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 5:13-20, Elders, oil and Elijah's prayer
The suffering should pray and the cheerful sing; the sick should call the church's elders to pray over them and anoint them with oil. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful, as Elijah's was, and whoever turns a sinner back covers a multitude of sins.
James 5:13-20, in every translation this tool compares.
James closes with prayer for every situation: the troubled should pray, the cheerful should sing praise and the sick should call the church's elders to pray and anoint them with oil. Prayer, healing and forgiveness belong together, so believers should confess sins to one another and pray for one another. Elijah, an ordinary man whose prayers stopped and restarted the rain, shows what a righteous person's prayer can do, and anyone who brings a straying believer back rescues that person from death.
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- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/anointing-with-oil\/","n":"Anointing with oil","s":"Oil poured on the head was a courtesy to a guest, the sign of a new king, a medicine, and care for the dead. The setting decided which.","r":""}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/jewish-prayer\/","n":"Prayer in Jesus' day","s":"Set prayers, set hours, standing to pray, God addressed as Father, and prayers for his name and his kingdom. Jesus taught his own disciples a prayer inside that world.","r":""}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/elijah-expected\/","n":"Elijah expected","s":"Malachi promised Elijah would come back before the great day of the Lord. By Jesus' time many were waiting for him, and the Gospels keep raising his name.","r":""}
Elders had ruled Old Testament villages and still led, usually as a group (the cultural backgrounds notes; the ESV Study Bible). The oil is read several ways, set out under anointing with oil: medicine joined with a sign of God's Spirit (Keener; the cultural backgrounds notes), a symbol of the Spirit (the ESV Study Bible), a cure-all with the healing placed in the prayer (the CSB Study Bible), a household remedy given with prayer, not a church ritual (the Zondervan dictionary), or a sign of God's longing to heal that the church still uses (Wright's commentary). Jewish literature often linked sin and sickness, though neither the Old Testament nor James ties every illness to sin (Keener; the cultural backgrounds notes). Only a few holy men were thought able to bring rain, chief among them Honi the Circle-drawer, whom Josephus calls Onias, "a righteous man he was, and beloved of God" (Antiquities 14.2.1; Keener). A cultural backgrounds article notes that these rain stories were embellished centuries later. James applies that standard of prayer to every believer (Keener). The three and a half years are later tradition (Keener) or half of seven, a symbol of judgment (the ESV Study Bible).
- Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament, on James 5:14, 5:15-16, 5:17-18 and 5:19-20
- NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, notes on James 5:14, 5:15, 5:17-18 and 5:20
- ESV Study Bible, study notes on James 5:13-14, 5:16 and 5:17-18
- CSB Study Bible, note on James 5:13-14
- Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews 14.2.1, trans. William Whiston
- J. D. Douglas and Merrill C. Tenney, Zondervan Illustrated Bible Dictionary, entry diseases
- NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, article Healing Miracles in the New Testament
- N. T. Wright, Early Christian Letters for Everyone, comment on James 5:13-20
