James 4
The full text of James 4 in the Trinity Bible Version — clear modern English, translated from the original Greek. Free to read.
1 What causes wars, and what causes fights among you? Don't they come from your desires that wage war within you?
2 You crave and do not have, so you kill. You covet and cannot obtain, so you quarrel and fight. You do not have because you do not ask.
3 You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, so that you may spend it on your pleasures.
4 You adulterous people! Don't you know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? So whoever wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.
5 Or do you think Scripture says without meaning it, "The spirit he caused to dwell in us longs jealously"?
6 But he gives greater grace. That is why Scripture says, "God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble."
7 Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.
8 Come near to God, and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.
9 Grieve, mourn, and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom.
10 Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.
11 Do not slander one another, brothers and sisters. Anyone who speaks against a brother or judges his brother speaks against the law and judges the law. And if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law but a judge.
12 There is only one lawgiver and judge, the one who is able to save and to destroy. But who are you to judge your neighbor?
13 Come now, you who say, "Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, spend a year there, do business, and make a profit."
14 Yet you do not even know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.
15 Instead, you ought to say, "If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that."
16 But as it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil.
17 So whoever knows the right thing to do and does not do it, for him it is sin.
Translation notes (5)
- James 4:2a This can also be translated as "You crave and do not have; you kill and covet, and cannot obtain." The punctuation in the Greek is uncertain, and some scholars have suggested "you envy" (phthoneite) instead of "you kill" (phoneuete), though no manuscript supports this change. The original, harsher reading "you kill" is the confirmed text.
- James 4:4a The Greek word moichalides literally means "adulteresses," an image of spiritual unfaithfulness drawn from the prophets; it is rendered inclusively here. Some later manuscripts add "adulterers and adulteresses."
- James 4:5a This verse is considered one of the most difficult in the New Testament. The Greek can be understood as either "the spirit (or Spirit) that he made to dwell in us yearns to envy," or "he yearns jealously for the spirit he made to dwell in us." The Scripture quoted here is not found word-for-word in the Old Testament, and even whether the subject is God's Spirit or the human spirit is debated.
- James 4:12a Some later manuscripts omit the phrase "and judge," but the critical Greek text includes it, reading "lawgiver and judge."
- James 4:14a The Greek phrase for "what tomorrow will bring" is uncertain, as manuscripts vary between "the things of tomorrow" and "what your life will be tomorrow." Additionally, the Greek word atmis can mean "mist," "vapor," or "puff of smoke."
About this translation
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