James 5:1 - Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible

Bible Comments

JAMES CHAPTER 5 James 5:1-6 Wicked rich men are warned of God's impending judgment. James 5:7-11 The brethren are exhorted to patience, after the example of the prophets and of Job, James 5:12 to abstain from swearing, James 5:13-15 to pray in affliction and sickness, and sing psalms in prosperity, James 5:16-18 to acknowledge mutually their faults, and to pray for one another, James 5:19,20 and to endeavour to reclaim sinners. Go to now: see James 4:13. Ye rich men; he speaks to them not simply as rich, (for riches and grace sometimes may go together), but as wicked, not only wallowing in wealth, but abusing it to pride, luxury, oppression, and cruelty. Against these, either as looking on them as incurable, or upon supposition of their impenitency, he denounceth God's judgments; and that whether they were unconverted Jews, vexing the believing Jews; or Gentiles, oppressing the Christian Jews; or Christians in profession and name, who yet were so vile in their practice, as to condemn and kill the just; and that they might more speciously do it, to draw them before the judgment-seats, &c. Weep and howl; to denote the extremity of the calamities coming upon them, in which they should not only weep like men, but howl like wild beasts: see Jeremiah 4:8 Micah 1:8 Joel 1:10,13. For your miseries that shall come upon you; or, are coming upon you, to signify the certainty and nearness of them. The miseries he means may be both temporal and eternal.

James 5:1

1 Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you.