Passage

James 5.4

Book: James · ASV / WEB / KJV / YLT

Immediate context (±2 verses)

ASV

2. Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are moth-eaten. 3. Your gold and your silver are rusted; and their rust shall be for a testimony against you, and shall eat your flesh as fire. Ye have laid up your treasure in the last days.

4. Behold, the hire of the laborers who mowed your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth out: and the cries of them that reaped have entered into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth.

Ye have lived delicately on the earth, and taken your pleasure; ye have nourished your hearts in a day of slaughter. 6. Ye have condemned, ye have killed the righteous one; he doth not resist you. (James 5:2-6, ASV)

WEB

2. Your riches are corrupted and your garments are moth-eaten. 3. Your gold and your silver are corroded, and their corrosion will be for a testimony against you, and will eat your flesh like fire. You have laid up your treasure in the last days.

4. Behold, the wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you have kept back by fraud, cry out, and the cries of those who reaped have entered into the ears of the Lord of Armies.

You have lived delicately on the earth, and taken your pleasure. You have nourished your hearts as in a day of slaughter. 6. You have condemned, you have murdered the righteous one. He doesn’t resist you. (James 5:2-6, WEB)

KJV

2. Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are motheaten. 3. Your gold and silver is cankered; and the rust of them shall be a witness against you, and shall eat your flesh as it were fire. Ye have heaped treasure together for the last days.

4. Behold, the hire of the labourers who have reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth: and the cries of them which have reaped are entered into the ears of the Lord of sabaoth.

Ye have lived in pleasure on the earth, and been wanton; ye have nourished your hearts, as in a day of slaughter. 6. Ye have condemned and killed the just; and he doth not resist you. (James 5:2-6, KJV)

YLT

2. your riches have rotted, and your garments have become moth-eaten; 3. your gold and silver have rotted, and the rust of them for a testimony shall be to you, and shall eat your flesh as fire. Ye made treasure in the last days!

4. lo, the reward of the workmen, of those who in-gathered your fields, which hath been fraudulently kept back by you, doth cry out, and the exclamations of those who did reap into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth have entered;

ye did live in luxury upon the earth, and were wanton; ye did nourish your hearts, as in a day of slaughter; 6. ye did condemn, ye did murder the righteous one, he doth not resist you. (James 5:2-6, YLT)

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Setting

Speaker: James (Iakōbos), identified by the great majority of interpreters as the brother of Jesus (Galatians 1:19; Mark 6:3), leader of the Jerusalem church (Acts 15:13; Acts 21:18). He introduces himself simply as "a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ" (James 1:1), never as a relative.
Audience: Jewish believers outside Palestine, addressed as "the twelve tribes which are of the Dispersion" (James 1:1). The congregations meet in a synagōgē (James 2:2) and include both poor members and wealthy visitors.
Location: Jerusalem, from which James led the mother church.
Time period: Date disputed. An early date (c. AD 44-49) would make this the earliest surviving Christian writing; a later one places it before James's death, which Josephus dates to AD 62 (Antiquities 20.200). The letter shows no awareness of the Gentile-circumcision controversy settled in Acts 15, which many take as evidence for the early date.

Theological reading

"Behold, the hire of the laborers who mowed your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth out: and the cries of them that reaped have entered into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth."

The wages cry out. The withheld wages are given a voice, as Abel's blood was: "the voice of thy brother's blood crieth unto me from the ground" (Genesis 4:10). The workers' own cries join them. The law forbade exactly this: "the wages of a hired servant shall not abide with thee all night until the morning" (Leviticus 19:13), and "in his day thou shalt give him his hire, neither shall the sun go down upon it; for he is poor, and setteth his heart upon it: lest he cry against thee unto Jehovah, and it be sin unto thee" (Deuteronomy 24:15).

"The Lord of Sabaoth." Sabaoth (Strong's G4519 in the KJV) carries the Hebrew word for "hosts" over untranslated. Paul uses the same title when he quotes Isaiah 1:9 in Romans 9:29, and Isaiah's own text there reads "Jehovah of hosts." The reapers' complaint reaches the commander of heaven's armies. The rich have power in the courts (2:6), but the one who hears the reapers has more.

Judgment left with God. James addresses the rich directly, but the letter goes to the church. The paragraph tells the defrauded that God has heard them and tells the congregation to wait: "Be patient therefore, brethren, until the coming of the Lord" (5:7), for "the judge standeth before the doors" (5:9).

Key words

Theologically-loaded Greek or Hebrew words in this verse may have entries in the lexicon. Curated to roughly 100 contested terms across the corpus, not every word; see Lexicon Roadmap.

G2962 - kyrios, kyrios, Strong's G2962

Quoted in

Concepts:

Sin, via James 5.1-6

People:

Lexicon:

H6635 - tzevaot

Why these four translations

ris3n chose ASV, WEB, KJV, and YLT for two reasons together. They are the most literal English translations available (formal-equivalence: word-for-word renderings that preserve the Hebrew and Greek grammar rather than smoothing it into modern dynamic-equivalence idiom). And they are in the public domain in the United States, which means fair-use quotation at any length requires no publisher license. Modern licensed translations (NASB95, ESV, NIV) restrict volume of quotation under their copyright terms, so they are not used at stub-level coverage here. NASB95 appears only on hand-curated rich passage hubs under Lockman Foundation's fair-use allowance.

The four:

ASV (American Standard Version, 1901). The basis of the modern critical-text English tradition.
WEB (World English Bible, contemporary). Public-domain revision in the ASV line, in current English.
KJV (King James Version, 1611). Reformation-era, Textus Receptus base.
YLT (Young's Literal Translation, Robert Young, 1862). Hyper-literal preservation of Hebrew and Greek grammar; useful for word-study work even where English reads stiff.

See Bibles for the full per-translation history, translators, textual basis, strengths, and weaknesses.