James 5: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

James warns rich people who cheated their harvest workers out of their pay that misery is coming on them, and he tells the believers to be patient until the Lord's coming, the way a farmer waits for the rains and the crop. He points to the prophets and to Job as examples of endurance, tells them not to grumble against one another and not to back their words with oaths, and gives instructions for prayer in trouble, in gladness, and in sickness, including calling the church elders to pray over the sick and anoint them with oil. He cites Elijah's prayers about rain as proof that the prayer of a righteous person accomplishes much, and closes by saying that whoever turns a wandering believer back from error saves a soul from death and covers many sins.

Claim by Claim

1. 5:1
   • The rich are addressed and told to pay attention now.
   • The rich are commanded to weep.
   • The rich are commanded to wail aloud.
   • Miseries are coming upon the rich.
2. 5:2
   • Their wealth has rotted.
   • Their garments have become moth-eaten.
3. 5:3
   • Their gold and their silver have corroded.
   • The corrosion of their gold and silver will serve as a witness against them.
   • The corrosion will eat their flesh like fire.
   • They have stored up treasure in the last days.
4. 5:4
   • The wages of the workers who reaped their fields were held back from them.
   • Those withheld wages cry out.
   • The cries of the harvesters have entered the ears of the Lord of hosts.
5. 5:5
   • They have lived luxuriously on the earth.
   • They have lived self-indulgently.
   • They have fattened their hearts in a day of slaughter.
6. 5:6
   • They have condemned the righteous one.
   • They have killed the righteous one.
   • The righteous one does not resist them.
7. 5:7
   • The brothers are told to be patient until the coming of the Lord.
   • The farmer waits for the precious fruit of the ground.
   • The farmer is patient over the fruit until it receives the early and the latter rain.
8. 5:8
   • They too are told to be patient.
   • They are told to strengthen their hearts.
   • The coming of the Lord has drawn near.
9. 5:9
   • The brothers are told not to complain against one another.
   • The purpose of not complaining is that they not be judged.
   • The judge is standing before the doors.
10. 5:10
    • The brothers are told to take the prophets as an example of suffering affliction.
    • The brothers are told to take the prophets as an example of patience.
    • The prophets spoke in the name of the Lord.
11. 5:11
    • Those who endured are counted blessed.
    • The hearers have heard of the endurance of Job.
    • The hearers have seen the outcome brought about by the Lord.
    • The Lord is very compassionate.
    • The Lord is merciful.
12. 5:12
    • Above all else, the brothers are told not to swear.
    • They are not to swear by heaven.
    • They are not to swear by the earth.
    • They are not to swear by any other oath.
    • Their yes is to be yes and their no is to be no.
    • The purpose is that they not fall under judgment.
13. 5:13
    • The question is asked whether anyone among them is suffering affliction.
    • The one suffering is told to pray.
    • The question is asked whether anyone is cheerful.
    • The cheerful one is told to sing praise.
14. 5:14
    • The question is asked whether anyone among them is sick.
    • The sick person is told to call for the elders of the church.
    • The elders are to pray over the sick person.
    • The elders are to anoint the sick person with oil in the name of the Lord.
15. 5:15
    • The prayer of faith will save the one who is sick.
    • The Lord will raise him up.
    • If he has committed sins, they will be forgiven him.
16. 5:16
    • They are told to confess their sins to one another.
    • They are told to pray for one another.
    • The purpose of this is that they may be healed.
    • The prayer of a righteous person, at work, is very powerful.
17. 5:17
    • Elijah was a man with the same nature and feelings as we have.
    • Elijah prayed earnestly that it would not rain.
    • It did not rain on the land for three years and six months.
18. 5:18
    • Elijah prayed again.
    • The sky gave rain.
    • The earth produced its fruit.
19. 5:19
    • The condition is set: someone among the brothers strays from the truth.
    • The condition continues: someone turns that person back.
20. 5:20
    • They are to know what follows.
    • The one who turns a sinner back from the error of his way saves a soul from death.
    • It is not specified whether the soul saved is the sinner's or the one who turns him.
    • The one who turns a sinner back covers a multitude of sins.

Words Worth Explaining

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

5:1

"Go to now" is an old English way of getting attention, closer to "come on now" or "look here" than to any instruction to go somewhere. "Weep and howl" describes the loud, public mourning of the ancient world, wailing out loud rather than crying privately.

5:2

Clothing was a major store of wealth in this world. Good robes were counted in inventories, handed down, and given as gifts, so moths in the cloth meant real financial loss, not just a spoiled coat.

5:3

"Cankered" in 1611 meant eaten away by rust or corrosion. Gold and silver do not actually rust, which is part of the force of the image: the metal has been sitting unused so long that it has done what such metal should not be able to do. "The last days" was a standing expression for the closing stretch of history before God's judgment, and the Greek can be read either as "in the last days" or "for the last days," that is, stockpiling for a future that will not arrive.

5:4

"Sabaoth" is not a name or a place. It is the Hebrew word for armies, carried straight over into Greek without translation, in the title usually rendered "Lord of Hosts," the Lord who commands the armies of heaven. Field hands were hired by the day and paid at the end of each day, and the law required it (Leviticus 19:13, Deuteronomy 24:14-15) because a day laborer had no reserve: pay held back overnight meant no food that night. The unpaid wages "cry out," the same language the Old Testament uses of spilled blood and of the oppressed whose complaint reaches God.

5:5

"Wanton" in 1611 meant living without restraint or self-indulgent, not specifically sexual. The picture behind "a day of slaughter" is livestock being fattened for butchering day. The Greek can be taken two ways: they fattened themselves on the day of slaughter, feasting while judgment stood ready, or they fattened themselves for it.

5:6

"The just" is singular in the Greek, the righteous or innocent one. It may be meant generally, of the poor person who has no defense in court, or of a particular victim. "He doth not resist you" can be read either as a statement (he puts up no fight) or as a question (does he not resist you?), since Greek manuscripts carried no punctuation to settle it.

5:7

In this part of the world rain falls in two seasons. The autumn rains around October and November soften the baked ground so seed can be sown; the spring rains around March and April fill out the grain just before harvest. A farmer who has sown has to wait through both and can do nothing to hurry either one.

5:8

"Stablish your hearts" means make your hearts steady. "Draweth nigh" means comes close.

5:9

In 1611 "grudge" meant to grumble or mutter complaints out loud, not to nurse a silent resentment. "The judge standeth before the door" is an everyday image for someone who has already arrived and is about to walk in.

5:10

The prophets were messengers who delivered God's word to Israel, often to hostile audiences and often at real cost: Jeremiah was thrown into a cistern, Elijah was hunted by a queen. James picks them as examples precisely because being right did not spare them anything.

5:11

"Happy" in 1611 meant fortunate or blessed, not cheerful. The Greek word behind "patience" here means staying under a heavy load, holding out, rather than keeping a calm temper; Job in his own book complains bitterly and never stops protesting. "The end of the Lord" means the outcome the Lord finally brought about, how the story ends. "Pitiful" in 1611 meant full of pity, compassionate, the reverse of what the word now suggests.

5:12

In ordinary speech people swore by heaven, by the earth, by Jerusalem, or by their own head, substitute formulas that avoided pronouncing God's name, and there was long-running argument among teachers about which of these oaths were actually binding and which could be wriggled out of. That is why the list is here. "Let your yea be yea" means say yes and mean it, with nothing propped underneath it.

5:13

"Afflicted" covers hardship of any kind, trouble and suffering generally, not illness in particular; sickness comes in the next verse. The Greek verb behind "sing psalms" originally meant to pluck a stringed instrument and by this period meant to sing praise, with or without accompaniment.

5:14

"Elders" translates a word for the recognized senior leaders of a local congregation, an arrangement carried over from the synagogue. Olive oil was the standard medicine of the ancient world, rubbed onto wounds and onto the sick, and it was also used ceremonially to mark a person or object as set apart. The verb used here is the everyday word for rubbing oil on, not the formal word used of anointing kings and priests, and readers have argued ever since over which sense is uppermost.

5:15

The Greek verb translated "save" covers both healing a body and rescuing a person in the fullest sense, and "raise him up" likewise means both getting someone up off a sickbed and raising the dead. The wording is deliberately double. "If he have committed sins" is a genuine condition: it leaves open that the illness may have nothing to do with any sin.

5:16

Some ancient manuscripts read "sins" here rather than "faults." "The effectual fervent prayer" renders a single Greek participle whose sense is disputed: either prayer that is at work and energized, or prayer that is made effective by God's own working. The KJV uses two adjectives to cover both possibilities.

5:17

"Elias" is simply the Greek form of the name Elijah, and it is what the KJV column prints. "Subject to like passions" means of the same nature as we are; "passions" in 1611 meant feelings and sufferings in general, with no sexual sense. On the length of the drought, 1 Kings 17 and 18 give no total, saying only that the rain came "in the third year"; three and a half years is the figure used in Luke 4:25 and in Jewish tradition.

5:18

"Heaven" here means the sky, which is the ordinary everyday sense of both the Hebrew and the Greek word.

5:19

In 1611 "err" meant to wander off a road and "convert" meant simply to turn someone back. The picture is of a person who has strayed off the path being steered back onto it, not of anyone changing religion.

5:20

"Soul" here means the person's life, the whole self, not an inner part of them. "Hide a multitude of sins" echoes Proverbs 10:12, "love covereth all sins." Whose sins get covered is left open in the Greek: the wanderer's, the rescuer's, or both.