James 5:2

James 5:2-3 . Your riches are corrupted — Greek, σεσηπε , are putrefied, or are as things putrefied by being kept too long. The riches of the ancients consisted much in large stores of corn, wine, oil, and costly apparel. These things the rich men in Judea had amassed, like the foolish rich man mentioned Luke 12:18 , little imagining that they would soon be robbed of them by the Roman soldiers, and the destructive events of the war. Your garments — In your wardrobes; are moth-eaten — The fashion of clothes not changing in the eastern countries as with us, persons of fortune used to have many garments made of different costly stuffs, which they laid up as a part of their wealth. Thus, according to Q. Curtius, (lib. 5. c. 6,) when Alexander took Persepolis, he found the riches of all Asia gathered together there, which consisted not only of gold and silver, but vestis ingens modus, a vast quantity of garments. Your gold and silver is cankered — Or eaten out with rust; and the rust of them — Your perishing stores and moth-eaten garments; shall be, εις μαρτυριον , for a testimony against you — Of your covetousness and worldly mind; and of your having foolishly and wickedly buried those talents in the earth, which you ought to have employed, according to your Lord’s will, in relieving the wants of your fellow-creatures. And shall eat your flesh as it were fire — Will occasion you as great a torment as if fire were consuming your flesh.

Or, as the rust eats into the gold and silver, so shall your flesh and wealth be eaten up as if you had treasured up fire in the midst of it. This was punctually fulfilled in the destruction of that nation by their own seditions, and their wars with the Romans. For, among the Sicarii and the Zealots, the ringleaders of all their seditions, it was crime enough to be rich; and their insatiable avarice induced them continually to search into the houses of the rich, and, by false accusation, to slay them as deserters, for the sake of their property. Yea, both their substance and their bodies were devoured by the flames which burned up the city and the temple: and if any thing remained, it became a prey to the Roman soldiers. Ye have heaped treasure for the last days — The days which are now coming, when your enemies shall seize or destroy all, to your infinite vexation and distress: or, you have heaped them up when it is too late; when you have no time or opportunity to enjoy them. This phrase, the last days, does not merely signify for the time to come, but for that period when the whole Jewish economy was to close, and when those awful judgments, threatened in the prophets to be poured out upon wicked men in the last days, were just coming.

2. corrupted—about to be destroyed through God's curse on your oppression, whereby your riches are accumulated (Jas 5:4). Calvin thinks the sense is, Your riches perish without being of any use either to others or even to yourselves, for instance, your garments which are moth-eaten in your chests. garments … moth-eaten—referring to Mt 6:19, 20.

Verse 2. - Description of the miseries that are coming upon them. The perfects ( σέσηπε ... γέγονεν ) are probably to be explained as "prophetic," in accordance with a common Hebrew idiom (see Driver on the 'Tenses of the Hebrew Verb,' § 14; and cf. Winer, 'Grammar of New Testament Greek,' p. 342: "The perfect does not stand for a present or future, but the case indicated by the apostle in ταλαιπωρίαις ὑμῶν ταῖς εηπερχομέναις is viewed as already present, and consequently the σήπειν of the riches as already completed"). For an instance of the prophetic perfect, used as here after ὀλούζείν , see Isaiah 23:1, 14 ," Howl.... for your stronghold has been wasted." The miseries coming upon the rich are thus announced to be the destruction of everything in virtue of which they were styled rich. Their costly garments, in a great store of which the wealth of an Eastern largely consists, should become moth-eaten. Their gold and silver should be rusted. Bengel notes on this passage: "Scripta haec suut paucis annis ante obsidionem Hierosolymorum;" and certainly the best commentary upon it is to be found in the terrible account given by Josephus of the sufferings and miseries which came upon the Jews during the war and siege of Jerusalem.

The Jewish historian has become the unconscious witness to the fulfillment of the prophecies of our Lord and his apostle. Σέσηπεν : only here in the New Testament; in the LXX., Job 16:7 . Σητόβρωτα is also an ἄπαξ λεγόμενον in the New Testament; in LXX. used also of garments in Job 13:28 . James 5:2

Your riches are corrupted: either by riches he means the general, and by garments, gold and silver, the particulars in which their riches consisted; and then being corrupted, is to be taken generally, as comprehending the several ways whereby the several kinds of their riches were spoiled: or else, by riches he understands such things as were liable to corruption, or putrefaction, as corn, wine, oil, which were a great part of their riches. And your garments are moth-eaten; costly garments, in which rich men are wont to pride themselves; and under them may be comprehended all such clothes as may be eaten by worms or moths.

(2) Your riches are corrupted . . . —As expanded in the eloquent gloss of Bishop Wordsworth, “Your wealth is mouldering in corruption, and your garments, stored up in vain superfluity, are become moth-eaten: although they may still glitter brightly in your eyes, and may dazzle men by their brilliance, yet they are in fact already cankered; they are loathsome in God’s sight; the Divine anger has breathed upon them and blighted them; they are already withered and blasted.” (Comp. Matthew 6:19 .)

2 . Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are motheaten ] The union of the two chief forms of Eastern wealth in this and the following verse, reminds us of the like combination in Matthew 6:19 , “where moth and rust doth corrupt.” Comp. St Paul’s “I have coveted no man’s silver, or gold, or apparel” ( Acts 20:33 ).

Jam 5:2 . The use of the Hebraic prophetic perfects in this passage is another mark of Jewish authorship. ὁ πλοῦτος ὑμῶν : this cannot refer to wealth in the abstract because this would be out of harmony with the rest of the verse which speaks of literal destruction; we have here precisely the same idea, as to actual destruction, as that which occurs in the eschatological passage Enoch , xcviii. 1 ff., where in reference to foolish men “in royalty, and in grandeur, and in power, and in silver and in gold, and in purple …,” it says that “they will perish thereby together with their possessions and with all their glory and their splendour”.— σέσηπεν : ἅπ . λεγ . in N.T., cf. Sir 14:19 , πᾶν ἔργον σηπόμε . νον ἐκλείπει .— σητόβρωτα : ἅπ . λεγ · in N.T., cf. Job 13:28 , παλαιοῦται ὥσπερ ἱμάτιον σητόβρωτον ; Sir 42:13 , ἀπὸ γὰρ ἱματίων ἐκπορεύεται σής . For the form of the word cf. σκωληκόβρωτος in Acts 12:23 .