James 4:14

οἵτινες οὐκ ἐπίστασθε τὸ τῆς αὔριον : “Ye are they that know not …”; it is the contrast between the ignorance of men, with the consequent incertitude of all that the morrow may bring forth, and the knowledge of God in accordance with Whose will (cf. ἐὰν ὁ κύριος θελήσῃ in the next verse) all things come to pass. ποία ἡ ζωὴ ὑμῶν; “Of what kind is your life”? The reference here is not to the life of the wicked, but to the uncertainty of human life in general; the thought of the ungodly being cut off is, it is true, often expressed in the Bible, but that is not what is here referred to; it is evidently not conscious sin, but thoughtlessness which the writer is rebuking here. ἀτμὶς γάρ ἐστε : the reading ἐστε, in preference to ἐστι or ἔσται, makes the address more personal; ἀτμὶς is often used for “smoke,” e.g., Acts 2:17; cf. Psalms 102:3 (4), ἐξέλιπον ὡσεὶ καπνὸς αἱ ἡμέραι μου; the word only occurs here in the N.T., in Acts 2:19 it is a quotation from Joel 2:30 (Sept.) James 3:3 (Heb.). In Job 7:7 we have μνήσθητι ὅτι πνεῦμά μου ἡ ζωή, cf. Wis 2:4; the rendering “breath” instead of “vapour” does not commend itself on account of the former being invisible, and the point of the words is that man does appear for a little time (πρὸς ὀλίγον φαινομένη) and then disappears, cf. Wis 16:6. ἀφανιζομένη : the word occurs, though in a different connection, in Sir 45:26.