Jameschapter 5
20 verses · BSBJames book hub →
Speaks with:James 5×5Proverbs 11×2Leviticus 19×2Matthew 5×21 Timothy 6×1Matthew 6×1
Summary
Chapter summary
'Go to now, ye rich, weep and howl for your miseries that are coming upon you'. Gold and silver rusted, and the wages kept back by fraud from the mowers crying out, the cries entering into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth. To the wronged, patience: like the husbandman waiting for the early and latter rain, establish your hearts, 'for the coming of the Lord is at hand.' Take the prophets for suffering, and Job for endurance. Then the closing orders: let the suffering pray, the cheerful sing praise, and the sick call for the elders, 'and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord' (5:14). Elijah, a man of like passions with us, prayed, and it rained not.
Context
Epistle · James — James overview
- A. 1–6 Rusted Gold Cries Out Against the Rich
- B. 7–12 Patient as a Farmer Waiting for Rain
- C. 13–20 The Prayer of Faith and the Wanderer Brought Back
The outline
A.Rusted Gold Cries Out Against the Richvv. 1 to 6
Read vv. 1 to 6 →B.Patient as a Farmer Waiting for Rainvv. 7 to 12
Read vv. 7 to 12 →C.The Prayer of Faith and the Wanderer Brought Backvv. 13 to 20
Read vv. 13 to 20 →
The world behind this chapter
James 5The history
The law was explicit about wages. A hired man had to be paid the same day, before sunset, because he lived on that day's coin. Withholding it was not sharp practice; it was theft from a man who would go to bed hungry.
Wealth in that world was stored in three forms: grain, cloth, and metal. James strikes all three — the grain rots, the fine garments are moth-eaten, and the gold and silver corrode. Wardrobes of costly cloth were a genuine store of value, and moths were their genuine enemy.
The farmer's patience is a rainfall calendar. That country depends on the early rains in the autumn to soften the ground for sowing and the late rains in the spring to fill the grain. Between them a farmer can do nothing but wait, and everyone in an agricultural community understood how long that felt.
Anointing the sick with oil sat where medicine and prayer met. Olive oil was the standard remedy of the ancient world, rubbed on wounds and used for almost everything, so calling the elders to pray and anoint combined the ordinary treatment with the request that God act.
What it meant to them
For laborers whose pay had been kept back, the letter says the wages themselves are crying out and the Lord has heard. Someone was finally taking their side out loud.
The closing instructions gave a congregation its own equipment: confess to one another, pray for one another, and go after the brother who has wandered off. Elijah is offered as the example precisely because he was a man with the same nature as theirs.
Sources cited
- Roland de Vaux, Ancient Israel: Its Life and Institutions
- Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament
The text of this chapter
This page carries no textual note on James 5. Where this site has examined a place the manuscripts differ, the examination is in the manuscripts room. Every place this site examines →
Connections from this chapter
v. 19 · Written to them
Convert the sinner from the error of his way
topics/restoration→MannaFest topical index
This page draws on Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory; John Calvin, Commentaries; John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the New Testament and Matthew Henry, Complete Commentary.