Scripture Daily

Context No. 3183 of 4322 · James

Context · Reflection

James 5:1-6: in context

1Come now, you rich, weep and howl for your miseries that are coming on you. 2Your riches are corrupted and your garments are moth-eaten. 3Your gold and your silver are corroded, and their corrosion will be for a testimony against you and will eat your flesh like fire. You have laid up your treasure in the last days. 4Behold, the wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you have kept back by fraud, cry out; and the cries of those who reaped have entered into the ears of the Lord of Armies. 5You have lived in luxury on the earth, and taken your pleasure. You have nourished your hearts as in a day of slaughter. 6You have condemned and you have murdered the righteous one. He doesn’t resist you.

James thunders against the unjust rich. Weep and howl, he says, for the miseries coming upon you. Your wealth has rotted, your fine clothes are moth-eaten, your gold and silver corroded, and their corrosion will testify against you. You defrauded the laborers who mowed your fields, and their cries have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts. You have lived in luxury and self-indulgence.

This is a fierce prophetic denunciation, not of wealth itself but of wealth gained by injustice and hoarded in luxury while the poor are cheated. The specific sins are named: withholding workers' wages, living in self-indulgence, condemning the innocent. And the terrifying note is that the cries of the defrauded harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts. God hears the cry of the underpaid worker; the wages unjustly withheld cry out to him. Ill-gotten wealth is not security but a witness against its owner. James warns that God takes the exploitation of the poor with deadly seriousness.

Do I take seriously that God hears the cry of anyone I might exploit or underpay, and that wealth gained or hoarded unjustly testifies against me?

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