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Jam_5:13. If one among you suffers, let him pray; if one is of good courage, let him sing psalms. This exhortation stands in no assignable connection with what goes before. The sufferings to which Jam_5:7 ff. refer are those of persecution; but κακοπαθεῖν has here an entirely general meaning. On account of the following εὐθυμεῖ , many expositors (Beza, Semler, Rosenmüller, Hottinger) incorrectly explain κακοπαθεῖν = “to be dejected” (Vulgate: tristatur quis). It rather means to be unfortunate, to suffer, in which aegritudo animo is certainly to be considered as included. Pott incorrectly takes it as equivalent to the following ἀσθενεῖν , which is only a particular, kind of κακοπαθεῖν .
προσεύχεσθαι ] denotes prayer generally; there is no reason to limit it here to petition.
ψάλλειν ] literally, to touch, used particularly of stringed instruments; in the LXX. the translation of ðÄðÌÅï and æÄèÌÅø = to sing psalms; comp. particularly 1Co_14:15. Both joy and sorrow should be the occasion of prayer to the Christian. The form of the sentence is the same as in 1Co_7:18; 1Co_7:27. Meyer: “The protases do not convey a question, being in the rhetorically emphatic form of the hypothetical indicative;” see Winer, p. 152 [E. T. 213], p. 255 [E. T. 355], p. 478 [E. T. 678].[239]
[239] Lachmann has after the sentence containing the hypothesis put a mark of interrogation. Al. Buttmann, p. 195 [E. T. 226], rightly declares this to be unnecessary, but has in his edition of the N. T. adopted the same punctuation.