James 5:6 - Exposition

The climax of their sin. Ye have condemned, ye have killed the righteous one. Does this allude to the death of our Lord? At first sight it may well seem so. Compare St. Peter's words in Acts 3:14 , "Ye denied the Holy One and the Just ( δίκαιον );" St. Stephen's in Acts 7:52 , "the coming of the Just One ( τοῦ δικαίου );" and St. Paul's in Acts 22:14 , "to see the Just One ( τὸν δίκαιον )." But this view is dispelled when we remember how throughout this whole passage the ideas and expressions are borrowed from the Old Testament, and when we find that in Isaiah 3:10 ( LXX ) the wicked are represented as saying, δήσωμεν τὸν δίκαιον ὅτι δύσχρηστος ἡμῖν ἐστί — a passage which lies at the root of the remarkable section in Wis. 2., "Let us oppress the poor righteous man … Let us condemn him with a shameful death." It is probable, then, that passages such as these were in St. James's mind, and suggested the words, and thus that there is no direct allusion to the Crucifixion (which, indeed, could scarcely be laid to the charge of his readers), but that the singular τὸν δίκαιον is used to denote the class collectively (cf. Amos 2:6 ; Amos 5:12 ). It is a remarkable coincidence, pointed out by most commentators, that he who wrote these verses, himself styled ὁ δίκαιος by the Jews, suffered death at their hands a very few years afterwards. He doth not resist you. According to the view commonly adopted, St. James simply means to say that the righteous man suffered this evil at their hands without resistance. Another interpretation seems more possible, taking the clause as interrogative, "Does he not resist you?" the subject, implied but not expressed, being God; as if he would say, "Is not God against you? "—that God of whom it has already been said that he resists ( ἀντιτάσσεται ) the proud (comp. Hosea 1:6 , "I will no more have mercy upon the house of Israel, but I will utterly take them away ( LXX ., ἀλλ ἢ ἀντιτασσόμενος ἀντιτάξομαι αὐτοῖς )")