James Chapter 5 verse 3 Holy Bible

Pulpit Commentary

Pulpit CommentaryVerse 3. - With this and the preceding verse contrast our Lord's words of treasure laid up in heaven, "where moth and rust do not corrupt" (Matthew 6:19). Cankered (κατίωται); better, rusted. Only here in the New Testament; never in the LXX. except Ecclus. 12:11. The rust of them. Ἰός: used here for "rust" as in the LXX. in Ezekiel's parable of the boiling pot (Ezekiel 24:6, etc.) - a passage which (according to one interpretation) may have suggested the following clause, "and shall eat your flesh," etc. (see vers. 9-12). Shall he a witness against you (εἰς μαρτύριον ὑμῖν). The rendering of the A.V. is quite defensible (see Winer, p. 265), but it is equally possible to take the words as the R.V. margin," for a testimony unto you." "The rust of them," says Alford, "is a token of what shall happen to yourselves; in the consuming of your wealth you see depicted your own." Two interpretations of the latter part of the verse are possible, depending on the punctuation adopted. (1) As the A.V. and R.V., putting the stop after πῦρ: "Their rust... shall eat your flesh as fire. Ye have laid up your treasure in the last days." The "fire," if this rendering be adopted, may be explained from Ezekiel 24:9, etc. (2) Putting the stop after ὑμῶν and before ὡς πῦρ: "Their rust... shall eat your flesh. Ye have heaped up as it were fire in the last days." This has the support of the Syriac ("Ye have gathered fire for you for the last days"), and is adopted by Drs. Westcott and Herr. The "fire" will, of course, be the fire of judgment; and the expression, ὡς πῦρ ἐθησαυρίσατε, may easily have been suggested by Proverbs 16:27, Ἀνὴρ ἄφρων ὀρύσσει ἑαυτῷ κακά ἐπὶ δὲ τῶν ἑαυτοῦ χειλέων θησαυρίζει πῦρ. The whole form of expression also reminds us of St. Paul's "treasurest up for thyself wrath in the day of wrath" (Romans 2:5), to which it is exactly parallel, the "wrath in the day of wrath" there answering to the "fire in the last days" here. (The rendering of the Vulgate is evidently influenced by this parallel, as it has thesaurizastis tram.) For the last days; rather, in the last days (ἐν ἐσχάταις ἡμέραις); cf. 2 Timothy 3:1. If the words are connected with πῦρ as suggested above, there is no difficulty in them. If the punctuation of the A.V. be retained, we must suppose that the writer is speaking from the point of view of the last day of all. "When the end came it found them heaping up treasures which they could never use" (Dean Scott). But the other view, though not so generally adopted, seems fat' preferable.

Ellicott's Commentary

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers(3) Your gold and silver . . .--In like manner, the gold and silver are said to be "cankered," or eaten up with rust. The precious metals themselves do not corrode, but the base alloy does, which has been mixed with them for worldly use and device. The rust of them shall be a witness to you: not merely against, but convincing yourselves in the day of judgment; and, moreover, a sign of the fire which shall consume you. So will the wages of the traitor, and the harlot, the spoil of the thief and oppressor, burn the hands which have clutched them; the memories of the wrong shiver through each guilty soul, like the liquid fires which Muhammedans say torture the veins of the damned in the halls of Eblis.Ye have heaped . . .--Read, Ye heaped up treasures in the last days:--the days of grace, given you for repentance, like the years when "the long-suffering of God waited in the days of Noah" (Genesis 6:3; 1Peter 3:20), or the time during which God bore with Canaan, "till the iniquity of the Amorite" was "full" (Genesis 15:16).Some expositors have seen in this verse an instance of James's belief that he was "living in the last days of the world's history;" and compared his delusion with that of Paul and John (1Thessalonians 4:15, and 1John 2:18). But there was no mistake on the part of the inspired. writers; freedom from error in their Sacred office must be vindicated, or who shall sever the false gospel from the true? The simple explanation is an old one--the potential nearness of Christ, as it is called. In many ways He has been ever near each individual, as by affliction, or death, or judgment; but His actual return was probably nearer in the first ages of faith than in the brutality of the tenth century, or the splendid atheism of the fifteenth, or the intellectual pride of the nineteenth. His advent is helped or hindered by the state of Christendom itself: "one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day" (2Peter 3:8), there is: neither past nor future in His sight; only the presence of His own determination: and nought retards Christ's Second Coming so much as the false and feeble Christianity which prays "Thy kingdom come" in frequent words, but waits not as the handmaid of her Lord, with "loins girded about and lights burning" (Luke 12:35), "until the day dawn, and the day star arise" (2Peter 1:19). . . .