The Worthlessness Of Riches

5:1-3 Come now, you rich, weep and wail at the miseries which are coming upon you. Your wealth is rotten and your garments are food for moths. Your gold and silver are corroded clean through with rust; and their rust is proof to you of how worthless they are. It is a rust which will eat into your very flesh like fire. It is a treasure indeed that you have amassed for yourselves in the last days!

James 5:1-6 has two aims. First, to show the ultimate worthlessness of all earthly riches; and second, to show the detestable character of those who possess them. By doing this he hopes to prevent his readers from placing all their hopes and desires on earthly things.

If you knew what you were doing, he says to the rich, you would weep and wail for the terror of the judgment that is coming upon you at the Day of the Lord. The vividness of the picture is increased by the word which James uses for to nail. It is the verb ololuzein ( Greek #3649 ), which is onomatopoeic and carries its meaning in its very sound. It means even more than to wail, it means to shriek, and in the King James Version is often translated to howl; and it depicts the frantic terror of those on whom the judgment of God has come ( Isaiah 13:6 ; Isaiah 14:31 ; Isaiah 15:2-3 ; Isaiah 16:7 ; Isaiah 23:1 ; Isaiah 23:14 ; Isaiah 65:14 ; Amos 8:3 ). We might well say that it is the word which describes those undergoing the tortures of the damned.

All through this passage the words are vivid and pictorial and carefully chosen. In the east there were three main sources of wealth and James has a word for the decay of each of them.

There were corn and grain. That is the wealth which grows rotten (sepein, Greek #4595 ).

There were garments. In the east garments were wealth. Joseph gave changes of garments to his brothers ( Genesis 45:22 ). It was for a beautiful mantle from Shinar that Achan brought disaster on the nation and death on himself and his family ( Joshua 7:21 ). It was changes of garments that Samson promised to anyone who would solve his riddle ( 14:12 ). It was garments that Naaman brought as a gift to the prophet of Israel and to obtain which Gehazi sinned his soul ( 2 Kings 5:5 ; 2 Kings 5:22 ). It was Paul's claim that he had coveted no man's money or apparel ( Acts 20:33 ). These garments, which are so splendid, will be food for moths (setobrotos ( Greek #4598 , compare Matthew 6:19 ).

The climax of the world's inevitable decay comes at the end. Even their gold and silver will be rusted clean through (katiasthai, Greek #2728 ). The point is that gold and silver do not actually rust; so James in the most vivid way is warning men that even the most precious and apparently most indestructible things are doomed to decay.

This rust is proof of the impermanence and ultimate valuelessness of all earthly things. More, it is a dread warning. The desire for these things is like a dread rust eating into men's bodies and souls. Then comes a grim sarcasm. It is a fine treasure indeed that any man who concentrates on these things is heaping up for himself at the last. The only treasure he will possess is a consuming fire which will wipe him out.

It is James' conviction that to concentrate on material things is not only to concentrate on a decaying delusion; it is to concentrate on self-produced destruction.