James 5:13

Is any among you afflicted? let him pray. Is any merry? let him sing psalms. AFFLICTED, [ kakopathei (G2553)] - 'evil treated:' "suffering affliction" (James 5:10). LET HIM PRAY - not "swear" in rash impatience. MERRY - in mind. SING PSALMS - of praise, as Paul and Silas did in prison....

13_Is any among you afflicted? _he means that there is no time in which God does not invite us to himself. For afflictions ought to stimulate us to pray; prosperity supplies us with an occasion to praise God. But such is the perverseness of men, that they cannot rejoice without forgetting God, and that when afflicted they are disheartened and driven to despair. We ought, then, to keep within due bounds, so that the joy, which usually makes us to forget God, may induce us to set forth the goodness of God, and that our sorrow may teach us to pray. For he has set the _singing of psalms _in opposition to profane and unbridled joy; and thus they express their joy who are led, as they ought to be, by prosperity to God....

12-18 The sin of swearing is condemned; but how many make light of common profane swearing! Such swearing expressly throws contempt upon God's name and authority. This sin brings neither gain, nor pleasure, nor reputation, but is showing enmity to God without occasion and without advantage It shows a man to be an enemy to God, however he pretends to call himself by his name, or sometimes joins in acts of worship. But the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain. In a day of affliction nothing is more seasonable than prayer. The spirit is then most humble, and the heart is broken and tender. It is necessary to exercise faith and hope under afflictions; and prayer is the appointed means for obtaining and increasing these graces. Observe, that the saving of the sick is not ascribed to the anointing with oil, but to prayer. In a time of sickness it is not cold and forma...

Verse 13. _IS ANY AMONG YOU AFFLICTED? LET HIM PRAY_] The Jews taught that the meaning of the ordinance, Leviticus 13:45, which required the leper to cry, _Unclean! unclean_! was, "that thus _making known_ his calamity, the people might be led to offer up prayers to God in his behalf," _Sota_, page 685, ed. Wagens. They taught also, that when any sickness or affliction entered a family, they should go to the wise men, and implore their prayers. _Bava bathra_, fol. 116, 1. In _Nedarim_, fol. 40, 1, we have this relation: "Rabba, as often as he fell sick, forbade his domestics to mention it for the first day; if he did not then begin to get well, he told his family to go and publish it in the highways, that they who hated him might rejoice, and they that loved him might intercede with God for him." Is any merry?

IS ANY AMONG YOU AFFLICTED? - By sickness, bereavement, disappointment, persecutions, loss of health or property. The word used here refers to suffering evil of any kind, (κακοπαθεῖ kakopathei.) LET HIM PRAY - That is, prayer is appropriate to trial. The mind naturally resorts to it, and in every way it is proper. God only can remove the source of sorrow; he can grant unto us “a happy issue out of all our afflictions;” he can make them the means of sanctifying the soul. Compare 2 Chronicles 33:12; Psalms 34:4; Psalms 107:6,...

EXPOSITION JAMES 5:1 DENUNCIATION OF THE RICH FOR (1) GRINDING DOWN THE POOR AND KEEPING BACK THEIR WAGES; (2) LUXURY; (3) MURDER. The whole section resembles nothing so much as an utterance of one of the old Jewish prophets. It might almost be a leaf torn out of the Old Testament. JAMES 5:1 GO TO NOW (see on James 4

IS ANY AMONG YOU AFFLICTED?.... As the people of God generally are; they are commonly a poor, and an afflicted people; at least there are many among them that are so, and many are their afflictions: those whom Christ loves, as he did Lazarus, are not free from sicknesses and diseases; and these are rather signs of love than arguments against it; and when this is the case of any of the saints, what is to be done? LET HIM PRAY; to God that can save him; in the name of Christ; under the influence of the Spirit; believing in the word of promise. Times of afflictions are proper times for prayer; there is then more especially need of it; and God sometimes lays his afflicting hand upon his people, when they have been negligent of their duty, and he has not heard of them for some time, in order to bring them near to him, to seek his face, pay him a visit, and pour out a prayer before him; see...

V. THE COMING OF THE LORD AND THE LIFE OF FAITH CHAPTER 5 _ 1. The oppression by the rich and their coming doom (James 5:1)_ 2. Be patient unto the coming of the Lord (James 5:7) 3. The prayers of faith and the life of faith (James 5:13) James 5:1 The two classes whom James addresses stand out very prominently in this final chapter of his Epistle. The rich oppressors certainly are not believers but the unbelieving rich; they are not addressed as “brethren”; but others are in verse 7 and exhorted to patience. Both classes, the unbelieving rich and the believing remnant are confronted by the coming of the Lord. “Go to

The key to this hard passage seems to lie in the climax, the example of Elijah, who in 1 Kings 17:1; 1 Kings 18:41 ff., is not said to have prayed for drought or for rain. His prayer is in the phrase before whom I stand a life in the Presence, bringing with it an instinctive knowledge of God's will; _cf._ Amos 3:7. The elders, therefore, of a faithful congregation may expect a Divine impulse prompting them to ask for physical recovery when God wills it; we may also believe that such united prayer is a real instrument in God's hands, just as much as the application of remedies like oil (_cf._ Isaiah 1:6;...

THE WORTHLESSNESS OF RICHES (James 5:1-3)...