James 5:2,3 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Your riches are corrupted Greek, σεσηπε, are putrefied, or are as things putrefied by being kept too long. The riches of the ancients consisted much in large stores of corn, wine, oil, and costly apparel. These things the rich men in Judea had amassed, like the foolish rich man mentioned Luke 12:18, little imagining that they would soon be robbed of them by the Roman soldiers, and the destructive events of the war. Your garments In your wardrobes; are moth-eaten The fashion of clothes not changing in the eastern countries as with us, persons of fortune used to have many garments made of different costly stuffs, which they laid up as a part of their wealth. Thus, according to Q. Curtius, (lib. 5. c. 6,) when Alexander took Persepolis, he found the riches of all Asia gathered together there, which consisted not only of gold and silver, but vestis ingens modus, a vast quantity of garments. Your gold and silver is cankered Or eaten out with rust; and the rust of them Your perishing stores and moth-eaten garments; shall be, εις μαρτυριον, for a testimony against you Of your covetousness and worldly mind; and of your having foolishly and wickedly buried those talents in the earth, which you ought to have employed, according to your Lord's will, in relieving the wants of your fellow-creatures. And shall eat your flesh as it were fire Will occasion you as great a torment as if fire were consuming your flesh. Or, as the rust eats into the gold and silver, so shall your flesh and wealth be eaten up as if you had treasured up fire in the midst of it. This was punctually fulfilled in the destruction of that nation by their own seditions, and their wars with the Romans. For, among the Sicarii and the Zealots, the ringleaders of all their seditions, it was crime enough to be rich; and their insatiable avarice induced them continually to search into the houses of the rich, and, by false accusation, to slay them as deserters, for the sake of their property. Yea, both their substance and their bodies were devoured by the flames which burned up the city and the temple: and if any thing remained, it became a prey to the Roman soldiers. Ye have heaped treasure for the last days The days which are now coming, when your enemies shall seize or destroy all, to your infinite vexation and distress: or, you have heaped them up when it is too late; when you have no time or opportunity to enjoy them. This phrase, the last days, does not merely signify for the time to come, but for that period when the whole Jewish economy was to close, and when those awful judgments, threatened in the prophets to be poured out upon wicked men in the last days, were just coming.