James Chapter 5 — Commentary and Notes on Verses 2-3

    Yourwealthhasrotted,andmothshaveeatenyourclothes.Yourgoldandsilverarecorroded. Theircorrosionwilltestifyagainstyouandeatyourfleshlikefire.Youhavehoardedwealthinthe last days.

    Here the apostle shows their particular sin and the reason for God’s judgment. Note his method: first he threatens, and then he comes to convince in particular.

    Every solemn threatening must be accompanied by sound conviction. This gives the arrow its head and makes it enter. Every “Woe” must have a “for” (Matthew 23, KJV); otherwise people will not take any notice of the terrible words. The success of our work depends on “a demonstration of the Spirit’s power” (1 Corinthians 2:4).

    Your wealth has rotted, and moths have eaten your clothes. Your gold and silver are corroded. Note that he speaks about all kinds of wealth. Your wealth has rotted—that is, corn and wine and oil, all things subject to rot. Moths have eaten your clothes—that is, silks, clothes, linen, and all such kinds of wares. By Your gold and silver are corroded he means the decay of all kinds of metals. By these details:

    (1)      He evinces their sin—that they want to hoard their goods and money and let them be eaten by moths and rust and so rot or perish without any profit at all, rather than put them to good use, such as supplying the poor and benefiting the community.

    (2)      He upbraids their folly—that they were such fools to place their confidence in what is so perishing and frail as to be eaten by rust and moths.

    (3)      He may be producing these circumstances as the first pledges of God’s displeasure against them and the introduction to the curse on their hoards and treasures, in that they were defaced or destroyed by moths, wetness, or rust.

    Note1. Niggardliness is a sure sign of a worldly heart. Covetousness wants to keep everything; the fool in the Gospel talked of storing his goods in his barns (Luke 12:18). Those who are in love will not part with the pictures of their beloved or let their darling go out of their sight; what God wishes to have shared and spent, they are all for keeping and storing. God gave us wealth not to hoard but to spend. The noblest act of the creature is providing for others’ needs. But a covetous person does not even spend on his own; a spiteful envy keeps him from supplying others.

    Note2. Keeping things from public use until they are corrupted or spoiled is niggardliness. When you do not spend them for God or for others or yourself, you are justly culpable. The Greek word for money indicates use. You abuse it when you make it apossession; then you might as well have so many stones as so many treasures. This is against God’s plan and the good of human society. Scourge your souls with remorse for this baseness. Your meat rots while many a hungry stomach needs it; your clothes are eaten by moths when they could cover the nakedness of many a poor soul in the world; your money goes rusty when it should be spent for public defense. Musteatzem, the covetous caliph of Babylon, was such an idolater of his wealth and treasures that he would not spend anything for the necessary defense of his city, whereupon it was taken, and the caliph starved to death, and Haalon, the Tartar conqueror, filled the caliph’s mouth with melted gold.

    Note3. Covetousness brings God’s curse on our estates. He sends the rot and the rust and the moth. Nothing is gained by rapine or tenacity or greed or keeping things to ourselves. Not by greedy getting: when people will snatch an estate out of the hands of providence, it is no wonder if God snatches it away again. Ill gains are equivalent to losses: “Am I still to forget, O wicked house, your ill-gotten treasures … ?” (Micah 6:10); that is, have they still got them? Not by undue withholding: this makes people curse and God too: “People curse the man who hoards grain, but blessing crowns him who is willing to sell” (Proverbs 11:26). God can easily corrupt what we will not give and can cause a worm to breed in manna. Certainly there is a withholding that comes to poverty (Proverbs 11:24). So then, learn the meaning of the Gospel riddle, that whoever wants to save must lose, and the best way of bringing in is spending.

    Note 4. There is corruption and decay on the face of all created glory—riches corrupted, garments moth-eaten, gold and silver corroded. It is madness to rest in perishing things: “Cast but a glance at riches, and they are gone” (Proverbs 23:5). Such a dependence is not only against grace but against reason; confidence should have a sure and stable ground. So then, take Christ’s advice in Matthew 6:19-20, “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy.…” We are apt to seek treasures here, but the moth and the rust check our vanity; these riches are like treasures made of snow that melts in our fingers. Christ was saying in effect, “Provide purses for yourselves that will not wear out, a treasure in heaven that will not be exhausted, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys.” You should look for a happiness that will last as long as your soul lasts. Why should we who have souls that will not perish look for things that perish with use? These things pass away, and the desire for them too (1 John 2:17).

    Note5. From the diversity of the terms rotted,moths,corroded, note that God has several ways in which to destroy our worldly comforts. Sometimes it is by moths, sometimes by thieves, sometimes by rust or robbery; they may either rot or be taken from us. So then, let us be all the more awed. Usually we look no further than the present likelihood. Sometimes God can use fire, sometimes a great wind, or the Sabeans; Job had messenger upon messenger (Job 1). Nothing keeps the heart so detached from earthly comforts as considering the various ways they may be taken from us. This evinces our close dependence on God and the absolute dominion of providence.

    Theircorrosionwilltestifyagainstyou. Scripture commonly speaks of inanimate things as testifying against the unthankful and wicked. As for the Gospel, Matthew 24:14 says, “as a testimony to all nations”; the preaching of the Word will be a witness that people had warning enough. So also with the dust of the apostles’ feet: “shake the dust off your feet when you leave, as a testimony against them” (Mark 6:11). That is, it will be clear that you are free of their blood; if there is no other witness, this dust will witness to it. So it is with the rust here; it will be a witness. That is, for the present it is a convicting argument that you had enough, though you would not spend it; and hereafter it will be brought by the supreme Judge as circumstantial evidence for your condemnation. Your own consciences, remembering the moths and the rust, will bring to remembrance your covetous hoarding.

    On the day of judgment the least circumstances of our sinful actions will be brought as arguments to convict us. God will not lack witnesses. The rusty iron, the corroded silver, the moth-eaten clothes will be produced; that is, our consciences will recognize them. “The stones of the wall will cry out, and the beams of the woodwork will echo it” (Habakkuk 2:11); that is, the materials of the house built up by oppression will come as joint witnesses. The stones of the wall will cry out, “Lord, we were built up by rapine and violence”; and the beams will answer, “True, Lord; that is exactly right.” The stones will cry, “Vengeance, Lord, upon our ungodly owner”; and the beams will answer, “Woe to him, because he built his house with blood.”

    The circumstances of sin are like so many memorials to remind us of guilt and to remind God of vengeance. So then, think of these things for the present; this rust may be produced against me, this building, these musty clothes in the wardrobe. Conscience is a shrewd reminder; it writes when it does not speak. Often it is silent for the present and seems to take no notice of those circumstances of guilt; but they are all registered and will be produced at the last day. The very filth of your fingers in counting money will be evidence that you have defiled your soul with loving it.

    Andeatyourfleshlikefire. Some people interpret this as referring to those “harmful desires” (1 Timothy 6:9) with which the covetous encumber their lives and eat out the vigor of their own spirits; but this is hardly probable. It is much nearer to the apostle’s meaning to interpret this eating as the means and cause of their ruin. Scripture often compares the wrath of God to fire, whether expressed by temporal judgment or eternal torment. “Your breath is a fire that consumes you” (Isaiah 33:11; see also Psalm 21:9; Isaiah 30:27); “their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched” (Mark 9:44, NIV note). The effects of wrath are also ascribed to the cause that merits it, for what wrath is said to do, sin is said to do also, as in the passages cited; and here rust will eat like fire—that is, it will hasten the wrath of God, which will burn like fire, either in your temporal or your eternal ruin. Possibly there may be some hidden allusion here to the manner of Jerusalem’s ruin, in which many thousands perished by fire, which was a pledge of the general judgment.

    Note6. In hell, the matter of our sin will become the matter of our punishment. The rust of hoarded treasure is not only the witness but executioner. As it has eaten away the silver, so it will eat a man’s flesh and gnaw at his conscience. When one is burning in hell-flames, reflections upon the rust will be sad and horrible. The vexation and anger at one’s past folly will heighten his present sufferings. Conscience and a sense of the wrath of God are a great part of the fire that burns souls; and the outward pains are much increased by remembering the past circumstances of sin. The revenging image and representation of them always runs in the thoughts, and their flesh is eaten but not consumed. Think about it! The rust that eats at the money is only a pledge of those devouring torments. It will be sad to think hereafter that all the money a man hoarded up became fire that he kept in his cupboards for his own eternal ruin. It is part of heaven’s happiness to know as we are known—that is, to look back on the circumstances of our past lives and see what we were enabled to do by the care and help of grace. And in the same way it is part of hell’s torment to review the course of a sinful life and look back with horror and despairing remorse on the known evidence and circumstances of one’s own guilt. Present delights will prove future torments.

    Note7. Observe again the misery of covetousness here and hereafter. Now it burns the soul with desire and cares, and hereafter with despair and remorse of conscience. Here it is pierced with thorns, and there scorched with fire. What a hard time these drudges of Satan have! Worry now and horror hereafter! They labor and toil, and all so that they may go to hell with nothing. What do you gain by Satan? Every sinner is first caught in his traps and then bound in chains of darkness; but some, above all others, begin their hell by eating out all their quiet with burdensome care, so that they may eternally undo their souls with more trouble.

    Youhavehoardedwealthinthelastdays. There is no cogent reason why we should take this metaphorically, especially since, with good warrant from the context and the purpose of the apostle and the state of those times, we may retain the literal meaning. I simply understand the words as an intimation of their approaching judgment; and so the apostle seems to me to censure their vanity in hoarding and heaping up wealth when those days when the Jewish nation was scattered and destroyed were just ready to overtake them. All the treasure that they had accumulated with such wrong to others and at such risk to their own contentment and with such violation of their own consciences was simply heaped up for the spoiler and the violence of the last days.

    People are usually most complacent and worldly before their own judgment and ruin. What wretched people here had fallen upon the treasures of the last days! It is usually like this; people are most full of worldly projects when God is about to break down and pluck up. “Should you then seek great things for yourself? Seek them not. For I will bring disaster on all people, declares the LORD” (Jeremiah 45:5). Foolish people are like a colony of ants storing their nests when their hill is going to be plowed under; and there is never more general complacency than when judgment is at hand. A little before the Flood, “people were eating, drinking, marrying and being given in marriage.… Then the flood came and destroyed them all” (Luke 17:27). And the same is observed of Sodom: “buying and selling, planting and building” (verse 28). When people generally apply themselves to worldly business, it is a sad prognosis: they are simply producing for the murderer and heaping up for the plunderer. “While people are saying, ‘Peace and safety,’ destruction will come on them suddenly, as labor pains on a pregnant woman, and they will not escape” (1 Thessalonians 5:3). When complacency runs riot and is likely to degenerate into utter contempt of God, people are not likely to profit by the Word; so God takes the rod in hand, that he may teach them by the severity of discipline what they would not learn by kinder and milder persuasion.