James 4:2,3

ἐπιθυμεῖτε καὶ οὐκ ἔχετε …: It must be confessed that these verses are very difficult to understand; we have, on the one hand, lusting and coveting, murdering and fighting; and, on the other hand, praying. Murdering and fighting are the means used in order to obtain that which is coveted; yet in the same breath it is said that the reason why the coveted things are not obtained is because they are not asked for! Is it intended to be understood that this lust (in the sense, of course, of desiring) and covetousness are not gratified only because they had not been prayed for, or not properly prayed for? This is what the words mean as they stand; but can it ever be justifiable to pray for what is evil? There is something extraordinarily incongruous in the whole passage, which defies explanation if the words are to be taken in their obvious meaning. Only one thing seems clear, and that is a moral condition which is hopelessly chaotic. Carr says that “these two verses are among the examples of poetical form in this Epistle”; perhaps this gives the key to the solution of the problem. It may be that we have in the whole of these James 4:1-10 a string of quotations, not very skilfully strung together a kind of “Stromateis” taken from a variety of authorities, in order to make this protest against a disgraceful state of affairs more emphatic and authoritative. φονεύετε : the reading φθονεῖτε cannot be entertained if any regard is to be paid to MS. authority; even if accepted it would not really simplify matters much. ζηλοῦτε : refers rather to persons, ἐπιθυμεῖτε to things.