Open an explanation beneath verses with notes. Your notes and highlights stay on this device.
Where do wars and fightings among you come from? Don’t they come from your pleasures that war in your members?
Verse 1. Whence are wars [1] and contentions, in all kinds, but from your lusts and disorderly passions, coveting to have and enjoy what you have not, as to pleasures, riches, honours, and so forth Witham.
You lust, and don’t have. You murder and covet, and can’t obtain. You fight and make war. You don’t have, because you don’t ask.
Verse 2. You covet, and have not. Though God has promised that whosoever asks shall receive, (Matthew 7:8) yet no wonder you receive not, because you ask amiss, by asking such temporal things as would be prejudicial to your soul, or because you ask not with humility, devotion, and perseverance. Witham.
You ask, and don’t receive, because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your pleasures.
You adulterers and adulteresses, don’t you know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.
Verse 4. Adulterers: which is here taken in a figurative sense for those who love creatures more than God, the true spouse of their souls; who reflect not that the love and friendship of this world is an enemy to God, and the true manner of serving him. Witham.
Or do you think that the Scripture says in vain, “The Spirit who lives in us yearns jealously”?
Verse 5. Do you think that the scripture saith in vain: To envy doth the spirit covet, with dwelleth in you? [2] This verse is obscure, and differently expounded. By some, of an evil spirit in men, by which they covet and envy others for having what they have not. Others understand God’s spirit inhabiting in them; and then it is an interrogation, and reprehension, as if he said: Doth God’s spirit, which you have received, teach or excite you to covet and envy others, and not rather to love and wish their good? And to enable men to do this, God is not wanting, who gives us greater grace, especially to the humble that ask it, though he resists the proud. Witham.—It is not evident to what part of Scripture Saint James here alludes, the exact words are nowhere in the sacred writings. That which seems the most like this text, and the most adapted to his subject, is a passage from Ezechiel, “I will set my jealousy against thee:” (Ezekiel 23:25) that is I have loved thee with the love of jealousy, and I will revenge upon thee my slighted affections.
But he gives more grace. Therefore it says, “God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble.”
Verse 6. But he giveth greater grace. The Holy Spirit which dwelleth in you, giveth you graces in proportion to your fidelity in complying with them, and according to your humility and the love which you bear to your neighbour. Calmet.—Saint James may also mean by these two verses, to exhort the Jews and Gentiles, who were rather jealous of each other, to nourish no jealousy against one another, nor be troubled at the blessing which their neighbour enjoyed from the bountiful hand of the Almighty. Then will God deal to us with a more liberal hand, and will bestow upon us greater graces in proportion as we lay aside all ill-will towards our neighbour. But that he will withhold his hand from the envious man, because he resists the proud, and gives his grace to the humble. Glory is the exclusive property of heaven; whoever, therefore assumes it to himself, makes God his enemy. There is nothing in man since his fall; there is nothing in holy writ which does not preach to us this truth.—N.B. These last words, “God resisteth the proud, and giveth grace to the humble,” are only in the Septuagint edition. Proverbs 3:34. The Hebrew and Vulg. read in this place, “He shall scorn the scorners, and to the meek he will give grace.” Calmet.
Be subject therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.
Verse 7. Be subject therefore to God; humble yourselves in his sight, considering your own nothing. Witham.
Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners. Purify your hearts, you double-minded.
Verse 8. Purify your heart from the love of creatures, so that your affections be not divided betwixt God and this world, like persons of two minds [3] or two souls. Witham.
Lament, mourn, and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom.
Verse 9. Be afflicted [4] and mourn, and deplore your sins against his divine majesty; punish yourselves, and think not that a mere change of life is sufficient after so many sins committed. Witham.
Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and he will exalt you.
Don’t speak against one another, brothers. He who speaks against a brother and judges his brother, speaks against the law and judges the law. But if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law but a judge.
Verse 11. Detract not one another, (nor judge rashly) brethren. Though he spoke so much against the evils of the tongue, he gives them a special admonition against the vice of detraction, so common in the world, as also against rash judgments, which happen so frequently where there are dissensions and divisions. He that detracteth, judgeth, and rashly condemneth his brother, may be said to detract and judge the law, inasmuch as he seems to contemn and condemn the law, by which these sins are forbidden; when, instead of obeying and complying with the law, he rather takes upon himself to act as a judge, [5] without fear of the law and of God, the only lawgiver, who is to judge all our actions, and who alone is able to destroy, or to free us and deliver us from the punishments we have deserved. Witham.
Only one is the lawgiver, who is able to save and to destroy. But who are you to judge another?
Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow let’s go into this city and spend a year there, trade, and make a profit.”
Verse 13. To-day or to-morrow, and so forth An admonition against that presumption, when persons forget the uncertainty of life, and the vanity of all things in this world, which vanish like a vapour, and can never be relied upon, so as to count upon years and the time to come. All things here appear and disappear in a moment. Take heed, therefore, not to glory or boast in your arrogancies; (verse 16) lit. pride; like the rich man, (Lu. 10) who thought of nothing but a long and merry life, and was cut off that very night. And being now admonished, reflect that it is sinful to know what is good, what is your duty, and not to comply with it. Witham.
Yet you don’t know what your life will be like tomorrow. For what is your life? For you are a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away.
For you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will both live, and do this or that.”
Verse 15. For what is your life? it is a vapour. We frequently meet with three beautiful comparisons in holy writ. “Remember that my life is but wind.… As a cloud is consumed, and passeth away; so he that shall go down to hell, shall not come up.” Job 7:7, 9. “Man is like to vanity, his days pass away like a shadow.” Psalms 143:4. Similar expressions also frequently occur in profane authors.
Nemo tam Divos habuit faventes
Crastinum ut possit sibi polliceri. Seneca.
With reason then did our Saviour say, “Be you then also ready, for at what hour you think not, the Son of Man will come.” Lu. 12:40. Calmet.
But now you glory in your boasting. All such boasting is evil.
To him therefore who knows to do good and doesn’t do it, to him it is sin.