James 5:11

we count them happy which endure Better, we call them blessed, the verb being formed from the adjective used in ch. James 1:12. Comp. Luke 2:48. The words may contain a reference to Daniel 12:12.

Ye have heard of the patience of Job Better, endurance, to keep up the connexion with the verb. It is singular that, though the book is once quoted (1 Corinthians 3:19; Job 5:13), this is the only reference in the New Testament to the history of Job. Philo, however, quotes from Job 14:4 (de Mutat. Nom. xxiv.), and he is referred to by Clement of Rome (1.17.26). The book would naturally be studied by one whose attention had been drawn, as St James's manifestly had been, to the sapiential Books included in the Hagiographa of the Old Testament. It is obvious that he refers to the book as containing an actual history, as obvious that his so referring to it throws no light on the questions which have been raised, but which it would be out of place to discuss here, as to its authorship and date.

and have seen the end of the Lord The words have received two very different interpretations. (1) They have been referred to the "end" which the "Lord" wrought out for Job after his endurance had been tried, as in Job 42:12. (2) The "end of the Lord" has been understood as pointing to the death and resurrection of Christ as the Lord who had been named in James 5:7, the highest example of patience in the Old Testament being brought into juxtaposition with the Highest of all Examples. On this view the passage becomes parallel with 1 Peter 2:19-25. The clause that follows is, however, decisively in favour of (1), nor is there any instance of a New Testament writer using the term "end" of the passion and death of Christ. Matthew 26:58, which is the nearest approach to such a use, is scarcely in point.

that the Lord is very pitiful, and of tender mercy The first of the two adjectives, of which the nearest English equivalent would be large-hearted or perhaps tender-hearted, is not found in any other writer, and may have been a coinage of St James's. The latter occurs in Sir 2:11, in close juxtaposition with a passage which we have already found referred to in the Epistle (Sir 2:11), and which may therefore have been present to St James's thoughts. In this instance "the Lord" is clearly used in the Old Testament sense, and this, as has been said, determines the meaning of the previous clause.