Letter of James 5

¹ Now an answer for the rich. Start crying, weep for the miseries that are coming to you.

² Your wealth is all rotting, your clothes are all eaten up by moths.

³ All your gold and your silver are corroding away, and the same corrosion will be your own sentence, and eat into your body. It was a burning fire that you stored up as your treasure for the last days.

⁴ Labourers mowed your fields, and you cheated them – listen to the wages that you kept back, calling out; realise that the cries of the reapers have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts.

⁵ On earth you have had a life of comfort and luxury; in the time of slaughter you went on eating to your heart’s content.

⁶ It was you who condemned the innocent and killed them; they offered you no resistance.

⁷ Now be patient, brothers, until the Lord’s coming. Think of a farmer: how patiently he waits for the precious fruit of the ground until it has had the autumn rains and the spring rains!

⁸ You too have to be patient; do not lose heart, because the Lord’s coming will be soon.

⁹ Do not make complaints against one another, brothers, so as not to be brought to judgement yourselves; the Judge is already to be seen waiting at the gates.

¹⁰ For your example, brothers, in submitting with patience, take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord;

¹¹ remember it is those who had endurance that we say are the blessed ones. You have heard of the patience of Job, and understood the Lord’s purpose, realising that the Lord is kind and compassionate.[*a]

¹² Above all, my brothers, do not swear by heaven or by the earth, or use any oaths at all. If you mean ‘yes’, you must say ‘yes’; if you mean ‘no’, say ‘no’. Otherwise you make yourselves liable to judgement.

¹³ If any one of you is in trouble, he should pray; if anyone is feeling happy, he should sing a psalm.

¹⁴ If one of you is ill, he should send for the elders of the church, and they must anoint him with oil in the name of the Lord and pray over him.

¹⁵ The prayer of faith will save the sick man and the Lord will raise him up again; and if he has committed any sins, he will be forgiven.

¹⁶ So confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, and this will cure you; the heartfelt prayer of a good man works very powerfully.

¹⁷ Elijah was a human being like ourselves – he prayed hard for it not to rain, and no rain fell for three-and-a-half years;

¹⁸ then he prayed again and the sky gave rain and the earth gave crops.

¹⁹ My brothers, if one of you strays away from the truth, and another brings him back to it,

²⁰ he may be sure that anyone who can bring back a sinner from the wrong way that he has taken will be saving a soul from death and covering up a great number of sins.[*b]