that you may spend what you get on your own pleasures.
4. 4:4
   • The hearers are addressed as adulterers and adulteresses.
   • They are asked whether they do not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God.
   • Friendship with the world is enmity with God.
   • Whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.
5. 4:5
   • The hearers are asked whether they think the scripture speaks in vain.
   • The scripture says that the spirit that dwells in us yearns toward envy.
   • It is unclear whether the spirit is the one yearning or the object of yearning, and whether the envy is jealous longing or ill will.
6. 4:6
   • He gives greater grace.
   • For this reason the scripture says something.
   • God sets himself against the proud.
   • God gives grace to the humble.
7. 4:7
   • Submit yourselves to God.
   • Resist the devil.
   • The devil will flee from you.
8. 4:8
   • Draw near to God.
   • God will draw near to you.
   • Cleanse your hands.
   • The hearers are addressed as sinners.
   • Purify your hearts.
   • The hearers are addressed as double minded.
   • Be wretched.
   • Mourn.
   • Weep.
9. 4:9
   • Let your laughter be turned into mourning.
   • Let your joy be turned into gloom.
10. 4:10
    • Humble yourselves before the Lord.
    • The Lord will lift you up.
11. 4:11
    • Do not speak against one another.
    • The hearers are addressed as brothers.
    • He who speaks against a brother or judges his brother speaks against the law.
    • He who speaks against a brother or judges his brother judges the law.
    • If you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law.
    • If you judge the law, you are a judge of it.
12. 4:12
    • There is one lawgiver.
    • That one is able to save.
    • That one is able to destroy.
    • The hearer is asked who he is to judge another.
13. 4:13
    • Those who say the following are addressed.
    • They say they will go today or tomorrow into a certain city.
    • They say they will spend a year there.
    • They say they will trade there.
    • They say they will make a profit.
14. 4:14
    • You do not know what will happen tomorrow.
    • The question is asked what your life is.
    • Your life is a vapor.
    • The vapor appears for a little time.
    • The vapor then vanishes away.
15. 4:15
    • Instead you ought to say the following.
    • You ought to say: if the Lord wills, we shall live.
    • You ought to say: if the Lord wills, we shall do this or that.
16. 4:16
    • As it is, you boast in your arrogant pretensions.
    • All such boasting is evil.
17. 4:17
    • To the one who knows to do good and does not do it, it is sin.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

4:1

"Members" in 1611 English means the parts of the body, so "your lusts that war in your members" pictures cravings campaigning inside a person's own body. "Lusts" carries the older broad sense of any strong craving, not only sexual desire; the Greek word covers pleasures of every kind. "Wars and fightings" translates terms for a military campaign and for a single battle, applied here to quarrels inside a group.

4:2

"Ye kill" translates the ordinary Greek verb for murder, and readers have long found it startling in a letter to a congregation. The sentence divisions are disputed: the King James pairs "ye kill, and desire to have," while many modern versions read "you kill and covet" as one movement from craving to violence. Some early readers guessed the word was a copyist's error for a similar verb meaning "you envy," but no manuscript supports that.

4:3

"Amiss" means wrongly or badly. "Consume it upon your lusts" means spend it right up on your own pleasures, the way money is spent until none is left.

4:4

"Ye adulterers and adulteresses" is figurative. The Hebrew prophets regularly described Israel turning to other gods as a wife's unfaithfulness, and the word works the same way here. The oldest Greek manuscripts have only the feminine form, "adulteresses," which fits that image; later copies added the masculine. "The world" translates kosmos, meaning human society with its ambitions and standards, not the planet. "Enmity" is the condition of being enemies.

4:5

Two difficulties sit in this verse. First, no known Old Testament passage says these words, so it is unclear what is being quoted. Second, the Greek can be read several ways: the spirit may be the human spirit God placed in people or God's own Spirit, and the verb may mean that God yearns jealously over that spirit, or that the spirit inside a person craves enviously. Translations divide on it, and the wording here keeps one option without settling the question. "In vain" means for nothing, emptily.

4:6

The quoted line is Proverbs 3:34 as it stands in the Greek Old Testament, the version most readers of this letter used. The Hebrew text of that proverb says God scoffs at scoffers rather than resisting the proud. The same Greek wording is quoted in 1 Peter 5:5.

4:7

"Resist" is a military image: hold your ground against an advance. The Greek word behind "devil" is diabolos, meaning slanderer or accuser, which sits pointedly in a chapter about people speaking against each other.

4:8

"Draw nigh" simply means come near. Washing the hands and purifying the heart are Temple language, where priests washed before approaching the altar; hands stand for what a person does, the heart for what a person wants. "Double minded" translates a rare Greek word meaning literally "two souled," used earlier in this letter (1:8) of someone pulled in two directions at once.

4:9

"Be afflicted" is a command to feel wretched, to be miserable, rather than a description of harm coming from outside. "Heaviness" in 1611 English means gloom or dejection, not weight.

4:11

"Speak not evil" translates a verb for talking against someone, especially behind their back. "The law" most likely means the command this letter has already called the royal law, "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself" (2:8): running down a fellow believer breaks it, and treating it as optional sets you above it instead of under it. "Brother" here means a fellow member of the community, not a blood relative.

4:12

"Lawgiver" means the one who issued the law in the first place, and so the only one entitled to rule on it. Many Greek manuscripts add "and judge" after the word. What the King James renders "another" is the ordinary Greek word for neighbor, pointing back to the command to love your neighbor.

4:13

"Go to now" is a 1611 idiom for "look here" or "come now," used to seize attention before a rebuke. The people addressed are traveling merchants, who in that world would sail to a commercial city, settle there for a season, trade, and move on. "Get gain" means turn a profit.

4:14

"Vapour" translates a word for mist or steam, the puff that rises off a pot or shows in cold air. Greek manuscripts differ slightly over whether the sentence reads "you are a mist" or "it is a mist," meaning your life.

4:15

"If the Lord will" was a set formula, the equivalent of saying "God willing." Greek and Roman writers used the same phrase of their own gods, and it turns up elsewhere in the New Testament as ordinary talk about travel plans.

4:16

"Rejoice" here carries the older sense of exulting or boasting, not simply being glad. "Boastings" translates a word for the swagger of a braggart, the person who claims resources and powers he does not actually have.

4:17

To "sin" means to do wrong, and to go against what God wants.