Series: The Epistle of James

c. As comforting the lowly poor and chastening the haughty rich (James 1:9-11)

9 (in the equality of Christian brotherhood) let the brother  
     of humble degree exult in his being made high,
10 and the rich (brother) in his being made low: for he
     (in his being-only-rich) shall pass away like the flower  
     among the grass.
11. For the sun arises, with the scorching wind, and parches
     the grass, and the flower among it falls off, and the 
     beauty of its appearance perishes: so he who is (only)
     rich shall wither in his ways (Translation: Adamson p. 61)

Adamson begins by focusing on James’s intended meaning of the terms. His analysis is based on the Greek language version, and both New Testament and Old Testament verses.

Brother

Concerning verse 9, Adamson says the wording in Greek is significant for understanding who is meant by the word, ‘brother’. He argues that we must read ‘brother’ with the rich (v. 10) as well as with the lowly (of humble degree). This is contrary to another view which assumes that the phrase the rich refers to the non-Christian man in general. Adamson agrees with the argument provided by Ropes.

My Approach to Adamson’s Bibliography

Ropes is one of the entries in Adamson’s ‘select bibliography’, which begins on page 40. Adamson sometimes disagrees with the authors on this list. Or he agrees with them and uses their works to illustrate his own view. In the discussion of ‘brother’ he depends completely on Ropes’s argument that ‘brother’ does not refer to the non-Christian man in general. So, I included the citation. If the reader is not comfortable with this approach, please compare my summary against Adamson’s book.

Ropes’s Rebuttal of the View that ‘Brother’ means the Non-Christian Man ¹

• The refusal to supply ‘brother’ is unnatural.
• The addition of ‘let him exult’ would require excessive irony.
• [‘Brother’ has a] loose connection with the context and especially with the initial and continuing idea of peirasmoi.

Exalted

For ease of reading, I’ll repeat Adamson’s translation of verse 9: ‘let the brother of humble degree exult in his being made high‘. In this section, Adamson lists several verses to demonstrate the use of the verb exult.

The Old Testament

In the Old Testament, the verb ‘exult’ is used for any ‘proud and exulting joy’. (Hover or click on the citation to read the verse. The verses are not visible on mobile view. I’m trying to fix it.).

• Psalms 5:11
• Psalms 32:11
• Jeremiah 9:23
• Ben Sira 39:8

The New Testament

The verb is used frequently in the New Testament, especially by Paul who uses it more than thirty times.

• 2 Corinthians 7:14
• Romans 5:3
• 2 Corinthians 12:9
• 2 Corinthians 11:12 (Ropes p. 145)

According to Adamson, the way the verb is used here harks back to the exhortation to joy of James 1:2 and it stresses the opposition to double-mindedness. The moral quality of this joy depends on the occasion.

To exult is bad in James 4:16. Adamson offers the following verses for comparison, and leaves it to the reader to decide if these verses support his view that they refer to the moral quality of exulting joy:

• Romans 2:17

• Romans 2:23
• Romans 3:27
• Romans 4:2
• 1 Corinthians 1:29
• 1 Corinthians 4:7
• 2 Corinthians 11:18
• Galations 6:13
• 1 Corinthians 5:6

In the following verses the exulting is good:

• Romans 5:2
• Romans 5:11
• Philippians 3:3
• Romans 15:17
• 1 Corinthians 1:31

‘Lowly’ as Referring to the Outward Social Status

Adamson argues that when James used ‘lowly’ he did not have in mind the Christian grace of humility. That would be to ‘spiritualize’ the word. He was referring to outward social status, like the status of a slave or a beggar. In other words, ‘poverty in relation to glorying and contempt, a state despised by the mass of mankind’ (Hort)².

Here Adamson refers us to Luke 1:52 and Romans 12:16.

• Luke 1:52
• Romans 12:16

The Greek word means ‘low’. This is not a virtue in mind or status, as in classical thought, but rather it is like our ‘poor-spirited’. In the LXX (the Septuagint), the word may mean literally ‘poor’ (1 Samuel 18:23).

Lowly can also have a religious connotation

But it sometimes has a special religious connotation when contrasted with the ‘rich’:

• Psalms 10:2
• Psalms of Solomon 2:35 (a collection of ancient Jewish religious poems)

James also used ‘lowly’ in an inward spiritual way (4:6). The two uses were sometimes associated in Jewish literature (Ben Sira 10:30f).

Among Christians, humility is the virtue of voluntary acceptance or confession of a low or subordinate status in esteem or function; (compare) Phil. 2:1-13, the locus classicus on Christian, and Christ’s, humility.

Even under Christianity, the metaphor implicit in the word ‘humility’ is not very pleasing in an equalitarian age. In Jas. 1:9 the meaning is literal, referring to a man’s mean social station in life. ‘Highness’, ‘exaltation’, refers to the present spiritual status which, by virtue of his relation to Christ, the Christian now enjoys. (Adamson p. 62)

Philippians 2:1-13
2:1  If there is any solace in love, any participation in the Spirit, any compassion and mercy, 

2:2  complete my joy by being of the same mind, with the same love, united in heart, thinking of one thing. 

2:3  Do nothing out of selfishness or our of vainglory; rather, humbly regard others as more important than yourselves, 

2:4  each looking out for his own interests, but (also) everyone for those of others. 

2:5  Have among yourselves the same attitude that is also yours in Christ Jesus.

2:6-11   
6  Who, though he was in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God 
something to be grasped. 
7  Rather, he emptied himself, 
taking the form of a slave, 
coming in human likeness;
and found human in appearance, 
8  he humbled himself, 
becoming obedient to death,
even death on a cross.
9  Because of this, God greatly exalted him
and bestowed on him the name
that is above every name,
10  that at the name of Jesus
every knee should bend,
of those in heaven and on earth 
and under the earth,
11  and every tongue confess that 
Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.

2:12  So then, my beloved, obedient as you have always been, not only when I am present but all the more now when I am absent, work out your salvation with fear and trembling. 

2:13  For God is the one who, for his good purpose, works in you both to desire and to work. (The Catholic Bible NABRE)

Abasement

In verse 10, Adamson focuses on the word ‘abasement’. Here it means self-abasement. This refers to a new mind of humility which Christians adopt. James urges this adoption on some of the brothers in 4:10, 13-16.

The Flowers of Palestine

Adamson likens James to Peter in his use of Isaiah 40:6,7. Its theme: ‘all flesh is grass’. He translates it as ‘the flower among the grass’ and emphasizes that flowers are profuse in Palestine. He names anemone, cyclamen, and lily.

Adamson also cites Matthew 6:28, 30. In my opinion, it is painful to read these verses with present-day Palestine in mind:

28  Why are you anxious about clothes? Learn from the way the wild flowers grow. They do not work or spin.

30  If God so clothes the grass of the field, which grows today and is thrown into the oven tomorrow, will he not much more provide for you, O you of little faith?

It is also painful to read Hort’s description of the flowers of Palestine:

By ‘the flower of the field’ the prophet doubtless meant the blaze of gorgeous blossoms which accompanies the first shooting of the grass in spring, alike in the Holy Land and on the Babylonian plain (Hort p. 15).

According to Adamson, in the Mediterranean region the spring is brilliant but very brief. The flowers only live for a short time every year. H. B. Tristram is quoted next:

The downs of Bethlehem in February are one spangled carpet of brilliant flowers…In May all traces of verdure are gone.

The Flower and its Implications for the Rich

In verse 11, the implications for the rich are described poetically by means of ‘the flower’. Adamson’s focus in this section is the intricacies of the Greek words. For example, he informs us that the Greek ‘aorist‘ is used here.

Needless to say, aorist has a complex meaning, not to mention the various words chosen by the other scholar’s listed in his bibliography. Much of this section explains the translations that Adamson rejects and his reasons for his own choices. In my opinion, including every word of this part of the text would be fruitless for those of us who don’t read Greek. Normally my main interest is in making his conclusions as clear as possible for all readers. However, the importance he gives this verse demands attention–his commentary takes up three pages. In this case, I summarize it as accurately as I can.

Regarding the word aorist, Adamson thinks it may represent the Hebrew perfect in order to emphasize the suddenness and completeness of the withering. Here is a reminder of what the verse says:

 11 For the sun arises, with the scorching wind, and parches
     the grass, and the flower among it falls off, and the 
     beauty of its appearance perishes: so he who is (only)
     rich shall wither in his ways.

The Scorching Wind

Rather than using obscure tribal references as some do, or the comparison of Christ to the rising of the sun, Adamson chose ‘scorching wind’. He thinks it is a better description of the vividness of the country life.

No one who has ever lived in Palestine can forget the sirocco (sharqiya)–the blasting, scorching southeast wind which blows there in the spring; once begun it blows incessantly night and day. (Adamson p. 63)

He also highlights a comment by E. F. F. Bishop.³

The temperature hardly seems to vary. Flowers and herbage wilt and fade, lasting as long as ‘morning glory’. Anemones and cyclamen, carpeting the hillsides of Galilee in spring, have a loveliness that belongs only to the past, when the hot wind comes. Drooping flowers make fuel. The fields of lupins are here today and gone tomorrow.

Adamson was certain that James must have seen the flowers that bloom on the Galilean hills as they wilt in the scorching wind.

Appearance

The word ‘appearance’ also rates its own examination. Adamson prefers the ‘easier’ meaning of appearance or show, and he illustrates its use with verses from the Old Testament. He credits Ropes for these references.

• Genesis 2:6
• 2 Samuel 14:20
• Job 41:13

Beauty

As for the word beauty, Adamson prefers Ropes’s ‘goodly appearance’. He doesn’t think it should be allegorized too far. He says that we don’t think of the ‘pride’ of flowers, but of their short-lived beauty. The point is mainly that they perish. That’s why grass is often included in such Old Testament comparisons. And when we speak of the glory of flowers, or the sunrise or sunset, it is not the glory of pomp and pride as in plutocrats.

The Withering of the Unbelieving Rich

These verses are describing the fate of the unbelieving rich. Their withering is a simile.

The picture of the rich ‘withering’ continues the simile of the fading flower: the verb, found only in the NT, is picturesque and may be used of the dying out of a fire.⁴ (Adamson p. 64)

The verb is also used for many kinds of gradual enfeeblement (Wisdom 2:8)

It is found in Philo, in connection with wealth⁵, and in 2 Talmud.

The children of man are like the grasses of the field, some blossom and some fade.⁶

Ways

Adamson’s choice of the translation of ‘way’ is summed up in his view of James as an artist. This refers to the way James organizes his composition.

Which passes away, the rich man or his riches?

Hort poses this question, and he answers it by saying that the point is in the separation of a man from his wealth at death. Then follows a discussion of the state of the dead in Hebrew thought, and the problem of wealth without righteousness. Adamson concludes that the common fact of mortality has a special lesson for the rich, because they have a special temptation to forget it. He quotes Pindar:

If any man who has riches excels others in beauty of form and has proved his strength by victory in the Games, let him remember that he puts his raiment on mortal limbs and in the end of all is clad with earth.⁷

If any man fosters his wealth with honesty, abounding in possessions and winning good fame, let him not seek to be a god.⁸

Conclusion

Yet Hort perceives the truth. James indeed, as Hort says, has in view ‘not death absolutely but death as separating riches from their possessor and showing them to have no essential connection with him’. The pride of wealth ‘substituted another God for Jehovah and denied the brotherhood of man’. Speaking of his friend, a poor Christian, a wealthy unbeliever remarked: ‘When I die, I shall leave my riches. When he dies he will go to his’.⁹ In effect, this is what James is saying: Remember you are mortal and wealth per se does nothing for your soul: so be glad that by humbling yourself in Christ and the brotherhood you are likely to win the treasure of life everlasting. The old Hebrew thought of the premature end of the wicked and rich appears in James’s statement of his principle, which in fact is equally valid if the the man lives in wealth to the age of a hundred; besides, James is convinced that the end is at hand (see James 5:3, 8) (Adamson p. 66).

1. J. H. Ropes, The Epistle of St. James. ICC (1916). ↩︎
2. F. J. A. Hort, The Epistle of St. James, i. 1-iv. 7 (1909) ↩︎
3. E. F. F. Bishop, Apostles of Palestine (1958). ↩︎
4. Aristotle De Vita et Morte 5. ↩︎
5. Special Laws i. 311 ↩︎
6. b. Erubin 54a; Sir. 14:11-19. ↩︎
7. Nem. xi. 13-16. ↩︎
8. Ol. v. 23f ↩︎
9. See J. Blanchard, Not Hearers Only 1 (1971), p. 68. Cf. K. Menninger, Whatever Became of sin?, on ‘the sin of affluence’ (pp. 149ff). ↩︎