1These wars and conflicts among you, where do they come from? Is it not from your desires that wage war in your members? 2You lust, and do not have! You kill, covet, and [still] cannot obtain! You fight and make war. You do not have because you do not ask! 3You ask and do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, in order to spend it for your pleasures. 4Adulterers and adulteresses!2267 Do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility2268 with God? Whoever wants to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God! 5Or do you think that the Scripture2269 says in vain, “The spirit which dwells2270 in us longs to envy”?2271 6But he has given a greater grace, as the Scripture says:
God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble.2272
7Therefore, submit yourselves to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. 8Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. 9Lament, mourn, and weep! Let your laughter be turned to mourning, and your joy to gloom.2273 10Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and he will exalt you.
11Do not speak against one another, brethren. Whoever speaks against one of the brethren and judges speaks against the law and judges the law. But if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law, but a judge! 12Only one is the lawgiver and judge, he who is able to save and to destroy. But who are you to judge another?
Warning against presumption
13Now listen, you who say, “Today and tomorrow, we will go into this city, spend a year there, do business, and make a profit.” 14Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow! Truly, what is your life? It will be a mist2274 that appears for a little while and then vanishes away. 15Instead, you should say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and also do this or that.” 16Nevertheless, you boast and brag! All such boasting is evil. 17If someone knows how to do what is good and yet does not do it, it is a sin.
Warning to the wealthy
- Or “You unfaithful people!” CT reads “Adulteresses!”
- Or “enmity”
- This quote cannot be found in any Old Testament book. It may simply be reference to ideas and concepts found in the Old Testament scriptures
- MT/ TR read “dwelt” whereas CT has “he [has] caused to dwell”
- This is a difficult verse which can also be translated: “He yearns with jealousy for the Spirit he has caused to dwell in us” (see previous note for textual variant).
- Proverbs 3:34. NT agrees with LXX against MT.
- Compare Matthew 5:4
- Some manuscripts read “You are just a mist”
Text: The Eastern / Greek Orthodox Bible, New Testament (EOB). Used with permission.
