_THE FOLLIES AND INIQUITIES OF THE RICH;
THEIR MISERABLE END._
"Go to now, ye rich, weep and howl for your miseries that are coming
upon you. Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are
moth-eaten. Your gold and your silver are rusted; and their rust
shall be for a testimony against you, and shall eat your flesh as
fire. Ye have laid up your treasure in the last days. Behold, the
hire of the labourers who mowed your fields, which is of you kept
back by fraud, crieth out: and the cries of them that reaped have
entered into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth. Ye have lived
delicately on the earth, and taken your pleasure; ye have nourished
your hearts in a day of slaughter. Ye have condemned, ye have killed
the righteous one; he doth not resist you."--ST. JAMES v. 1-6.
Here, if anywhere in the Epistle, the writer glances aside from the
believing Jews of the Dispersion, to whom the letter as a whole is
addressed, and in a burst of righteous indignation which reminds us of
passages in the old Hebrew Prophets, denounces members of the twelve
tribes who not even in name are Christians. In the preceding section
such a transition is in preparation. When he is condemning the godless
presumption of those seekers after wealth who dared, without thought
of their own frailty and of God's absolute control over their lives
and fortunes, to think and speak confidently of their schemes for
future gains, he seems to be thinking almost as much of unbelieving
Jews as of those who have accepted the Gospel. Here he appears for the
moment to have left the latter entirely out of sight, and to be
addressing those wealthy Jews who not only continued the policy and
shared the guilt of the opponents and murderers of Christ, but by
scandalous tyranny and injustice oppressed their poor brethren, many
of whom were probably Christians. The severity of the condemnation is
not the only or the main reason for thinking that the paragraph is
addressed to unconverted Jews. The first ten verses of chapter iv. are
very severe; and there also, as here, the affectionate form of
address, "brethren," so frequent elsewhere in the Epistle, is wanting;
but there is no doubt that those ten verses, like the paragraphs which
immediately precede and follow them, are addressed to Christians. What
is so exceptional in the passage now under consideration is _the
entire absence of any exhortation to repentance_, or of any indication
that there is still hope of being reconciled to the offended Jehovah.
They are to "weep and howl," not in penitence, but in despair. The end
is at hand; the day of reckoning is approaching; and it is a fearful
account which awaits them. In this respect there is a very marked
difference between this paragraph and the one which follows it. In
both the nearness of the Day of Judgment is the motive; but this
nearness is to "the rich" a terror, to "the brethren" a comfort. This
difference would be very difficult to explain if both paragraphs were
addressed to believing Jews.
Throughout the Epistle there are strains which sound like echoes from
the Prophets of the Old Testament, with whom St. James has much in
common; but the passage before us is specially in their spirit. It
would not surprise us to meet with it in Isaiah or Jeremiah. One or
two similar passages are worth comparing: "Woe to thee that spoilest,
and thou wast not spoiled; and dealest treacherously, and they dealt
not treacherously with thee! When thou hast ceased to spoil, thou
shalt be spoiled; and when thou hast made an end to deal
treacherously, they shall deal treacherously with thee" (Isa.
xxxiii. 1). "Woe to him that getteth an evil gain for his house, that
he may set his nest on high, that he may be delivered from the hand of
evil! Thou hast consulted shame to thy house, by cutting off many
peoples, and hast sinned against thy soul. For the stone shall cry out
of the wall, and the beam out of the timber shall answer it" (Hab.
ii. 9). In the New Testament the passage which most resembles it is
our Lord's denunciation of the scribes and Pharisees (Matt.
xxiii. 13-36).
"Go to now, ye rich, weep and howl for your miseries that are coming
upon you." We have the same combination of words in Isaiah: "In their
streets they gird themselves with sackcloth: on their housetops, and
in their broad places, every one _howleth, weeping_ abundantly"
(xv. 3). And in an earlier chapter we have a still closer parallel to
the spirit of this verse: "_Howl ye; for the day of the Lord is at
hand_" (xiii. 6). The miseries to which St. James alludes are those
which shall befall them at "the coming of the Lord" (ver. 8). It is
the impending judgment of the tyrannous rich that is primarily in his
mind. He may also have foreseen something of the horrors of the Jewish
war and the destruction of Jerusalem, and in accordance with Christ's
prophecy may have considered these calamities typical of the judgment,
or part and parcel of it. In the Jewish war the wealthy classes
suffered terribly. Against them, as having been friendly to the
Romans, and having employed Roman influence in oppressing their own
countrymen, the fury of the fanatical party of the Zealots was
specially directed; and although the blow fell first and heaviest upon
the Jews in Jerusalem and Judæa, yet it was felt by all Jews
throughout the world.
They imagined themselves to be rich; they were really most poor and
most miserable. So sure is the doom that is coming upon them, that in
prophetical style St. James begins to speak of it as already here;
like a seer, he has it all before his eyes. "Your riches are
corrupted, and your garments are moth-eaten. Your gold and your silver
are rusted." We have here three kinds of possessions indicated. First,
stores of various kinds of goods. These are "corrupted;" they have
become rotten and worthless. Secondly, rich garments, which in the
East are often a very considerable portion of a wealthy man's
possessions. They have been stored up so jealously and selfishly that
insects have preyed upon them and ruined them. And thirdly, precious
metals. These have become tarnished and rusted, through not having
been put to any rational use. Everywhere their avarice has been not
only sin, but folly. It has failed of its sinful object. The
unrighteous hoarding has tended not to wealth, but to ruin. And thus
the rust of their treasures becomes "a testimony against them." In the
ruin of their property their own ruin is portrayed; and just as
corruption, and the moths, and the rust consume their goods, so shall
the fire of God's judgment consume the owners and abusers of them.
They have reserved all this store for their selfish enjoyment, but God
has reserved them for His righteous anger.
"Ye laid up your treasure in the last days." _There_ was the monstrous
folly of it. The end of all things was close at hand; "the last days"
had already begun; and these besotted graspers after wealth were still
heaping up treasures which they would never have any opportunity of
using. The Authorized Version spoils this by a small, but rather
serious, mistranslation. It has, "Ye have heaped up treasure together
_for_ the last days," instead of "_in_ the last days" (ἐν ἐσχάταις
ὑμέραις). The case is precisely that which Christ foretold: "As were
the days of Noah, so shall be the coming of the Son of man. For as in
those days which were before the flood they were eating and drinking,
marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered into
the ark, and they knew not until the flood came, and took them all
away; so shall be the coming of the Son of man" (Matt. xxiv. 37-39).
"Likewise even as it came to pass in the days of Lot; they ate, they
drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they builded; but in the
day that Lot went out from Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from
heaven, and destroyed them all: after the same manner shall it be in
the day that the Son of man is revealed" (Luke xvii. 28-30).
That the "last days" mean the days immediately preceding the Second
Advent can scarcely be doubted. The context renders this very
probable, and the exhortation in the next section renders it
practically certain. "Be ye also patient; stablish your hearts: for
_the coming of the Lord is at hand_. Murmur not, brethren, one against
another, that ye be not judged: behold, _the Judge standeth before the
doors_." That the first Christians believed that Jesus Christ would
return in glory during the lifetime of many who were then living, will
hardly be disputed by any one who is acquainted with the literature of
the Apostolic age and of the period immediately following. Nor,
perhaps, will many at the present time care to dispute that this
erroneous opinion was shared, for a time at any rate, even by
Apostles. "Ye are guarded through faith unto a salvation ready to be
revealed in the last time," says St. Peter (1 Peter i. 5). "We that
are alive, that are left unto the coming of the Lord, shall in nowise
precede them that are fallen asleep" (1 Thess. iv. 15; _cf._ 1 Cor.
xv. 51); and again, writing some years later, "In the last days
grievous times shall come," about which Timothy is to be on his guard,
says St. Paul (2 Tim. iii. 1). And much nearer to the close of the
Apostolic age we have St. John telling his little children that "it is
the last hour" (1 John ii. 18). Some twenty or thirty years later
St. Ignatius writes to the Ephesians, "These are the last times.
Henceforth let us be reverent; let us fear the longsuffering of God,
lest it turn into a judgment against us. For either let us fear the
wrath which is to come, or let us love the grace which now is" (xi.).
Only very gradually did the Christian Church attain to something like
a true perspective as to the duration of Christ's kingdom upon earth.
Only very gradually did even the Apostles obtain a clear vision as to
the nature of the kingdom which their Lord had founded and left in
their charge, for them to occupy until He came. Pentecost did not at
once give them perfect insight into the import of their own
commission. Much still remained to be learned, slowly, by experience.
And if this was the case with Apostles, we need not wonder that it was
so with James, the Lord's brother. It is remarkable that Christ's
solemn warning against speculating as to the time of His return seems
to have made only partial impression upon the disciples. "Of that day
or that hour knoweth no one, not even the angels in heaven, neither
the Son, but the Father. Take ye heed, watch and pray: for ye know not
when the time is" (Mark xiii. 32, 33). But it is our gain that they
were allowed for a time to hold a belief that the Lord would return
very speedily. The Epistles and Gospels were written by men under the
influence of that belief, and such influence is a very considerable
guarantee for the honesty of the writers. It was because the rich whom
St. James here denounces had no such belief in a speedy judgment,
indeed had very little thought of a judgment at all, that they were
guilty of such folly and iniquity.
Having indicated their folly in amassing wealth which was no blessing
to themselves or others, but simply deteriorated by being hoarded,
St. James passes on to point out their iniquity. And first of all he
mentions the gross injustice which is frequently inflicted by these
wealthy employers of labour upon those who work for them. The payment
of the wages which have been earned is either unfairly delayed or not
paid at all. "Behold, the hire of the labourers who mowed your fields,
which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth out." Several passages in
the Old Testament appear to be in the writer's mind. "Thou shalt not
oppress an hired servant that is poor and needy, whether he be of thy
brethren, or of thy strangers that are in thy land within thy gates:
_in his day thou shalt give him his hire_, neither shall the sun go
down upon it; for he is poor, and setteth his heart upon it: lest he
_cry_ against thee unto the Lord, and it be sin unto thee" (Deut.
xxiv. 14, 15; cf. 17, and Lev. xix. 13). "And I will come near you to
judgment; and I will be a swift witness against ... those that
_oppress the hireling in his wages_, the widow and the fatherless, and
that turn away the stranger from his right, and fear not Me, saith the
Lord" (Mal. iii. 5; _cf._ Jer. xxii. 13). Perhaps also, "Their cry
came up unto God by reason of the bondage" (Exod. ii. 23); and "The
voice of thy brother's blood crieth unto me from the ground" (Gen.
iv. 10). The frequency with which the subject is mentioned[84] seems
to show that the evil which St. James here denounces had long been a
common sin among the Jews. Tobit, in his charge to his son, says,
"What is hateful to thee do not thou to others. Let not the wages of
any man, which hath wrought for thee, tarry with thee (abide with thee
all night), but give him it out of hand" (Tobit iv. 14). And in
Ecclesiasticus, which St. James seems so often to have in his
thoughts, we read, "The bread of the needy is the life of the poor: he
that defraudeth him thereof (ὁ ἀποστερῶν αὐτήν) is a man of blood. He
that taketh away his neighbour's living slayeth him; and he that
defraudeth the labourer of his hire (ὁ ἀποστερῶν μισθόν μισθίου)[85]
is a blood-shedder" (Ecclus. xxxiv. 21, 22).
But none of these passages determine for us a point of some interest
in the construction used by St. James. The words translated "_of_
you," in "of you kept back by fraud," literally mean "_from_ you" (ἀφ'
ὑμῶν, not ὑφ' ὑμῶν). Two explanations are suggested: 1. The fraudulent
action proceeds _from_ them, and hence "from" becomes nearly
equivalent to "by;" and the use of "from" (ἀπό), rather than "by"
(ὑπό), is all the more natural because the word for "kept back by
fraud" has the former preposition compounded with it. 2. "From you,"
being placed between "kept back by fraud" and "crieth out" (ὁ
ἀπεστερημένος ἀφ' ὑμῶν κράζει), may go with either, and it will be
better to take it with "crieth out:" "The hire kept back by fraud
_crieth out from you_." The wrongfully detained wages are with the
rich employers, and therefore it is from the place where they are
detained that their cry goes up to heaven. The passage quoted above
from Exodus ii. 23 slightly favours this view, for there the
Septuagint has, "Their cry came up unto God _from their labours_" (ἀπὸ
τῶν ἔργων); but the passages are not really parallel.
The word used for "fields" (χώρας) is worth noting. It implies
extensive lands, and therefore adds point to the reproach. The men who
own such large properties are not under the temptations to fraud which
beset the needy, and it is scandalous that those who can so well
afford to pay what is due should refuse. Moreover, the labour of
mowing and reaping such fields must be great, and therefore the
labourers have well earned their wage. The words "into the ears of the
Lord of Sabaoth" probably come from Isaiah (v. 9), and perhaps
St. James was led to them by the thought that these extensive fields
are the result of fraud or violence; for the verse which precedes the
words in Isaiah runs thus: "Woe unto them that join house to house,
that lay field to field, till there be no room, and ye be made to
dwell alone in the midst of the land!" No other New Testament writer
uses the expression "the Lord of Sabaoth," although St. Paul once
quotes it from Isaiah (Rom. ix. 29). Bede may be right in thinking
that its point here is that the rich fancy that the poor have no
protector; whereas the Lord of hosts hears their cry. And there is
possibly another point in mowers and reapers being selected as the
representatives of all hired labourers. Calvin suggests that it is
specially iniquitous that those whose toil supplies us with food
should themselves be reduced to starvation; and to this it has been
added that the hard-heartedness of the grasping employers is indeed
conspicuous when not even the joy of the harvest moves them to pay the
poor who work for them their hardly earned wage.
The second feature in the iniquity of the rich is the voluptuous and
prodigal life which they lead themselves, at the very time that they
inflict such hardships upon the poor. "Ye lived delicately on the
earth, and took your pleasure; ye nourished your hearts in a day of
slaughter." The aorists should perhaps be translated as aorists
throughout these verses: "Ye laid up your treasure, ... ye lived
delicately," etc. rather than, "Ye _have_ laid up, ye _have_ lived,"
etc. The point of view is that of the Day of Judgment, when these
wealthy sinners are confronted by the enormities which they committed
during their lives. But it is a case in which it is quite permissible
to render the Greek aorist by the English perfect. "On the earth" may
either mean "during your lifetime," or may be in contrast to "entered
into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth." All the while that the cry
against their iniquity was ascending to _heaven_, as an accumulating
charge that would at last overwhelm them, they were living in luxury
_on earth_, thinking nothing of the wrath to come. It was the converse
of the old Epicurean doctrine, so graphically described by the
Laureate in "The Lotus-eaters." There it is the gods who "lie beside
their nectar" in ceaseless enjoyment, "careless of mankind," who send
up useless lamentations, which provoke no more than a smile among the
neglectful deities. Here it is the men who revel in boundless luxury,
careless of the righteous God, whose vengeance they provoke by
persistent neglect of His commands.
The meaning of "in a day of slaughter" is not easily determined. The
"as"--"_as_ in a day of slaughter"--must certainly be omitted. It was
inserted to make more evident one of the possible interpretations of
"day of slaughter." "Ye fattened your heart with perpetual banqueting,
as if life were made up of killing and eating." "And in that day did
the Lord, the Lord of hosts, call to weeping and to mourning, and
baldness, and to girding with sackcloth: and behold, joy and gladness,
slaying oxen and killing sheep, eating flesh and drinking wine: let us
eat and drink, for to-morrow we die" (Isaiah xxii. 12, 13). If this be
the idea which is expressed by the words in question, then the meaning
would be, "Ye fared sumptuously every day." But it is possible that
"in a day of slaughter" here balances "in the last days" just above.
As the folly of heaping up treasure was augmented by the fact that it
was done when the end of all things was at hand, so the iniquity of
voluptuous living was augmented by the fact that their own destruction
was at hand. In this case the wealthy owners, like stalled oxen, were
unconsciously fattening themselves for the slaughter. Instead of
sacrificing themselves to God's love and mercy, they had sacrificed
and devoured their poor brethren. They had fed themselves, and not the
flock; and unwittingly they were preparing themselves as a sacrifice
to God's wrath. _For a sacrifice, either willingly or unwillingly,
every one must be._
Did any of those whom St. James here condemns remember his words when,
a few years later, thousands of the Jews of the Dispersion were once
more gathered together at Jerusalem for the sacrifice of the Passover,
and there became unwilling sacrifices to God's slow but sure
vengeance? As already pointed out, it was the wealthy among them who
specially suffered. Their prosperity and their friendship with the
Romans provoked the envy and enmity of the fanatical Zealots, and they
perished in a day of slaughter. Josephus tells us that it was all one
whether the richer Jews stayed in the city during the siege or tried
to escape to the Romans; for they were equally destroyed in either
case. Every such person was put to death, on the pretext that he was
preparing to desert, but in reality that the plunderers might get his
possessions. People who were evidently half-starved were left
unmolested, when they declared that they had nothing; but those whose
bodies showed no signs of privation were tortured to make them reveal
the treasures which they were supposed to have concealed (_Bell. Jud._
V. x. 2).
"Ye condemned, ye killed the righteous one; he doth not resist you."
Does this refer to the condemnation and death of Jesus Christ? This
interpretation has found advocates in all ages--Cassiodorus, Bede,
Œcumenius, Grotius, Bengel, Lange, and other modern commentators;
and it is certainly attractive. St. Peter, addressing the Jews in
Solomon's Porch, says, "But ye denied the Holy and _Righteous One_,
and asked for a murderer to be granted unto you, and killed the Prince
of Life" (Acts iii. 14, 15). St. Stephen, in his speech before the
Sanhedrin, asks, "Which of the prophets did not your fathers
persecute? and they killed them which showed before of the coming of
_the Righteous One_; of whom ye have now become betrayers and
murderers" (Acts vii. 52; _cf._ xxii. 14, and 1 Pet. iii. 18). It is
certainly no objection to this interpretation that St. James uses the
aorist--"ye condemned, ye killed." That tense might fittingly be used
either of a course of action in the past, as in the aorists
immediately preceding, or of a single action, as of Abraham's offering
Isaac (ii. 21). Nor is it any objection that in "He doth not resist
you" St. James changes to the present tense. In any case the change
from past to present has to be explained, and it is as easy to explain
it of the present long-suffering of Christ, or of His abandoning them
to their wickedness, as of the habitual meekness of the righteous man.
Nor, again, is it any objection that the Jews addressed in this
Epistle could not rightly be charged with the condemnation and death
of Christ, for twenty or thirty years had elapsed since that event. It
is by no means improbable that among the Jews then living there were
many who had cried "Crucify Him" on Good Friday; and even if there
were not, the words of St. James are quite justifiable. The
Crucifixion was in a very real sense the act of the whole nation, far
more so than was the murder of Zacharias the son of Jehoiada, and yet
Jesus says to the Jews respecting Zacharias, "whom ye slew between the
sanctuary and the altar." If at the present day the English might be
told that they condemned and killed Charles I., and the French be told
that they condemned and killed Louis XVI., much more might the Jews in
the middle of the first century be said to have condemned and killed
Jesus Christ.
But nevertheless, this attractive and tenable interpretation is
probably not the right one; the context is against it. It is the evil
that is inherent in class tyrannizing over _class_ that is condemned,
the rich oppressing the poor, and the godless persecuting the godly.
"The righteous one" is here not an individual, but the representative
of a class. The iniquitous violence which slew Jesus Christ and His
martyrs, James the son of Zebedee and Stephen, _illustrates_ what
St. James says here, just as his own martyrdom does; but it does not
follow from this that he is alluding to any one of these events in
particular. The Book of Wisdom seems once more to be in the writer's
mind: "Let us oppress the poor righteous man; let us not spare the
widow, nor reverence the ancient grey hairs of the aged.... Let us lie
in wait for the righteous; because he is not for our turn, and he is
clean contrary to our doings: he upbraideth us with our offending the
law, and objecteth to our infamy the transgressings of our
education.... He is grievous to us even to behold: for his life is not
like other men's; his ways are of another fashion.... Let us examine
him with despitefulness and torture, that we may know his meekness,
and prove his patience. Let us condemn him with a shameful death; for
by his own saying he shall be respected" (ii. 10-20).
* * * * *
Julius Cæsar on one occasion stated his financial position by
confessing that he needed half a million of money in order to be worth
nothing. The spiritual condition of many prosperous men might be
expressed in a similar way. Cæsar never allowed lack of funds to stand
between him and his political aims; when he had nothing he borrowed at
enormous interest. So also with us. In pursuing our worldly aims we
sink deeper and deeper in spiritual ruin, and accumulate debts for an
eternal bankruptcy. Riches are not a whit less perilous to the soul
now than they were in the first century, and yet how few among the
wealthy really believe that they are perilous at all. The wisdom of
our forefathers has placed in the Litany a petition which every
well-to-do person should say with his whole heart: "In all time of our
_wealth, Good Lord, deliver us_."
[84] In addition to the passages quoted in the text see Job vii. 1, 2;
ix. 24; xii. 5, 6; xxiv. 1-12; xxxi. 38, 39.
[85] It is uncertain whether the word which St. James uses is
ἀπεστερημένος or ἀφυστερημένος.