James 5:3

Your gold and silver is cankered; and the rust of them shall be a witness against you, and shall eat your flesh as it were fire. Ye have heaped treasure together for the last days. IS CANKERED - rusted through. RUST ... WITNESS AGAINST YOU - in the day of judgment; namely, that your riches were of no profit, lying unemployed, so contracting rust. SHALL EAT YOUR FLESH. The rust which once eat your riches shall then gnaw your conscience, accompanied with punishment which shall prey upon your bodies forever. AS ... FIRE - not with the slow process of rusting, but with the swiftness of fire. FOR THE LAST DAYS - ye have heaped together, not treasures, as ye suppose (cf. ), but wrath against the last days. Rather, 'In the last days (before the coming judgmen...

3_A witness against you_. He confirms the explanation I have already given. For God has not appointed gold for rust, nor garments for moths; but, on the contrary, be has designed them as aids and helps to human life. Therefore, even spending without benefit is a witness of inhumanity. The rusting of gold and silver will be, as it were, the occasion of inflaming the wrath of God, so that it will, like fire, consume them. _Ye have heaped treasure together_: These words may also admit of two explanations: — that the rich, as they would always live, are never satisfied, but weary themselves in heaping together what may be sufficient to the end of the world, — or, that they heap together the wrath and curse of God for the last day; and this second view I embrace. (138)...

1-6 Public troubles are most grievous to those who live in pleasure, and are secure and sensual, though all ranks suffer deeply at such times. All idolized treasures will soon perish, except as they will rise up in judgment against their possessors. Take heed of defrauding and oppressing; and avoid the very appearance of it. God does not forbid us to use lawful pleasures; but to live in pleasure, especially sinful pleasure, is a provoking sin. Is it no harm for people to unfit themselves for minding the concerns of their souls, by indulging bodily appetites? The just may be condemned and killed; but when such suffer by oppressors, this is marked by God. Above all their other crimes, the Jews had condemned and crucified that Just One who had come among them, even Jesus Christ the righteous....

Verse James 5:3. _YOUR GOLD AND SILVER IS CANKERED_] Instead of helping the poor, and thus honouring God with your substance, ye have, through the principle of covetousness, kept all to yourselves. _THE RUST OF THEM SHALL BE A WITNESS AGAINST YOU_] Your putrefied stores, your moth-eaten garments, and your tarnished coin, are so many proofs that it was not for want of property that you assisted not the poor, but through a principle of avarice; _loving money_, not for the sake of what it could procure, but for its _own sake_, which is the genuine principle of the _miser_. This was the very character given to this people by our Lord himself; he called them φιλαργυροι, _lovers of money_. Against this despicable and abominable disposition, the whole of the 12th chapter of St. Luke is levelled; but it was their easily besetting sin, and is so to the

YOUR GOLD AND SILVER IS CANKERED - That is, that you have heaped together, by injustice and fraud, a large amount, and have kept it from those to whom it is due, James 5:4, until it has become corroded. The word rendered is “cankered” (κατίωται katiōtai,) does not occur elsewhere in the New Testament. It properly means “to cause to rust; to rust out” (Passow); “to be corroded with rust” (Robinson); to be spotted with rust. It is true that gold and silver do not properly rust, or become oxidized, and that they will not be corroded like iron and steel; but by being kept long in a damp place they will contract a dark color, resembling rust in appearance. This seems to be the idea in the mind of the apostle. He speaks of gold and silver as they appear after having been long laid up without use; and undoubtedly the wor

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

YOUR GOLD AND SILVER IS CANKERED,.... Or grown rusty like iron, by lying long without use; this is not easily and quickly done, but in length of time gold and silver will change, and contract a rustiness; and so this conveys the same idea of hoarding up riches and laying up money, without making use of it in trade, for the support of the poor, and without distributing it to their necessities: AND THE RUST OF THEM SHALL BE A WITNESS AGAINST YOU: at the day of judgment; which will be a proof that they have not been employed to such services, and for such usefulness, for which they were designed and given. AND SHALL EAT YOUR FLESH AS IT WERE FIRE; that is, a remembrance of this, a sense of it impressed upon them, shall be like fire in their bones; shall distress their minds, gnaw their consciences, and be in them the worm that never dies, and the fire that shall never be quenched: ye hav...

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

From the merely careless rich James turns to the actively oppressive, the fellows of those whom he lashes in James 2:6 f. For him, of course, the prophetic Day of the Lord was more assured and more definite _than_ to the Jews he addressed; he had in thought the apocalypse of Mark 13, which was to receive a first fulfilment in the fall of Jerusalem. Even Jews of the Dispersion would feel many reflex effects of that catastrophe. James 5:2 recalls Matthew 6:19. There was a kind of fuliginous vapour arising from the Dead Sea which rusted even gold, and this may have suggested the figure. For a testimony _unto you_ is the figure of Mark 6:11. The dust

Come now, you rich, weep and wail at the miseries which are coming upon you. Your wealth is rotten and your garments are food for moths. Your gold and silver are corroded clean through with rust; and their rust is proof to you of how worthless they are. It is a rust which will eat into your very flesh like fire. It is a treasure indeed that you have amassed for yourselves in the last days! James 5:1-6 has two aims. First, to show the ultimate worthlessness of all earthly riches; and second, to show the detestable character of those who possess them. By doing this he hopes to prevent his readers from placing all their hopes and desires on earthly things. If you knew what you were doing, he says to the rich, you would weep and wail for the terror of the judgment that is coming upon you at the Day of the Lord. The vividness of the picture is increased by the word which James uses for