Verse 2
2. Ye lust Ye desire, crave. The objects of most of the verbs in the passage are to be supplied, the apostle leaving our minds to conceive how varied they are.
Have not In spite of your craving and violent efforts to obtain. They desired wealth, but poverty was the order of the day. They desired domination, but were enslaved by the Romans. They desired emancipation, but every bloody effort led to a bloodier destruction.
Kill In predatory assaults and political insurrections.
Desire to have It is a great puzzle with even such commentators as Huther and Alford to tell why St. James should commit such an anticlimax as to place so feeble a term as desire after kill. Alford discusses four solutions of previous commentators, rejecting them all, and gives a fifth little better than the four. The true solution is very simple. The three verbs, kill, desire, cannot obtain, are to be taken in close connexion: Ye kill and desire to have, (namely, the avails of your killing,) and cannot obtain, (those avails;) so that your bloodshed is bootless. You obtain neither wealth, nor emancipation, nor domination.
Ask not They were monotheists, hereditary covenant people of God, went through rituals, and yet their prayer was no prayer. For, as the next verse shows, they were lustful ejaculations.
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