The Wanton Use of Money (5:5 f.)
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.