James 1:2

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.