聖書注解書

1–4. Trials and their Purpose

1. a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ] The description which the writer gives of himself throws no light on his identity. The term “servant,” better slave, as one who had been bought with a price (1 Corinthians 6:20; 1 Corinthians 7:23), was used of themselves by both St Peter (2 Peter 1:1) and St Paul (Romans 1:15 Titus 1:1). It might be claimed by either of the Apostles who bore the name of James, or by the brother of our Lord, or indeed by any believer. (1 Peter 2:16).

It may be noted that this and ch. James 2:1 are the only passages in which St James names our Lord, and that the form in which the Name appears is identical with that in the Epistle from the Apostles and Elders assembled under St James’s presidency, in Acts 15:26.

to the twelve tribes which are scattered abroad] Literally, that are in the dispersion. The superscription is interesting as shewing that the ten tribes of the Kingdom of Israel, though they had been carried into a more distant exile than Judah and Benjamin, were thought of, not as lost and out of sight, but as still sharing the faith and hope of their fathers. So St Paul speaks of “the twelve-tribed nation” as “serving God day and night” (Acts 26:7), and our Lord’s promise that His twelve disciples should sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel (Matthew 19:28), and the Apocalyptic vision of the sealing of the tribes (Revelation 7:5-8) imply the same belief. The legend as to the disappearance of the Ten Tribes, which has given rise to so many insane dreams as to their identification with the Red Indians of America or our Anglo-Saxon forefathers, appears for the first time in the Apocryphal 2 Esdras (13:39–47), a book probably of about the same date as the Revelation of St John.

The term, “the dispersion,” the abstract noun being used for the concrete, had come to be a technical term for the Hellenistic and other Jews who were to be found within, or beyond, the limits of the Roman Empire. So the Jews ask whether our Lord will go “to the dispersion of (i. e. among) the Greeks” (John 7:35). So St Peter writes to “the sojourners of the dispersion” in the provinces of Asia Minor (1 Peter 1:1). The term had probably come into use from the LXX. of Deuteronomy 28:25 (“There shall be a dispersion in all the kingdoms of the world”). So in Jdt 5:19, Judah and Benjamin are said “to have come back from the dispersion,” and the prayer of Nehemiah in 2Ma 1:27 is that “God would gather together his dispersion,”

greeting] The salutation is the same as in the Epistle purporting to come from the Church over which St James presided, in Acts 15:23. The literal meaning of the word is to rejoice, and the idiomatic use of the infinitive is a condensed expression of the full “I wish you joy.” It was primarily a formula of Greek letter-writers, but it had been used by the LXX. for the Hebrew “peace” in Isaiah 48:22; Isaiah 57:21, and appears in the superscription of the letters of Antiochus in 2Ma 9:19. It is the word used in the mock salutations of the soldiers in the history of the Passion, “Hail, King of the Jews” (Matthew 26:49; Matthew 27:29; Matthew 28:9). In 2 John James 1:10-11 it is rendered by the colloquial English of “bidding God speed.” It is not used in any other of the Epistles of the New Testament, St Paul and St Peter using the formula “grace and peace.”

2. count it all joy …] We lose, in the English, the link which connects the wish for “joy” merged in our “greeting,” with the thought which indicates how the wish may be realised even under conditions that seem most adverse to it. The transition may be noticed as characteristic of the style of the Epistle. Other examples of a like method will meet us as we go on. The Greek formula for “all joy” (literally, every kind of joy) suggests the thought of the varied elements of joy that were to be found in the manifold forms of trial.

into divers temptations] The word, as commonly in the New Testament, stands for trials that take the form of suffering, rather than for the enticements of pleasure. Comp. Luke 22:28; Acts 20:19; 1 Corinthians 10:13; 1 Peter 1:6. Its use implies accordingly that those to whom the Epistle was written were passing through a time of adversity. This was true, more or less, of the whole Jewish race, everywhere, but it was specially true of those who being of the Twelve Tribes, also held the faith of the Lord Jesus Christ, and of those most of all who were most within the writer’s view. Comp. 1 Thessalonians 2:14; Hebrews 10:32-33, for the sufferings of Jewish and specially of Hebrew Christians. The word for “fall into” implies an unlooked-for concurrence of adverse circumstances.

3. that the trying of your faith] The word for “trying” implies at once a “test,” and a “discipline” leading to improvement. The same phrase meets us, in conjunction also with “divers temptations,” in 1 Peter 1:7. Each was, perhaps, quoting what had become an axiom of the Church’s life.

worketh patience] The Greek word always implies more than mere passive submission, the “endurance unto the end” of Matthew 10:22; Matthew 24:13, the perseverance which does not falter under suffering.

4. But let patience have her perfect work] Better, and let endurance have a perfect work, there being sequence of thought but not contrast. The word for “perfect” expresses the perfection of that which reaches its end, and so implies, possibly, a reference to our Lord’s words in Matthew 10:22. The form of the counsel implies that the work might be hindered unless the will of those who were called to suffer co-operated with the Divine purpose. The sufferings must be borne joyfully as well as submissively.

that ye may be perfect and entire] The latter word implies completeness in all parts or regions of the spiritual life, as the former does the attainment of the end, the completeness of growth. The corresponding substantive is used for the “perfect soundness” of the restored cripple in Acts 3:16; the adjective, in a like spiritual application, in 1 Thessalonians 5:23.

wanting nothing] The English is unfortunately ambiguous. Better, failing or lacking in nothing.

5–8. Wisdom, and the Prayer that gains it

5. If any of you lack wisdom] As before, in James 1:1-2, the prominent word of the preceding clause suggests the opening of the next, the word for “lack” being the same as the “wanting” in the previous verse. The prominence thus given to wisdom is characteristic of the teaching of St James (comp. ch. James 3:13-17). It is as though he had largely fashioned his thoughts of the spiritual life on the teaching of the Book of Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, perhaps also on the Wisdom of Solomon and Ecclesiasticus. Wisdom, in its good sense, stands, in New Testament language, as implying both a wider range of thought and a more direct influence on conduct than knowledge (1 Corinthians 12:8; Colossians 2:3).

that giveth to all men liberally] Literally, simply, but as to give simply, without reserve or arrière pensée, is to give freely, both the adverb and the corresponding noun often carried with them the idea of liberality (comp. Romans 12:8; 2 Corinthians 9:11; 2 Corinthians 9:13). The thought is that God gives absolutely all good gifts to those that ask Him (Matthew 6:11), and the highest gift, that of the Spirit that imparts wisdom, is included in the promise (Luke 11:13).

and upbraideth not] The word implies a contrast with human givers who too often, at the time or afterwards, mar their bounty with bitter and reproachful speeches. There seems here a direct allusion to the description in Sir 20:15, of “the gift of a fool,” “He giveth little and upbraideth much,” to the counsel “after thou hast given, upbraid not” (Sir 41:23). Not so, St James implies, does God give, though we are more open to His reproaches than any who are the objects of our bounty can be to ours.

and it shall be given him] An obvious echo of our Lord’s promise in Matthew 7:7; Luke 11:9.

6. let him ask in faith] The prominence thus given to faith at the very outset of the Epistle must be borne in mind in connection with the subsequent teaching of ch. James 2:14-26. Faith, i.e. trust in God, as distinct from belief in a dogma, is with him, as with St Paul, of the very essence of the spiritual life.

nothing wavering] Better, “nothing doubting.” Another echo from our Lord’s teaching (Matthew 21:21). The variations in the English version hinder us from seeing that St Paul, when he said that “Abraham staggered not at the promise of God … but was strong in faith” (Romans 4:20), was reproducing the very thought and language of St James. The primary idea of the verb used, as here, in the middle voice, is that of the inner “debating” which implies doubt. It does not involve the absolute negation of unbelief, though, as in Romans 4:20, it tends to this, but represents the state of one who meets the question, “Will God keep His promise?” now with Yes, and now with No. The words of our own poet,

“Faith and Unfaith can ne’er be equal powers,

Unfaith in aught is want of faith in all.”

Tennyson’s Merlin and Vivien.

reproduce the substance of St James’s teaching.

he that wavereth is like a wave] Better, he that doubteth. The English play upon the word, though happy in itself, has nothing corresponding to it in the Greek. Wycliffe gives “doubt”. Tyndal introduced “waver” in the previous clause, but kept “doubteth” in this.

driven with the wind and tossed] Better, driven by the winds and blasts, both words describing the action of a storm at sea, the latter pointing especially to sudden gusts and squalls. The image, true at all times and for all nations, was specially forcible for a people to whom, like the Jews, the perils of the sea were comparatively unfamiliar. Comp. the description of the storm in Proverbs 23:34 and the comparison of the wicked to the “troubled sea” in Isaiah 57:20. Popular speech likens a man who has no stedfastness to a ship drifting on the troubled waves of life. St James goes one step farther and likens him to the unresting wave itself. Now he is in the depths, now uplifted high. In Ephesians 4:14 the same image describes those who are “carried about by every wind of doctrine.” So far as St James wrote from personal experience we trace, perhaps, a recollection of stormy nights upon the Sea of Galilee. If we could identify him with the son of Zebedee, we might think of him as remembering such a night as that of Matthew 8:24 or John 6:18.

7. let not that man think …] Faith, undoubting faith, is then the condition of the prayer for wisdom, as of all other prayers, being heard and answered. Without it, the No excludes the Yes, which yet the man will not quite abandon.

of the Lord] It is a question whether the Divine Title is used in the Old Testament sense, for the Father, or, as generally, though not exclusively, in the New Testament, for the Son. On the whole, looking (1) to the meaning of the word in ch. James 5:7; James 5:14-15, (2) and to the frequent use of “God” and “the Father,” where Christ is not meant, there seems a balance of evidence in favour of the latter meaning. Christ also, not less than the Father, is thought of as giving or not giving, in answer to prayer. Possibly, however, the word was used without the thought of a distinction between the Divine Persons.

8. A double minded man …] The context shews that the man so described (the Greek word is not found in any earlier writer and may have been coined by St James) is not the fraudulent man but the waverer, trying to serve two masters (Matthew 6:24), halting between two opinions (1 Kings 18:21). It answers to the “double heart” (Heb. “a heart and a heart”) of Psalm 12:2. In Sir 1:28 we find the same thought, though not the same word, “Come not unto the Lord with a double heart,” and again in Sir 2:12, where a woe is uttered against the “sinner that goeth two ways,” in company with “the fearful and faint-hearted.” Clement of Rome (i. 11) reproduces St James’s word. The construction of the sentence is doubtful, and may be taken either as in the English text, or, with “he that doubteth” as the subject and “double-minded, unstable” as predicates.

unstable] The Greek word is found in the LXX. of Isaiah 54:11, where the English version has “tossed with tempest.” It is not found elsewhere in the New Testament, except as a various reading in ch. James 3:8, but the corresponding noun is often used both literally and figuratively (Luke 21:9; 1 Corinthians 14:33; 2 Corinthians 6:5; 2 Corinthians 12:20; James 3:16 and the LXX. of Proverbs 26:28). There is a slight change of imagery, and the picture brought before us is that of a man who does not walk straight onward, but in “all his ways” goes to and fro, now on this side, now on that, staggering, like a drunken man.