James 4:1

III. OUTSIDE THE CHRISTIAN SYNAGOGUE PUBLIC TURBULENCE AND WARS, IRREVERENCE, AND OPPRESSIVE WEALTH, James 4:1 to James 5:11.

1. Wars and public commotions Whence come they? What the remedy? James 4:1-10.

1. Whence… wars Passing beyond the synagogue, Christian or Jewish, our apostle extends his address to the people of the twelve tribes. The great body of modern commentators, such as Stier, Bengel, De Wette, Huther, and Alford have interpreted these wars as strifes in Churches, or even between Christian teachers! This has arisen from their not discriminating the various classes addressed by the epistle. Limiting all the epistle to the Christian body, they are obliged either to impute to the apostolic Church enormities of which it was not supposably guilty, or else very arbitrarily to give a figurative meaning to the terms. The class plainly enough addressed is the Jews who, in those troublous times, acted the part of brigands robbed, murdered, skirmished in armed bands, and yet held themselves as the people of God, doing him service. The passage is a picture of the times described in our vol. iii, pp. 233-235.

Huther thus approvingly quotes Laurentius as saying: “The apostle speaks, not concerning wars and slaughters;” which are precisely what he does speak about; “but concerning mutual dissensions, lawsuits, scoldings, and contentions.” From such an exegesis we are obliged to dissent, and fall back, with Grotius, and recognise a clear view of the Jewish age.

First, it seems entirely inadmissible to interpret such a series of terms as wars, battles, kill, fight, cleanse hands, sinners, doubleminded, of the Christian body. These phrases, also, stand in strong contrast with the terms of James 4:11-12, where brethren are directly addressed, and where the faults corrected are not blood and murder, but censorious speaking.

Second, even these interpreters admit that the dread apostrophe to the oppressive rich in first paragraph of next chapter is not addressed to Christians. But the two passages are precisely parallel. One addresses the disturbers of public peace, the other the oppressors of the poor, especially poor Christians. It would be just as easy, by a forced transformation of the strong terms into figures, to make the latter passage an address to the Church as the former.

Third, the two passages are also parallel in the fact that each is followed by a passage in a very different tone addressed to the Church. As the denunciations James 4:1-10 are parallel to the denunciations of James 5:6, so is the gentle address to the Church in James 4:11-12, parallel to the gentle address to the Church in James 5:7-10, and following. In both cases there is a bold appeal to the wicked world, followed by a fraternal appeal to the holy, yet not faultless, Church.

Fightings Battles, specific acts of war. The preferred reading repeats the whence for vividness; whence come wars? whence battles?

Lusts Not the usual Greek word for lusts, but the word for pleasures, or delights. The term alludes to that bad delight or gratification, existing in the fierceness of strife, prompting to repetition.

That war There is an inward war, prompting to outward. The bloody public contests were deeply based upon the inward depravities, the cupidities, ambitions, revenges, lusts, mingled with the fiery patriotisms and religions kindled to fanaticism. Thence came assassinations, rapines, conflagrations, finally resulting in the dissolution of society, and the desolation of the land swept of its inhabitants.