James 2:4

οὐ διεκρίθητε with אAB2C and most cursives. B* omits οὐ, so also ff. KLP and others have καὶ οὐ.

4. οὐ διεκρίθητε. For reading see critical notes. Did ye not make a distinction among yourselves (though you are ἀδελφοί), and thereby shewed yourselves to be judges whose reasonings are evil? διεκρίθητε though passive in form has here a middle or intransitive meaning. This appears from the two other passages in the N.T. where the same form occurs, Matthew 21:21; Mark 11:23. Compare the prevailing N.T. form ἀπεκρίθη in place of the far rarer ἀπεκρίνατο, which last occurs four times only in the synoptic gospels, and three of these are in the parallel accounts of the Passion.

There is a tendency in later Greek to the disuse of middle forms. In Modern Greek the middle voice has ceased to exist. There are also instances in Hellenistic Greek of recurrence to original forms, and “the aorist stems in -η and -θη appear to have originally had an intransitive sense of which the passive sense was a growth or adaptation.” Monro’s Hom. Gram. § 44.

But apart from these arguments from the history of language the passive rendering fails here to give good sense.

διαλογισμῶν πονηρῶν. See on ἀκροατὴς ἐπιλησμονῆς James 1:25. διαλογισμοί, reasonings, never in a good sense in N.T., διαλογισμοὶ πονηροί, Matthew 15:19; οἱ διαλ. οἱ κακοί, Mark 7:21. See also Romans 14:1; Philippians 2:14; 1 Timothy 2:8.