James 4:4

4. Adulterers is probably a spurious reading prefixed to adulteresses, which is alone genuine. We also prefer Tischendorf’s punctuation, which would read, “that you may expend it in your lusts, ye adulteresses.” Israel is often termed in the Old Testament the spouse of Jehovah, and apostate Israel is pronounced an adulteress. Said Isaiah, (Isaiah 54:5,) “Thy Maker is thine husband:” and Jeremiah, (Jeremiah 2:2,) “I remember… the love of thine espousals.” Said Ezekiel, (Ezekiel 16:32,) “But as a wife that committeth adultery.” Our Lord pronounced the Jews an “adulterous generation.” (Matthew 12:29; Matthew 16:4; Mark 8:38.) In all probability the copyist, not perceiving this figurative sense, thought that adulterers should be added in order to include both sexes in the charge of literal adultery.

Know ye not Parallel with think ye, do ye think, in next verse, with an or between the two. These two parallel questions start, first, the antithesis between the friendship of the world and the friendship of God; and, second, the contrast made by God against envy and the proud in favour of the humble. This drift of the thought is important as key to the difficulty found by commentators in the interpretation of James 4:5. Friendship (rather, love) of the world What is meant by world when it is thus condemned in lump? Not merely the secular business of the world, or human society, or the State, or the organic system of human things as such. The existence of such things is right. To say otherwise is to introduce a most disastrous and demoralizing monasticism. And this organic structure of human things is largely at the present age fused over with Christian influences. The living world of our present Christendom is not as bad as the world of the apostolic age.

Enmity with God For he who loves the world as ruled by Satan is at war with God and his kingdom.