James 5:3-6
The Message
Destroying Your Life from Within
5 1-3 And a final word to you arrogant rich: Take some lessons in lament. You’ll need buckets for the tears when the crash comes upon you. Your money is corrupt and your fine clothes stink. Your greedy luxuries are a cancer in your gut, destroying your life from within. You thought you were piling up wealth. What you’ve piled up is judgment.
4-6 All the workers you’ve exploited and cheated cry out for judgment. The groans of the workers you used and abused are a roar in the ears of the Master Avenger. You’ve looted the earth and lived it up. But all you’ll have to show for it is a fatter than usual corpse. In fact, what you’ve done is condemn and murder perfectly good persons, who stand there and take it.
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James 5:3-5
New International Version
3 Your gold and silver are corroded. Their corrosion will testify against you and eat your flesh like fire. You have hoarded wealth in the last days.(A) 4 Look! The wages you failed to pay the workers(B) who mowed your fields are crying out against you. The cries(C) of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord Almighty.(D) 5 You have lived on earth in luxury and self-indulgence. You have fattened yourselves(E) in the day of slaughter.[a](F)
Footnotes
- James 5:5 Or yourselves as in a day of feasting
James 5:3-5
King James Version
3 Your gold and silver is cankered; and the rust of them shall be a witness against you, and shall eat your flesh as it were fire. Ye have heaped treasure together for the last days.
4 Behold, the hire of the labourers who have reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth: and the cries of them which have reaped are entered into the ears of the Lord of sabaoth.
5 Ye have lived in pleasure on the earth, and been wanton; ye have nourished your hearts, as in a day of slaughter.
Read full chapterCopyright © 1993, 2002, 2018 by Eugene H. Peterson
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