James 5King James Version
Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl. Be patient therefore, brethren, unto the coming of the Lord. Behold, the husbandman waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth. Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.
The final chapter opens with a blistering indictment of wealthy landowners who defraud workers and live in self-indulgent ease. Then James pivots to his scattered believers: be patient like farmers waiting for rain, like the prophets who suffered and held on, like Job. He calls for honest speech, communal prayer for healing, anointing the sick, and mutual accountability. The letter ends with the power of prayer and the value of turning a wanderer back.
Patient endurance is not passive; it is a form of active trust in a God who hears the cries of the oppressed and responds. Meanwhile, pray specifically, confess honestly, and go after the ones drifting away.
"The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much." (5:16) James anchors communal prayer to character, not formula; the prayer that moves things comes from a person who is walking closely with God.
A sick member of the congregation calls for the elders. They come, anoint with oil, pray together. This was not a church with professional clergy, a building, or institutional resources. It was a small group of people in a Roman city, leaning on each other and on God. James treats this ordinary act as one of enormous power, and closes his letter by saying that pulling one person back from the edge of abandoning the faith is worth everything.
Elijah appears as proof that extraordinary prayer results are available to ordinary people, since he was, as James says, 'subject to like passions as we are.' Job is cited as the model of endurance under suffering. The landowners of the opening verses are unnamed but recognizable archetypes of economic exploitation.
Chapter 5 brings the letter full circle: it started with joy in trials; it ends with patient endurance in suffering and communal practices that hold the church together under pressure. The call to anoint and pray for the sick was formative for early Christian practice. The final verses on restoring wanderers show James's pastoral heart at its most direct.
The image of harvested wages crying out from the fields, and those cries entering the ears of the Lord of armies, is one of the most vivid social justice statements in the New Testament. It carries the emotional weight of the Hebrew prophets. Readers who have been defrauded feel seen; readers who hold power feel warned.
1Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you.
2Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are motheaten.
3Your gold and silver is cankered; and the rust of them shall be a witness against you, and shall eat your flesh as it were fire. Ye have heaped treasure together for the last days.
4Behold, the hire of the labourers who have reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth: and the cries of them which have reaped are entered into the ears of the Lord of sabaoth.
5Ye have lived in pleasure on the earth, and been wanton; ye have nourished your hearts, as in a day of slaughter.
6Ye have condemned and killed the just; and he doth not resist you.
7Be patient therefore, brethren, unto the coming of the Lord. Behold, the husbandman waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth, and hath long patience for it, until he receive the early and latter rain.
8Be ye also patient; stablish your hearts: for the coming of the Lord draweth nigh.
9Grudge not one against another, brethren, lest ye be condemned: behold, the judge standeth before the door.
10Take, my brethren, the prophets, who have spoken in the name of the Lord, for an example of suffering affliction, and of patience.
11Behold, we count them happy which endure. Ye have heard of the patience of Job, and have seen the end of the Lord; that the Lord is very pitiful, and of tender mercy.
12But above all things, my brethren, swear not, neither by heaven, neither by the earth, neither by any other oath: but let your yea be yea; and your nay, nay; lest ye fall into condemnation.
13Is any among you afflicted? let him pray. Is any merry? let him sing psalms.
14Is any sick among you? let him call for the elders of the church; and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord:
15And the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up; and if he have committed sins, they shall be forgiven him.
16Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.
17Elias was a man subject to like passions as we are, and he prayed earnestly that it might not rain: and it rained not on the earth by the space of three years and six months.
18And he prayed again, and the heaven gave rain, and the earth brought forth her fruit.
19Brethren, if any of you do err from the truth, and one convert him;
20Let him know, that he which converteth the sinner from the error of his way shall save a soul from death, and shall hide a multitude of sins.