James 5:1

James 5:1. Go to now. Whoever may be the persons referred to in the preceding paragraph, we consider that the rich who are here addressed were unbelieving and wicked men not belonging to the Christian community. Some indeed consider that they are rich Christians; [1] but the crime charged upon them of condemning and killing the just cannot be applicable to believers. Hence, Stier correctly remarks: ‘The rich men, whom St. James must here mean, are those already mentioned in chap, James 2:6-7: those who practised violence on the disciples of Christ, the confessors of the Lord of glory, and blasphemed that good name by which they were called. To them St. James predicts, as a prophet and in the style of the old prophets, the impending judgment to which Jerusalem was doomed, the desolation of the land, and all the misery which he, like the Lord Himself, speaks of as His coming to judgment and salvation.' It has also been disputed whether we have here a pure and unmixed denunciation of evil, or a call to repentance. Certainly there is in the words no invitation to repentance, but a mere declaration of vengeance. ‘They are mistaken,' observes Calvin, ‘who consider that St. James here exhorts the rich to repentance. It seems to be a simple denunciation of God's judgment, by which he meant to terrify them, without giving them any hope of pardon, for all that he says tends only to despair.' But this must not be too absolutely assumed, for we learn in the case of Nineveh that all God's denunciations are likewise exhortations to repentance.

[1] So Erdmann.

ye rich men: to be taken literally, rich in worldly wealth: the same who were formerly mentioned as the oppressors of believers (James 2:6-7). The allusion is not to rich men as a class, but to the unbelieving rich. The words are applicable to all the rich who are living without God in the world; and certainly the rich are under a peculiar temptation of setting their affections upon the things of this world. Riches are too frequently an obstacle to salvation, a weight which prevents the soul soaring upwards to heaven.

weep and howl for your miseries: literally, ‘weep, howling over your miseries.'

that shall come upon you: literally, ‘that are coming upon you.' The miseries here referred to are those which shall precede or occur at the advent of the Lord; and also, as in our Lord's prophecy, those which occurred during the Jewish war, then close at hand, miseries which were typical of those which would occur at the advent. These miseries in the Jewish war fell heavily upon the rich. They as a class belonged to the moderate party, who, having much to lose, wished to avoid a war with the Romans, and therefore were especially persecuted by the Jewish zealots, who became the ruling party. Nor were these miseries confined to the Jews in Judea, but embraced the Jews of the dispersion ‘the twelve tribes, scattered abroad.' There was at that time a general attack upon the Jews throughout the world. ‘St. James,' observes Bishop Wordsworth, ‘like a Christian Jeremiah, is uttering a Divine prophecy of the woes that are coming on Jerusalem and the Jews throughout the world.'