Saints Translation

By Vincent Melli

James — Greek text and reception

ProphetHumble repentance

James 4 — Greek text and reception

Saints Translation: James [V2 Working Draft]

Each card preserves the Greek reading and its textual and reception notes. This source provides a Greek study edition; Hebrew counterparts and Hebrew–Greek classifications are not supplied.

Chapter 4

Conflict, humility, and the uncertainty of tomorrow

Desire and division

Verse 4:1

Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)

From where come wars, and from where come fights among you? Is it not from here—from your pleasures that wage war in your members?

Textual & Reception Notes

Text [G]: The repeated source question and the inner military image are retained. Reception: [R19].

Verse 4:2

Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)

You desire and do not have; you murder and envy and cannot obtain. You fight and wage war. You do not have because you do not ask.

Textual & Reception Notes

Text [G]: Phoneuete means you murder; Calvin’s proposed envy reading is not adopted. The Greek names frustrated desire, murder and envy, conflict, and failure to ask. The rhetorical or literal application of murder belongs to interpretation. Reception: [R19].

Verse 4:3

Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)

You ask and do not receive, because you ask badly, so that you may spend it on your pleasures.

Textual & Reception Notes

Text [G]: The stated motive qualifies the ineffective asking; no universal denial of prayer is inserted. Reception: [R19].

Verse 4:4

Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)

Adulteresses! Do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Whoever therefore wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.

Textual & Reception Notes

Text [G]: SBLGNT addresses adulteresses alone; adulterers is not added from longer received presentations. The feminine plural supports the covenant-infidelity image in context; it is not evidence that only women receive the letter. Reception: [R20].

Verse 4:5

Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)

Or do you think Scripture says in vain, “He yearns jealously for the spirit that He made to dwell in us”?

Textual & Reception Notes

Text [G]: The draft takes God as the implicit yearning subject and spirit as object, while retaining lowercase spirit because its identification is uncertain. Another construal makes the spirit the subject of envious longing; Calvin instead asks whether the divine Spirit envies [R20]. SBLGNT’s katōkisen means made to dwell. No exact scriptural antecedent for the whole saying has been established. Reception: [R20].

Verse 4:6

Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)

But He gives greater grace. Therefore it says, “God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.”

Textual & Reception Notes

Text [G]: Greater grace remains the contrast. SBLGNT includes the complete saying about God opposing the proud and giving grace to the humble. Calvin discusses doubts about this clause under 4:7; those historical suggestions do not alter the selected text. Reception: [R20].

Humility before God

Verse 4:7

Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)

Submit yourselves therefore to God; but resist the devil, and he will flee from you.

Textual & Reception Notes

Text [G]: The two imperatives have different objects; the fleeing subject is the devil. Reception: [R21], [R35].

Verse 4:8

Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)

Draw near to God, and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, sinners, and purify your hearts, you of divided mind.

Textual & Reception Notes

Text [G]: Hands/hearts and cleanse/purify remain distinct; divided mind repeats dipsychos from 1:8. Reception: [R21].

Verse 4:9

Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)

Be wretched and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned into mourning and your joy into dejection.

Textual & Reception Notes

Text [G]: The forceful calls to penitence and the two reversals are retained in their exhortatory setting. Reception: [R21].

Verse 4:10

Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)

Humble yourselves before the Lord, and He will exalt you.

Textual & Reception Notes

Text [G]: Lord follows the Greek title; the human humbling and divine exalting are distinguished. Reception: [R21].

Judging a neighbor

Verse 4:11

Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)

Do not speak against one another, brothers. The one who speaks against a brother or judges his brother speaks against the law and judges the law. But if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law but a judge.

Textual & Reception Notes

Text [G]: The plural instruction shifts to singular if you judge; repeated law and judge preserve the argument. Reception: [R22].

Verse 4:12

Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)

There is one Lawgiver and Judge, the One able to save and destroy. But who are you to judge your neighbor?

Textual & Reception Notes

Text [G]: SBLGNT includes both Lawgiver and Judge, and explicitly names the neighbor. These are retained even though Calvin’s displayed English omits and Judge and has another. The singular challenge restrains the reader’s assumed authority. Reception: [R22].

Tomorrow and the Lord’s will

Verse 4:13

Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)

Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this city, spend a year there, trade, and make a profit”—

Textual & Reception Notes

Text [G]: G reads or, this city, and a year; the four planned actions are retained. Reception: [R23].

Verse 4:14

Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)

you who do not know what tomorrow brings. What is your life? For you are a vapor, appearing for a little while and then disappearing.

Textual & Reception Notes

Text [G]: The short question is an editorial division of difficult syntax; the source’s you are a vapor is preserved. Reception: [R23].

Verse 4:15

Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)

Instead, you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we shall both live and do this or that.”

Textual & Reception Notes

Text [G]: Both life itself and the planned action depend on the stated condition. Reception: [R23].

Verse 4:16

Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)

But now you boast in your pretensions. All such boasting is evil.

Textual & Reception Notes

Text [G]: The condemnation concerns such boasting, not every possible use of the verb boast. Reception: [R23].

Verse 4:17

Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)

Therefore, to the one who knows to do good and does not do it, it is sin.

Textual & Reception Notes

Text [G]: The knowing and the failure to act are both essential to the statement. Reception: [R23].