Yakobus 3:1--5:6

The Power of the Tongue

3:1 Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers and sisters, ¹  because you know that we will be judged more strictly. ²  3:2 For we all stumble ³  in many ways. If someone does not stumble ⁴  in what he says, ⁵  he is a perfect individual, ⁶  able to control the entire body as well. 3:3 And if we put bits into the mouths of horses to get them to obey us, then we guide their entire bodies. ⁷  3:4 Look at ships too: Though they are so large and driven by harsh winds, they are steered by a tiny rudder wherever the pilot’s inclination directs. 3:5 So too the tongue is a small part of the body, ⁸  yet it has great pretensions. ⁹  Think ¹⁰  how small a flame sets a huge forest ablaze. 3:6 And the tongue is a fire! The tongue represents ¹¹  the world of wrongdoing among the parts of our bodies. It ¹²  pollutes the entire body and sets fire to the course of human existence – and is set on fire by hell. ¹³ 

3:7 For every kind of animal, bird, reptile, and sea creature ¹⁴  is subdued and has been subdued by humankind. ¹⁵  3:8 But no human being can subdue the tongue; it is a restless ¹⁶  evil, full of deadly poison. 3:9 With it we bless the Lord ¹⁷  and Father, and with it we curse people ¹⁸  made in God’s image. 3:10 From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. These things should not be so, my brothers and sisters. ¹⁹  3:11 A spring does not pour out fresh water and bitter water from the same opening, does it? 3:12 Can a fig tree produce olives, my brothers and sisters, ²⁰  or a vine produce figs? Neither can a salt water spring produce fresh water.

True Wisdom

3:13 Who is wise and understanding among you? By his good conduct he should show his works done in the gentleness that wisdom brings. ²¹  3:14 But if you have bitter jealousy and selfishness in your hearts, do not boast and tell lies against the truth. 3:15 Such ²²  wisdom does not come ²³  from above but is earthly, natural, ²⁴  demonic. 3:16 For where there is jealousy and selfishness, there is disorder and every evil practice. 3:17 But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, accommodating, ²⁵  full of mercy and good fruit, ²⁶  impartial, and not hypocritical. ²⁷  3:18 And the fruit that consists of righteousness ²⁸  is planted ²⁹  in peace among ³⁰  those who make peace.

Passions and Pride

4:1 Where do the conflicts and where ³¹  do the quarrels among you come from? Is it not from this, ³²  from your passions that battle inside you? ³³  4:2 You desire and you do not have; you murder and envy and you cannot obtain; you quarrel and fight. You do not have because you do not ask; 4:3 you ask and do not receive because you ask wrongly, so you can spend it on your passions.

4:4 Adulterers, do you not know that friendship with the world means hostility toward God? ³⁴  So whoever decides to be the world’s friend makes himself God’s enemy. 4:5 Or do you think the scripture means nothing when it says, ³⁵  “The spirit that God ³⁶  caused ³⁷  to live within us has an envious yearning”? ³⁸  4:6 But he gives greater grace. Therefore it says, “God opposes the proud, but he gives grace to the humble.” ³⁹  4:7 So submit to God. But resist the devil and he will flee from you. 4:8 Draw near to God and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and make your hearts pure, you double-minded. ⁴⁰  4:9 Grieve, mourn, ⁴¹  and weep. Turn your laughter ⁴²  into mourning and your joy into despair. 4:10 Humble yourselves before the Lord and he will exalt you.

4:11 Do not speak against one another, brothers and sisters. ⁴³  He who speaks against a fellow believer ⁴⁴  or judges a fellow believer speaks against the law and judges the law. But if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law but its judge. ⁴⁵  4:12 But there is only one who is lawgiver and judge – the one who is able to save and destroy. On the other hand, who are you to judge your neighbor? ⁴⁶ 

4:13 Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into this or that town ⁴⁷  and spend a year there and do business and make a profit.” 4:14 You ⁴⁸  do not know about tomorrow. What is your life like? ⁴⁹  For you are a puff of smoke ⁵⁰  that appears for a short time and then vanishes. 4:15 You ought to say instead, ⁵¹  “If the Lord is willing, then we will live and do this or that.” 4:16 But as it is, ⁵²  you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. 4:17 So whoever knows what is good to do ⁵³  and does not do it is guilty of sin. ⁵⁴ 

Warning to the Rich

5:1 Come now, you rich! Weep and cry aloud ⁵⁵  over the miseries that are coming on you. 5:2 Your riches have rotted and your clothing has become moth-eaten. 5:3 Your gold and silver have rusted and their rust will be a witness against you. It will consume your flesh like fire. It is in the last days that you have hoarded treasure! ⁵⁶  5:4 Look, the pay you have held back from the workers who mowed your fields cries out against you, and the cries of the reapers have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts. 5:5 You have lived indulgently and luxuriously on the earth. You have fattened your hearts in a day of slaughter. ⁵⁷  5:6 You have condemned and murdered the righteous person, although he does not resist you. ⁵⁸ 

[3:1]  ¹ tn Grk “brothers.” See note on the phrase “brothers and sisters” in 1:2.

[3:1]  ² tn Grk “will receive a greater judgment.”

[3:2]  ³ tn Or “fail.”

[3:2]  ⁴ tn Or “fail.”

[3:2]  ⁵ tn Grk “in speech.”

[3:2]  ⁶ tn The word for “man” or “individual” is ἀνήρ (anhr), which often means “male” or “man (as opposed to woman).” But it sometimes is used generically to mean “anyone,” “a person,” as here (cf. BDAG 79 s.v. 2).

[3:3]  ⁷ tn Grk “their entire body.”

[3:5]  ⁸ tn Grk “a small member.”

[3:5]  ⁹ tn Grk “boasts of great things.”

[3:5]  ¹⁰ tn Grk “Behold.”

[3:6]  ¹¹ tn Grk “makes itself,” “is made.”

[3:6]  ¹² tn Because of the length and complexity of the Greek sentence, a new sentence was started here in the translation.

[3:6]  ¹³ sn The word translated hell is “Gehenna” (γέεννα, geenna), a Greek transliteration of the Hebrew words ge hinnom (“Valley of Hinnom”). This was the valley along the south side of Jerusalem. In OT times it was used for human sacrifices to the pagan god Molech (cf. Jer 7:31; 19:5-6; 32:35), and it came to be used as a place where human excrement and rubbish were disposed of and burned. In the intertestamental period, it came to be used symbolically as the place of divine punishment (cf. 1 En. 27:2, 90:26; 4 Ezra 7:36).

[3:7]  ¹⁴ tn Grk (plurals), “every kind of animals and birds, of reptiles and sea creatures.”

[3:7]  ¹⁵ tn Grk “the human species.”

[3:8]  ¹⁶ tc Most mss (C Ψ 1739^c Ï as well as a few versions and fathers) read “uncontrollable” (ἀκατασχετόν, akatasceton), while the most important witnesses (א A B K P 1739* latt) have “restless” (ἀκατάστατον, akatastaton). Externally, the latter reading should be preferred. Internally, however, things get a bit more complex. The notion of being uncontrollable is well suited to the context, especially as a counterbalance to v. 8a, though for this very reason scribes may have been tempted to replace ἀκατάστατον with ἀκατασχετόν. However, in a semantically parallel early Christian text, ἀκατάστατος (akatastato") was considered strong enough of a term to denounce slander as “a restless demon” (Herm. 27:3). On the other hand, ἀκατάστατον may have been substituted for ἀκατασχετόν by way of assimilation to 1:8 (especially since both words were relatively rare, scribes may have replaced the less familiar with one that was already used in this letter). On internal evidence, it is difficult to decide, though ἀκατασχετόν is slightly preferred. However, in light of the strong support for ἀκατάστατον, and the less-than-decisive internal evidence, ἀκατάστατον is preferred instead.

[3:9]  ¹⁷ tc Most later mss (Ï), along with several versional witnesses, have θεόν (qeon, “God”) here instead of κύριον (kurion, “Lord”). Such is a predictable variant since nowhere else in the NT is God described as “Lord and Father,” but he is called “God and Father” on several occasions. Further, the reading κύριον is well supported by early and diversified witnesses (̲⁰ א A B C P Ψ 33 81 945 1241 1739), rendering it as the overwhelmingly preferred reading.

[3:9]  ¹⁸ tn Grk “men”; but here ἀνθρώπους (anqrwpous) has generic force, referring to both men and women.

[3:10]  ¹⁹ tn Grk “brothers.” See note on the phrase “brothers and sisters” in 1:2.

[3:12]  ²⁰ tn Grk “brothers.” See note on the phrase “brothers and sisters” in 1:2.

[3:13]  ²¹ tn Grk “works in the gentleness of wisdom.”

[3:15]  ²² tn Grk “This.”

[3:15]  ²³ tn Grk “come down”; “descend.”

[3:15]  ²⁴ tn Grk “soulish,” which describes life apart from God, characteristic of earthly human life as opposed to what is spiritual. Cf. 1 Cor 2:14; 15:44-46; Jude 19.

[3:17]  ²⁵ tn Or “willing to yield,” “open to persuasion.”

[3:17]  ²⁶ tn Grk “fruits.” The plural Greek term καρπούς has been translated with the collective singular “fruit.”

[3:17]  ²⁷ tn Or “sincere.”

[3:18]  ²⁸ tn Grk “the fruit of righteousness,” meaning righteous living as a fruit, as the thing produced.

[3:18]  ²⁹ tn Grk “is sown.”

[3:18]  ³⁰ tn Or “for,” or possibly “by.”

[4:1]  ³¹ tn The word “where” is repeated in Greek for emphasis.

[4:1]  ³² tn Grk “from here.”

[4:1]  ³³ tn Grk “in your members [i.e., parts of the body].”

[4:4]  ³⁴ tn Grk “is hostility toward God.”

[4:5]  ³⁵ tn Grk “vainly says.”

[4:5]  ³⁶ tn Grk “he”; the referent (God) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[4:5]  ³⁷ tc The Byzantine text and a few other mss (P 33 Ï) have the intransitive κατῴκησεν (katwkhsen) here, which turns τὸ πνεῦμα (to pneuma) into the subject of the verb: “The spirit which lives within us.” But the more reliable and older witnesses (Ì⁷⁴ א B Ψ 049 1241 1739 al) have the causative verb, κατῴκισεν (katwkisen), which implies a different subject and τὸ πνεῦμα as the object: “The spirit that he causes to live within us.” Both because of the absence of an explicit subject and the relative scarcity of the causative κατοικίζω (katoikizw, “cause to dwell”) compared to the intransitive κατοικέω (katoikew, “live, dwell”) in biblical Greek (κατοικίζω does not occur in the NT at all, and occurs one twelfth as frequently as κατοικέω in the LXX), it is easy to see why scribes would replace κατῴκισεν with κατῴκησεν. Thus, on internal and external grounds, κατῴκισεν is the preferred reading.

[4:5]  ³⁸ tn Interpreters debate the referent of the word “spirit” in this verse: (1) The translation takes “spirit” to be the lustful capacity within people that produces a divided mind (1:8, 14) and inward conflicts regarding God (4:1-4). God has allowed it to be in man since the fall, and he provides his grace (v. 6) and the new birth through the gospel message (1:18-25) to counteract its evil effects. (2) On the other hand the word “spirit” may be taken positively as the Holy Spirit and the sense would be, “God yearns jealously for the Spirit he caused to live within us.” But the word for “envious” or “jealous” is generally negative in biblical usage and the context before and after seems to favor the negative interpretation.

[4:5]  sn No OT verse is worded exactly this way. This is either a statement about the general teaching of scripture or a quotation from an ancient translation of the Hebrew text that no longer exists today.

[4:6]  ³⁹ sn A quotation from Prov 3:34.

[4:8]  ⁴⁰ tn Or “two-minded” (the same description used in 1:8).

[4:9]  ⁴¹ tn This term and the following one are preceded by καί (kai) in the Greek text, but contemporary English generally uses connectives only between the last two items in such a series.

[4:9]  ⁴² tn Grk “let your laughter be turned.”

[4:11]  ⁴³ tn Grk “brothers.” See note on the phrase “brothers and sisters” in 1:2.

[4:11]  ⁴⁴ tn See note on the word “believer” in 1:9.

[4:11]  ⁴⁵ tn Grk “a judge.”

[4:12]  ⁴⁶ tn Grk “who judges your neighbor.”

[4:13]  ⁴⁷ tn Or “city.”

[4:14]  ⁴⁸ tn Grk “who” (continuing the description of the people of v. 13). Because of the length and complexity of the Greek sentence, a new sentence was started here in the translation.

[4:14]  ⁴⁹ tn Or “you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow.”

[4:14]  ⁵⁰ tn Or “a vapor.” The Greek word ἀτμίς (atmis) denotes a swirl of smoke arising from a fire (cf. Gen 19:28; Lev 16:13; Joel 2:30 [Acts 2:19]; Ezek 8:11).

[4:15]  ⁵¹ tn Grk “instead of your saying.”

[4:16]  ⁵² tn Grk “but now.”

[4:17]  ⁵³ tn Or “knows how to do what is good.”

[4:17]  ⁵⁴ tn Grk “to him it is sin.”

[5:1]  ⁵⁵ tn Or “wail”; Grk “crying aloud.”

[5:3]  ⁵⁶ tn Or “hoarded up treasure for the last days”; Grk “in the last days.”

[5:5]  ⁵⁷ sn James’ point seems to be that instead of seeking deliverance from condemnation, they have defied God’s law (fattened your hearts) and made themselves more likely objects of his judgment (in a day of slaughter).

[5:6]  ⁵⁸ tn Literally a series of verbs without connectives, “you have condemned, you have murdered…he does not resist.”