James 1:13

Let no man say when he is tempted The thought of trial as coming from outward circumstances, and forming part of man's spiritual education, leads to a deeper inquiry as to its nature, and so passes on to the wider notion of temptation, which includes the allurements of desire as well as the trials of adversity, In both cases men found refuge from the reproof of conscience in a kind of fatalism. God had placed them in such and such circumstances; therefore, He was the author of the sin to which those circumstances had led. The excuse is one which presents itself to men's minds at all times, but here also there is a special point of contact with the Son of Sirach: "Say not thou, it is through the Lord that I fell away" (Sir 15:11). It may be noted that the popular Pharisaism, which taught a doctrine of necessity (Joseph. Ant. xviii. 1. § 3; Wars, ii. 8. § 14) while speculatively maintaining also the freedom of man's will, was likely to develope into this kind of practical fatalism.

I am tempted of God The order of the Greek words is more emphatic, It is from God that I am tempted.

for God cannot be tempted with evil The English "cannot be tempted" answers to a Greek verbal adjective, not used elsewhere in the New Testament or in the LXX. version of the Old, and not found in Classical Greek. Its meaning as used in later Greek writers, is simply "untried," and so "unversed in," and it has been maintained that it is so used here, but the context makes it almost certain that St James used it in the sense of "untempted." At first it might seem as if this assertion did not meet the thought to which it appears to be answer, but the latent premiss of the reasoning seems to be that no one tempts to evil, who has not been first himself tempted by it. If men shrank from the blasphemy of affirming that of God, they ought to shrink also from the thought that He could ever tempt them to evil. He who was absolutely righteous, could not be the originator of sin. He triesmen, but does not temptthem.

neither tempteth he any man Better, and He (the pronoun is emphatic) tempteth no one.