Evidently James is all ablaze as he faces the situation of his readers.
These Jewish plutocrats, some of them shysters, have made their money
out of the blood and sweat of the toiling poor. And then they spend it
in a way to anger the wronged workers still more. They live in the most
luxurious extravagance and waste of money while the cold, half-naked,
hungry toilers who made the wealth go unpaid. It is no wonder that such
laborers grow bitter at heart. It is a vivid and even ghastly picture of
the wicked rich who revel at the cost of human happiness, who with
careless indifference shut their eyes to the misery all around them due
to their own injustice. Christianity endeavors to make this cold
cynicism impossible, to persuade to be just and, if need be, go the
second mile in eagerness to help rather than to hang back and higgle
over the first.
“Ye have lived delicately on the earth, and taken your pleasure, ye have
revelled on earth and plunged into dissipation” (Moffatt). The sound of
revelry by night has no melody to the ears of the man whose wife and
children are starving because he does not get a square deal from his
employer. In Hermas (_Sim._ 7. 1) both of these verbs are used together
(“reminiscence of this passage,” Mayor) of those who gave themselves up
to the lusts of the world. See also 1 Timothy 5:6: “She that giveth
herself to pleasure is dead while she liveth.” One is reminded of the
picture of the beggar Lazarus who lay at the rich man’s gate while the
man feasted within. The conditions will be reversed in heaven if the
poor are Christians and the rich man is unsaved (Luke 16:25). That hope
is not to be despised, but James is not content to spare the rich now
while they inflict such wrongs on men whom they employ.
“Ye have nourished your hearts in a day of slaughter.” We have here a
hard phrase to understand. Homer uses the verb meaning to turn milk into
cheese (_Od._ ix. 246). But we cannot feel sure (cf. Luke 21:34). And
what is “the day of slaughter”? Moffatt boldly renders it thus: “You
have fattened yourselves as for the Day of Slaughter.” That is at least
comprehensible. At any rate, when Jerusalem was destroyed, the Romans
slew the rich Jews indiscriminately, whether they remained in the city
or flew in despair to the Romans who were bent on plunder (cf. Josephus,
_War_, v. 10, 2). The pious poor in all the ages have suffered at the
hands of the rich and the mighty. Even in America religious liberty came
as the result of fierce struggle. Political freedom was bought with the
price of blood. Economic justice will be won only by tears and blood.
The very limit is reached. “Ye have condemned, ye have killed the
righteous one; he doth not resist you.” Many take these words to refer
to the death of Jesus as the culmination of iniquity, when the rich
Pharisees and Sadducees obtained the death of the poor Carpenter of
Nazareth. In these words Peter charged that the Jews had been guilty of
Christ’s death: “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
3:14 f.).
Certainly the application to Jesus has a deal of verisimilitude. Stephen
used similar language: “And they killed them that showed before of the
coming of the Righteous One; of whom ye have now become betrayers and
murderers” (Acts 7:52). “The Righteous One” is thus seen to be one of
the titles given Jesus by the early disciples. There is no reason why
James should not have referred to the death of Jesus in those words.
But the book of Wisdom has similar language about the righteous poor who
are oppressed by the wicked rich, and the parallel is so clear that
probably James refers directly to it. See Wisdom 2:10 ff.: “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 clear contrary
to our doings; he upbraideth us with our offending the law.” It was so
in the days of the prophets. Hear Amos (2:6 f.) as he thunders against
the evils of his day: “They have sold the righteous for silver, and the
needy for a pair of shoes—they that pant after the dust of the earth on
the head of the poor” (surely the most greedy of men for real estate, if
they even seek that on top of the head of the poor!). The picture is one
of the oppression of the good man who is unresisting and allows himself
to be robbed. The horrors of war to helpless women and children come
before us.
It is curious that in the legendary account[92] of the death of James,
who was later called also “the Just,” we are told that the Jews ran upon
James, crying, “Oh! oh! even the righteous one.” One of the priests
vainly cried out: “Stop! What are you doing? The righteous one is
praying for you.” According to this story, James himself finally met the
very fate of those unfortunate victims of Jewish greed and hate, of whom
Jesus is the chief illustration. Progress in behalf of human rights is
won only by slow advances here and there. But in the end of the day the
cause wins. The stars in their courses fight against Sisera and all the
enemies of man and God.
XII
Perseverance and Prayer
The purpose of James in writing his epistle comes out clearly in 5:7-20.
He wishes to hearten the Jewish Christians in the midst of their trials
as well as to make a protest against the oppressions to which they were
subjected. “The storm of indignation is past, and from this point to the
end of the Epistle St. James writes in tones of tenderness and
affection” (Plummer). He has denounced the persecutors and now turns to
the brethren who are under the heel of the money devil.