Your gold and your silver are corroded, and their corrosion will be for a testimony against you and will eat your flesh like fire. You have laid up your treasure in the last days.
Parallel Translations
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Your gold and your silver are corroded, and their corrosion will be for a testimony against you and will eat your flesh like fire. You have laid up your treasure in the last days.
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Youre golde and youre silver are cankred and the rust of them shalbe a witnes vnto you and shall eate youre flesshe as it were fyre. Ye have heaped treasure togedder in youre last dayes:
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Your gold and siluer is cankred, and the rust of them shalbe a witnesse against you, and shall eate your flesh, as it were fire. Ye haue heaped vp treasure for the last dayes.
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Contradictions (1)
Questions where the Bible appears to say two different things, with the passages on each side set together.
Cross-references (18)
Passages linked to James 5:3 in the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge, ordered by reader-vote popularity; verse text shown in World English Bible.
- Romans 2:5 But according to your hardness and unrepentant heart you are treasuring up for yourself wrath in the day of wrath, revelation, and of the righteous judgment of God;
- James 5:7-8 Be patient therefore, brothers, until the coming of the Lord. Behold, the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth, being patient over it, until it receives the early and late rain. You also be patient. Establish your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is at hand.
- Revelation 21:8 But for the cowardly, unbelieving, sinners, abominable, murderers, sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their part is in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death.”
- Isaiah 2:2 It shall happen in the latter days, that the mountain of Yahweh’s house shall be established on the top of the mountains, and shall be raised above the hills; and all nations shall flow to it.
- Revelation 20:15 If anyone was not found written in the book of life, he was cast into the lake of fire.
- Genesis 31:52 May this heap be a witness, and the pillar be a witness, that I will not pass over this heap to you, and that you will not pass over this heap and this pillar to me, for harm.
- Genesis 49:1 Jacob called to his sons, and said: “Gather yourselves together, that I may tell you that which will happen to you in the days to come.
- Deuteronomy 32:33-34 Their wine is the poison of serpents, the cruel venom of asps. “Isn’t this laid up in store with me, sealed up among my treasures?
- Joshua 24:27 Joshua said to all the people, “Behold, this stone shall be a witness against us, for it has heard all Yahweh’s words which he spoke to us. It shall be therefore a witness against you, lest you deny your God.”
- Job 14:16-17 But now you count my steps. Don’t you watch over my sin? My disobedience is sealed up in a bag. You fasten up my iniquity.
- Job 16:8 You have shriveled me up. This is a witness against me. My leanness rises up against me. It testifies to my face.
- Jeremiah 19:9 I will cause them to eat the flesh of their sons and the flesh of their daughters. They will each eat the flesh of his friend in the siege and in the distress, with which their enemies, and those who seek their life, will distress them.” ’
- Micah 3:3 who also eat the flesh of my people, and peel their skin from off them, and break their bones, and chop them in pieces, as for the pot, and as meat within the cauldron.
- Micah 4:1 But in the latter days, it will happen that the mountain of Yahweh’s temple will be established on the top of the mountains, and it will be exalted above the hills; and peoples will stream to it.
- 2 Timothy 2:17 and those words will consume like gangrene, of whom is Hymenaeus and Philetus:
- 2 Peter 3:3 knowing this first, that in the last days mockers will come, walking after their own lusts
- Genesis 31:48 Laban said, “This heap is witness between me and you today.” Therefore it was named Galeed
- Revelation 17:16 The ten horns which you saw, and the beast, these will hate the prostitute, will make her desolate, will strip her naked, will eat her flesh, and will burn her utterly with fire.
Cross-references from openbible.info (CC BY 4.0)
Explain this verse (14 sources)
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John Calvin 1540 · Public Domain 3 A witness against you. He confirms the explanation…
3 A witness against you. He confirms the explanation I have already given. For God has not appointed gold for rust, nor garments for moths; but, on the contrary, be has designed them as aids and helps to human life. Therefore, even spending without benefit is a witness of inhumanity. The rusting of gold and silver will be, as it were, the occasion of inflaming the wrath of God, so that it will, like fire, consume them.
Ye have heaped treasure together: These words may also admit of two explanations: — that the rich, as they would always live, are never satisfied, but weary themselves in heaping together what may be sufficient to the end of the world, — or, that they heap together the wrath and curse of God for the last day; and this second view I embrace.
John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain 3 Your gold and silver is cankered; and the…
3 Your gold and silver is cankered; and the rust of them shall be a witness against you, and shall eat your flesh as it were fire. Ye have heaped treasure together for the last days.
Ver. 3. And shall eat your flesh] i.e. With hell-fire, which shall consume your flesh, nay, your souls, with eternal torments. Some strong poison is made of the rust of metals; none worse than that of money.
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For the last days] Wrath for the day of wrath; or store for old age, it being the old man’s care, as Plutarch observes, οτι ουκ εξει θαφοντας και θρεφοντας, that he shall not have what to keep him while alive, and what to bury him honestly when dead.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain Your gold and silver is cankered; the most precious…
Your gold and silver is cankered; the most precious and lasting metals; yet even they, with long disuse, canker, and go to decay. Under these, other metals in esteem among them may be understood.
And the rust of them shall be a witness against you: by a prosopopoeia, that which properly belongs to living persons is ascribed to dead things, as Hab 2:11; Luk 19:40. It is as much as if he had said: The rust shall be a certain evidence against you, and which will as effectually convict you, as any living witness could do, of your folly in putting your trust in perishing things, your greediness in hoarding them up, your unmercifulness in not supplying the wants of others, and your unreasonableness in denying the use of them to yourselves, when you had rather let them lie by and perish, than enjoy the comfort of them, or do good with them. The like expression we have, Mar 6:11.
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And shall eat your flesh; the rust (the witness of your covetousness and cruelty) which now eats your money, shall hereafter devour yourselves, soul and body, (which he means by flesh), viz. by procuring and kindling the wrath of God upon you, (compared to fire), and likewise by galling your consciences with a vexatious remembrance of your sin and folly; and so what in the judgment is a witness against you, in hell will be a tormentor to you.
As it were fire; as if you had reserved fire in your treasure, as well as treasure in your chests.
Ye have heaped treasure together for the last days: either this may be understood metaphorically, ye have heaped a treasure of wrath for the last days, Rom 2:5; or literally, ye have hoarded up your wealth against the last and fatal days, in which God is bringing those judgments upon you which will consume all.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain Your gold and silver is cankered,.... Or grown rusty…
Your gold and silver is cankered,.... Or grown rusty like iron, by lying long without use; this is not easily and quickly done, but in length of time gold and silver will change, and contract a rustiness; and so this conveys the same idea of hoarding up riches and laying up money, without making use of it in trade, for the support of the poor, and without distributing it to their necessities:
and the rust of them shall be a witness against you: at the day of judgment; which will be a proof that they have not been employed to such services, and for such usefulness, for which they were designed and given.
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And shall eat your flesh as it were fire; that is, a remembrance of this, a sense of it impressed upon them, shall be like fire in their bones; shall distress their minds, gnaw their consciences, and be in them the worm that never dies, and the fire that shall never be quenched:
ye have heaped treasure together for the last days; either for many years, as the fool in the Gospel, for the times of old age, the last days of men, for fear they should then want; or for the last days of the world, or of time, as if they thought they should live for ever: the Vulgate Latin version reads, "ye have treasured up wrath for yourselves in the last days"; instead of riches, as they imagined; and that by their covetousness and wickedness, by a wicked disuse of their riches, and an unrighteous detention of them; but this supplement seems to be taken from Rom 2:5 though the sense is confirmed by some copies which connect the phrase, "as it were fire", in the preceding clause, with this, "ye have treasured up as it were fire"; and the Syriac version renders it, "ye have treasured up fire"; the fire of divine wrath; this is the fruit of treasuring up riches in an ill way, and without making a proper use of them.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain The canker of them - Your perishing stores and…
The canker of them - Your perishing stores and moth-eaten garments. Will be a testimony against you - Of your having buried those talents in the earth, instead of improving them according to your Lord's will. And will eat your flesh as fire - Will occasion you as great torment as if fire were consuming your flesh. Ye have laid up treasure in the last days - When it is too late; when you have no time to enjoy them.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain Verse 3. Your gold and silver is cankered] Instead…
Verse 3. Your gold and silver is cankered] Instead of helping the poor, and thus honouring God with your substance, ye have, through the principle of covetousness, kept all to yourselves.
The rust of them shall be a witness against you] Your putrefied stores, your moth-eaten garments, and your tarnished coin, are so many proofs that it was not for want of property that you assisted not the poor, but through a principle of avarice; loving money, not for the sake of what it could procure, but for its own sake, which is the genuine principle of the miser. This was the very character given to this people by our Lord himself; he called them φιλαργυροι, lovers of money. Against this despicable and abominable disposition, the whole of the 12th chapter of St. Luke is levelled; but it was their easily besetting sin, and is so to the present day.
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Shall eat your flesh as it were fire.] This is a very bold and sublime figure. He represents the rust of their coin as becoming a canker that should produce gangrenes and phagedenous ulcers in their flesh, till it should be eaten away from their bones.
Ye have heaped treasure together] This verse is variously pointed. The word ως, like as, in the preceding clause, is left out by the Syriac, and some others; and πυρ, fire, is added here from that clause; so that the whole verse reads thus: "Your gold and your silver is cankered; and the rust of them shall be a witness against you, and shall consume your flesh. Ye have treasured up FIRE against the last days." This is a bold and fine image: instead of the treasures of corn, wine, and oil, rich stuffs, with silver and gold, which ye have been laying up, ye shall find a treasure, a magazine of fire, that shall burn up your city, and consume even your temple. This was literally true; and these solemn denunciations of Divine wrath were most completely fulfilled. See the notes on Matt. 24, where all the circumstances of this tremendous and final destruction are particularly noted.
By the last days we are not to understand the day of judgment, but the last days of the Jewish commonwealth, which were not long distant from the date of this epistle, whether we follow the earlier or later computation, of which enough has been spoken in the preface.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain Your gold and silver is cankered - That is,…
Your gold and silver is cankered - That is, that you have heaped together, by injustice and fraud, a large amount, and have kept it from those to whom it is due, Jam 5:4, until it has become corroded. The word rendered is “cankered” (κατίωται katiōtai,) does not occur elsewhere in the New Testament. It properly means “to cause to rust; to rust out” (Passow); “to be corroded with rust” (Robinson); to be spotted with rust. It is true that gold and silver do not properly rust, or become oxidized, and that they will not be corroded like iron and steel; but by being kept long in a damp place they will contract a dark color, resembling rust in appearance. This seems to be the idea in the mind of the apostle. He speaks of gold and silver as they appear after having been long laid up without use; and undoubtedly the word which he uses here is one which would to an ancient have expressed that idea, as well as the mere literal idea of the rusting or oxidizing of metals. There is no reason to suppose that the word was then used in the strict chemical sense of rusting, for there is no reason to suppose that the nature of oxidization was then fully understood.
And the rust of them - Another word is used here - ἰὸς ios. This properly denotes something sent out or emitted, (from ἕημι hēmi), and is applied to a missile weapon, as an arrow; to poison, as emitted from the tooth of a serpent; and to rust, as it seems to be emitted from metals. The word refers to the dark discoloration which appears on gold and silver, when they have remained long without use.
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Shall be a witness against you - That is, the rust or discoloration shall bear testimony against you that the money is not used as it should be, either in paying those to whom it is due, or in doing good to others. Among the ancients, the gold and silver which anyone possessed was laid up in some secret and safe place. Compare the notes at Isa 45:3. There were no banks then in which money might be deposited; there were few ways of investing money so as to produce regular interest; there were no corporations to employ money in joint operations; and it was not very common to invest money in the purchase of real estate, and stocks and mortgages were little known.
And shall eat your flesh as it were fire - This cannot be taken literally. It must mean that the effect would be as if it should corrode or consume their very flesh; that is, the fact of their laying up treasures would be followed by painful consequences. The thought is very striking, and the language in which it is conveyed is singularly bold and energetic. The effect of thus heaping up treasure will be as corroding as fire in the flesh. The reference is to the punishment which God would bring on them for their avarice and in-justice - effects that will come on all now for the same offences.
Ye have heaped treasure together for the last days - The day of judgment; the closing scenes of this world. You have been heaping up treasure; but it will be treasure of a different kind from what you have supposed. It is treasure not laid up for ostentation, or luxury, or use in future life, but treasure the true worth of which will be seen at the judgment-day. So Paul speaks of “treasuring up wrath against the day of wrath, and revelation of the righteous judgment of God,” Rom 2:5. There are many who suppose they are accumulating property that may be of use to them, or that may secure them the reputation of possessing great wealth, who are in fact accumulating a most fearful treasure against the day of final retribution. Every man who is rich should examine himself closely to see whether there is anything in the manner in which he has gained his property, or in which he now holds it, that will expose him to the wrath of God in the last day. That on which he so much prides himself may yet bring down on him the vengeance of heaven; and in the day of judgment he may curse his own madness and folly in wasting his probation in efforts to amass property.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain is cankered--"rusted through" [ALFORD].
is cankered--"rusted through" [ALFORD].
rust . . . witness against you--in the day of judgment; namely, that your riches were of no profit to any, lying unemployed and so contracting rust.
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shall eat your flesh--The rust which once ate your riches, shall then gnaw your conscience, accompanied with punishment which shall prey upon your bodies for ever.
as . . . fire--not with the slow process of rusting, but with the swiftness of consuming fire.
for the last days--Ye have heaped together, not treasures as ye suppose (compare Luk 12:19), but wrath against the last days, namely, the coming judgment of the Lord. ALFORD translates more literally, "In these last days (before the coming judgment) ye laid up (worldly) treasure" to no profit, instead of repenting and seeking salvation (see on Jam 5:5).
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain 3. Gold… cankered—Literally, rusted. Gold, however, never does truly…
3. Gold… cankered—Literally, rusted. Gold, however, never does truly rust, or oxidize, just as fire does not eat, or rust eat flesh. Such a fact is, of course, here only figured, as an image of the perishability of human fortunes. Bloomfield says, “Gold does not, properly, rust; yet by long use it contracts a green colour, and a sort of acid humour. The ancient gold and silver might be more liable to rust, from having a greater proportion of alloy.” That greening of gold coin was viewed as a sort of rust, as appears from the poet Theocritus, (Idyl 16,) where he says that no one would give poets money; nay, “not rub off the rust of their money and give it to them.”
Witness against you—Not against, but to, you. It does not testify to any crime, but prophesies that you shall be even cankered as it is.
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For the last days—Literally, in last days. It is to be noted that the heaping of the treasure was within, not previous to, the last days. Both last days and day of slaughter are without the Greek article, while coming, of Jas_5:7, (where see note,) has the article. Both these terms, last days and day, clearly signify the closing days of the apostolic age of the Church, coincident with the closing days of the Jewish State. See notes on 2Th_2:7; 1Ti_4:1; 2Pe_3:3; 1Jn_2:18-22; 1Jn_4:3; 2Jn_1:7.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain 3. Your gold and silver is cankered] Literally, rusted,…
3. Your gold and silver is cankered] Literally, rusted, the word being used generically of the tarnish that sooner or later comes over all metals that are exposed to the action of the air.
shall be a witness against you …] Better, for a witness to you. The doom that falls on the earthly possessions of the ungodly shall be, as it were, the token of what will fall on them, unless they avert it by repentance.
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shall eat your flesh as it were fire] The last words have been sometimes taken as belonging to the next clause, “as fire ye laid up treasure,” but the structure of the English text is preferable. The underlying image suggested is that the rust or canker spreads from the riches to the very life itself, and that when they fail, and leave behind them only the sense of wasted opportunities and the memories of evil pleasures, the soul will shudder at their work as the flesh shudders at the touch of fire. We may perhaps trace a reminiscence of the “unquenchable fire” devouring the carcases in Gehenna, as in Mar_9:44.
Ye have heaped treasure together for the last days] Better, Ye laid (or, ye have laid) up treasure in the last days. The preposition cannot possibly have the sense of “for.” St James shared the belief of other New Testament writers that they were living in “the last days” of the world’s history, and that the “coming of the Lord” was nigh (1Jn_2:18; 1Co_15:51; 1Th_4:15). For those to whom he wrote the words had a very real truth. They were actually living in the “last days” of the polity of Israel. In the chaos and desolation of its fall their heaped-up treasures would avail but little. They would be marked out in proportion to their wealth, as the first to be attacked and plundered.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain (3) Your gold and silver . . .—In like…
(3) Your gold and silver . . .—In like manner, the gold and silver are said to be “cankered,” or eaten up with rust. The precious metals themselves do not corrode, but the base alloy does, which has been mixed with them for worldly use and device. The rust of them shall be a witness to you: not merely against, but convincing yourselves in the day of judgment; and, moreover, a sign of the fire which shall consume you. So will the wages of the traitor, and the harlot, the spoil of the thief and oppressor, burn the hands which have clutched them; the memories of the wrong shiver through each guilty soul, like the liquid fires which Muhammedans say torture the veins of the damned in the halls of Eblis.
Ye have heaped . . .—Read, Ye heaped up treasures in the last days:—the days of grace, given you for repentance, like the years when “the long-suffering of God waited in the days of Noah” (Gen_6:3; 1Pe_3:20), or the time during which God bore with Canaan, “till the iniquity of the Amorite” was “full” (Gen_15:16).
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Some expositors have seen in this verse an instance of James’s belief that he was “living in the last days of the world’s history;” and compared his delusion with that of Paul and John (1Th_4:15, and 1Jn_2:18). But there was no mistake on the part of the inspired. writers; freedom from error in their Sacred office must be vindicated, or who shall sever the false gospel from the true? The simple explanation is an old one—the potential nearness of Christ, as it is called. In many ways He has been ever near each individual, as by affliction, or death, or judgment; but His actual return was probably nearer in the first ages of faith than in the brutality of the tenth century, or the splendid atheism of the fifteenth, or the intellectual pride of the nineteenth. His advent is helped or hindered by the state of Christendom itself: “one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day” (2Pe_3:8), there is: neither past nor future in His sight; only the presence of His own determination: and nought retards Christ’s Second Coming so much as the false and feeble Christianity which prays “Thy kingdom come” in frequent words, but waits not as the handmaid of her Lord, with “loins girded about and lights burning” (Luk_12:35), “until the day dawn, and the day star arise” (2Pe_1:19).
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain With this and the preceding verse contrast our Lord"s…
With this and the preceding verse contrast our Lord"s words of treasure laid up in heaven, "where moth and rust do not corrupt". (Mat_6:19) Cankered (katiwtai); better, rusted. Only here in the New Testament; never in the LXX except Ecc_12:11. The rust of them. jIov: used here for "rust" as in the LXX in Ezekiel"s parable of the boiling pot (Eze_24:6, etc.) a passage which (according to one interpretation) may have suggested the following clause, "and shall eat your flesh," etc. (see vers. 9-12). Shall he a witness against you (eijv marturion uJmin). The rendering of the A.V is quite defensible (see Winer, p. 265), but it is equally possible to take the words as the R.V margin," for a testimony unto you." "The rust of them," says Alford, "is a token of what shall happen to yourselves; in the consuming of your wealth you see depicted your own." Two interpretations of the latter part of the verse are possible, depending on the punctuation adopted.
(1) As the A.V and R.V, putting the stop after pur: "Their rust shall eat your flesh as fire. Ye have laid up your treasure in the last days." The "fire," if this rendering be adopted, may be explained from Eze_24:9, etc.
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(2) Putting the stop after uJmwn and before wJv pur: "Their rust shall eat your flesh. Ye have heaped up as it were fire in the last days." This has the support of the Syriac ("Ye have gathered fire for you for the last days"), and is adopted by Drs. Westcott and Herr. The "fire" will, of course, be the fire of judgment; and the expression, wJv pur ejqhsaurisate, may easily have been suggested by Pro_16:27, jAnhssei eJautw kaka) ejpi dewn qhsaurizei pur. The whole form of expression also reminds us of St. Paul"s "treasurest up for thyself wrath in the day of wrath", (Rom_2:5) to which it is exactly parallel, the "wrath in the day of wrath" there answering to the "fire in the last days" here. (The rendering of the Vulgate is evidently influenced by this parallel, as it has thesaurizastis tram. ) For the last days; rather, in the last days (ejn ejscataiv hJmeraiv); cf. 2Ti_3:1. If the words are connected with pur as suggested above, there is no difficulty in them. If the punctuation of the A.V be retained, we must suppose that the writer is speaking from the point of view of the last day of all. "When the end came it found them heaping up treasures which they could never use" (Dean Scott) But the other view, though not so generally adopted, seems fat" preferable.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
B. W. Johnson 1891 · Public Domain 3. Your gold and silver are cankered. Rusted from…
3. Your gold and silver are cankered. Rusted from disuse. These metals do not literally rust, but do tarnish from long disuse. The idea is that they show they have been hoarded, not used. A witness against you. The tarnish shows that you have hoarded instead of using. Shall eat your flesh. They shall punish you, as though heated by fire and eating into your flesh. This hoarded wealth will curse the possessor. Ye have heaped … last days. Instead of laying up treasure in heaven you have continued to pile up earthly treasure to the last, a matter of extreme folly. What James then thought of as “the last days,” the end of his nation, country and Jerusalem, was close at hand.
B. W. Johnson's The People's New Testament with Notes (1889–1891) — public domain. Electronic text from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL) ThML edition.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 5:3 Material wealth, represented by gold and silver, is…
5:3 Material wealth, represented by gold and silver, is worthless in the face of God’s judgment. In fact, it will testify against them because it was unjustly gotten (5:4) and wickedly used (5:5-6).
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.