James 5:14 - Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible

Is any sick? Or infirm, though not desperately and incurably. Let him call for the elders; especially teaching elders, they being usually best furnished with gifts who labour in the word and doctrine, 1 Timothy 5:17. It is in the plural number, either by an enallage for the singular; q.d. Let him send for some or other of the elders; or, because there were in those times usually several elders (an ecclesiastical senate) in each church. And let them pray over him; as it were setting him before God, and presenting him to him, which might be a means to stir up the greater affection and warmth in prayer; see 1 Kings 17:21 2 Kings 4:33,34 Joh 11:41 Acts 20:10, Acts 9:40: or laying on their hands, as Acts 28:8, which yet seems to be for the same end. Anointing him with oil; an outward rite used in those times, in miraculous healing sick persons, which might then be kept up, while the gift whereof it was the symbol continued; but the gift ceasing, it is vainly used. These cures were sometimes wrought only with a word, Acts 9:34, Acts 14:10 16:18: sometimes by taking by the hand, or embracing, Acts 3:7, Acts 20:10; sometimes by laying on of hands, Mark 16:18 Acts 9:17; sometimes by anointing with oil, Mark 6:13: and so this is not an institution of a sacrament, but a command, that those elders that had the gift of healing, (as many in those days had), being called by the sick to come to them, should (the Spirit of the Lord so directing them) exercise that gift, as well as pray over them. In the name of the Lord; either, calling upon the Lord, and so joining prayer with their anointing; or, in the name, is by the authority of the Lord, from whom they had received that gift.