Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comRobertson Word Pictures - James 5:3 - 5:3
(Show All Books | Show All Chapters)
This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
Are rusted (katiōtai). Perfect passive indicative (singular for chrusos and arguros are grouped as one) of katioō, late verb (from ios, rust) with perfective sense of kata, to rust through (down to the bottom), found only here, Sir. 12:11, Epictetus (Diss. 4, 6, 14).
Rust (ios). Poison in Jam 3:8; Rom 3:13 (only N.T. examples of old word). Silver does corrode and gold will tarnish. Dioscorides (V.91) tells about gold being rusted by chemicals. Modern chemists can even transmute metals as the alchemists claimed.
For a testimony (eis marturion). Common idiom as in Mat 8:4 (use of eis with accusative in predicate).
Against you (humin). Dative of disadvantage as in Mar 6:11 (eis marturion autois) where in the parallel passage (Luk 9:5) we have eis marturion ep' autous. “To you” will make sense, as in Mat 8:4; Mat 10:18, but “against” is the idea here as in Luk 21:13.
Shall eat (phagetai). Future middle (late form from ephagon) of defective verb esthiō, to eat.
Your flesh (tas sarkas). The plural is used for the fleshy parts of the body like pieces of flesh (Rev 17:16; Rev 19:18, Rev 19:21). Rust eats like a canker, like cancer in the body.
As fire (hōs pur). Editors differ here whether to connect this phrase with phagetai, just before (as Mayor), for fire eats up more rapidly than rust, or with the following, as Westcott and Hort and Ropes, that is the eternal fire of Gehenna which awaits them (Mat 25:41; Mar 9:44). This interpretation makes a more vivid picture for ethēsaurisate (ye have laid up, first aorist active indicative of thēsaurizō, Mat 6:19 and see Pro 16:27), but it is more natural to take it with phagetai.