James 5:2

2. Riches are corrupted Under a series of physical images the great truth is proclaimed that ill-gotten and oppressive wealth brings upon the possessor the divine malediction, fulfilled in this or a coming world. The various forms of wealth are either to be themselves destroyed, or to become the destroyers of their holders. As it is rich men of the twelve tribes who are here more specifically addressed as the epistle was written from Jerusalem, and as the magnates of the tribes were even now on the brink of destruction in the coming overthrow of the Jewish State, it is a plausible interpretation which applies this passage as a prophecy, in accordance with our Lord’s memorable predictions of that downfall.

Nor is it supposable that a man so deeply imbued with so national and patriotic a sympathy for his kindred would overlook that coming catastrophe so fully predicted by Jesus, and so well understood by Jewish Christians as that they thereby effected their own escape. Indeed, this predicting the day of slaughter, and then the parousia of James 5:7, is remarkably parallel to our Lord’s discourse distinguishing and contrasting these two great events. The specifications of their treasures with their destruction embraces a triad, namely, riches, or hoarded goods; garments; and gold and silver. The first has been (for the three verbs are in the perfect tense, and should have been strictly so rendered) rotted; the second, motheaten; the third, not only rusted, but so rusted as that the rust shall corrode like fire, and consume their flesh. Like the old prophets, our apostle takes his standpoint in the future, and contemplates the destruction he predicts as already completed.

Corrupted Literally, putrified, rotted.