Tool Beta
The Ancient World Behind the Text
Pick a passage anywhere in the New Testament. See the customs and ideas a first reader knew without being told.
James 4:13-5:6, Merchants, landowners and the wages that cry out
James rebukes traders who plan a year of business without God, then turns on rich landowners whose hoarded wealth is rotting, whose withheld wages cry out to the Lord of hosts, and who have fattened themselves for a day of slaughter and condemned the righteous one.
James 4:13-5:6, in every translation this tool compares.
James first rebukes merchants who map out a year of travel and profit as if their lives were their own, reminding them that life is brief and every plan depends on God's will. He then turns on wealthy landowners in the manner of the old prophets, announcing that their hoarded riches are already rotting and that the unpaid wages of their field workers cry out to God. They have lived in luxury while condemning and killing the innocent. Who these rich were, and who the righteous one is, are debated.
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/estates-and-laborers\/","n":"Estates, tenants and day laborers","s":"Wealthy owners, often living in town, let their land to tenant farmers for a share of the crop or hired day laborers in the marketplace and paid them a denarius at sundown.","r":""}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/chief-priests-and-council\/","n":"Chief priests, elders and the council","s":"The Jerusalem aristocracy of priestly families and elders who ran the temple and the Sanhedrin and dealt with Rome.","r":""}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/stoning\/","n":"Stoning","s":"The law of Moses named stoning as the penalty for blasphemy, but under Rome Jewish courts could not execute without the governor. In practice stoning was what angry crowds did, in Jewish and Gentile towns alike.","r":""}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/jerusalem-destroyed-ad-70\/","n":"The war with Rome and the fall of Jerusalem","s":"In AD 66 Judea rose against Rome. By AD 70 Roman armies had starved and burned Jerusalem, destroyed the temple and sacrificed to their standards where it had stood.","r":""}
After Pompey and Herod's taxes many peasants worked as tenants on large estates, while "others became landless day laborers in the marketplaces, finding work only sporadically" (Keener; the cultural backgrounds article on poverty, in the same words). The law forbade holding back wages overnight (Leviticus 19:13; Deuteronomy 24:14-15). Ananias, who had been high priest, "was a great hoarder up of money", and his servants seized the tithes so that poorer priests "died for want of food" (Josephus, Antiquities 20.9.2). A day of slaughter was a feast, and the rich are cattle fattened for their own slaughter, as in 1 Enoch 94:8-9 (Keener; Charles). Who the righteous one is, is read differently: the poor killed by judicial oppression, or James himself, whom Ananus had stoned (Antiquities 20.9.1; Keener), though Hegesippus says he was thrown from the temple pinnacle (Price and House); a believer or an innocent (the ESV Study Bible); or Jesus, an explanation Wright and Bird report and Wright's commentary adopts, naming the rich as the Jerusalem elite, the Sadducees and chief priests, fat on the pilgrims' offerings. Keener and Wright's commentary place these landowners in Judea, the ESV Study Bible across much of the empire.
- Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament, introduction to James (James the Just, Situation), introductions to James 4:13-17 and 5:1-6, and on James 4:13, 4:15-17, 5:4, 5:5 and 5:6
- NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, notes on James 5:4, 5:5 and 5:6
- ESV Study Bible, study notes on James 4:13, 5:1-6 and 5:6
- R. H. Charles, The Book of Enoch (1917), 94:8-9
- N. T. Wright and Michael F. Bird, The New Testament in Its World, ch. 31, The Argument of James, section 8
- Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews 20.9.1 and 20.9.2, trans. William Whiston
- NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, article Poverty and Revolt in Judea
- J. D. Douglas and Merrill C. Tenney, Zondervan Illustrated Bible Dictionary, entry Ananias (3)
- J. Randall Price and H. Wayne House, Zondervan Handbook of Biblical Archaeology, Matthew 4:5 The Pinnacle of the Temple
- N. T. Wright, Early Christian Letters for Everyone, comment on James 5:1-6
