James 5:3
New International Version
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.

New Living Translation
Your gold and silver are corroded. The very wealth you were counting on will eat away your flesh like fire. This corroded treasure you have hoarded will testify against you on the day of judgment.

English Standard Version
Your gold and silver have corroded, and their corrosion will be evidence against you and will eat your flesh like fire. You have laid up treasure in the last days.

Berean Standard Bible
Your gold and silver are corroded. Their corrosion will testify against you and consume your flesh like fire. You have hoarded treasure in the last days.

Berean Literal Bible
Your gold and silver have corroded, and their rust will be for a testimony against you and will eat your flesh like fire. You have treasured up in the last days.

King James Bible
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.

New King James Version
Your gold and silver are corroded, and their corrosion will be a witness against you and will eat your flesh like fire. You have heaped up treasure in the last days.

New American Standard Bible
Your gold and your silver have corroded, and their corrosion will serve as a testimony against you and will consume your flesh like fire. It is in the last days that you have stored up your treasure!

NASB 1995
Your gold and your silver have rusted; and their rust will be a witness against you and will consume your flesh like fire. It is in the last days that you have stored up your treasure!

NASB 1977
Your gold and your silver have rusted; and their rust will be a witness against you and will consume your flesh like fire. It is in the last days that you have stored up your treasure!

Legacy Standard Bible
Your gold and your silver have rusted, and their corrosion will be a witness against you and will consume your flesh like fire. You have stored up such treasure in the last days!

Amplified Bible
Your gold and silver are corroded, and their corrosion will be a witness against you and will consume your flesh like fire. You have stored up your treasure in the last days [when it will do you no good].

Christian Standard Bible
Your gold and silver are corroded, and their corrosion will be a witness against you and will eat your flesh like fire. You have stored up treasure in the last days.

Holman Christian Standard Bible
Your silver and gold are corroded, and their corrosion will be a witness against you and will eat your flesh like fire. You stored up treasure in the last days!

American Standard Version
Your gold and your silver are rusted; and their rust shall be for a testimony against you, and shall eat your flesh as fire. Ye have laid up your treasure in the last days.

Aramaic Bible in Plain English
Your gold and your silver has corroded itself and their corrosion will be for a witness against you and will consume your flesh. You have gathered fire to yourselves for the last days.

Contemporary English Version
Your money has rusted, and the rust will be evidence against you, as it burns your body like fire. Yet you keep on storing up wealth in these last days.

Douay-Rheims Bible
Your gold and silver is cankered: and the rust of them shall be for a testimony against you, and shall eat your flesh like fire. You have stored up to yourselves wrath against the last days.

English Revised Version
Your gold and your silver are rusted; and their rust shall be for a testimony against you, and shall eat your flesh as fire. Ye have laid up your treasure in the last days.

GOD'S WORD® Translation
Your gold and silver are corroded, and their corrosion will be used as evidence against you. Like fire, it will destroy your body. You have stored up riches in these last days.

Good News Translation
Your gold and silver are covered with rust, and this rust will be a witness against you and will eat up your flesh like fire. You have piled up riches in these last days.

International Standard Version
your gold and silver are corroded, and their corrosion will be used as evidence against you and will eat your flesh like fire. You have stored up treasures in these last days.

Literal Standard Version
your gold and silver have rotted, and the rust of them will be to you for a testimony, and will eat your flesh as fire. You have stored up treasure in the last days!

Majority Standard Bible
Your gold and silver are corroded. Their corrosion will testify against you and consume your flesh like fire. You have hoarded treasure in the last days.

New American Bible
your gold and silver have corroded, and that corrosion will be a testimony against you; it will devour your flesh like a fire. You have stored up treasure for the last days.

NET Bible
Your gold and silver have rusted and their rust will be a witness against you. It will consume your flesh like fire. It is in the last days that you have hoarded treasure!

New Revised Standard Version
Your gold and silver have rusted, and their rust will be evidence against you, and it will eat your flesh like fire. You have laid up treasure for the last days.

New Heart English Bible
Your gold and your silver are corroded, and their corrosion will be for a testimony against you, and will eat your flesh like fire. You have laid up your treasure in the last days.

Webster's Bible Translation
Your gold and silver is cankered; and the rust of them shall be a testimony against you, and shall eat your flesh as it were fire. Ye have amassed treasure for the last days.

Weymouth New Testament
your gold and your silver have become covered with rust, and the rust on them will give evidence against you, and will eat your flesh like fire. You have hoarded up wealth in these last days.

World English Bible
Your gold and your silver are corroded, and their corrosion will be for a testimony against you and will eat your flesh like fire. You have laid up your treasure in the last days.

Young's Literal Translation
your gold and silver have rotted, and the rust of them for a testimony shall be to you, and shall eat your flesh as fire. Ye made treasure in the last days!

Additional Translations ...
Audio Bible



Context
Warning to the Rich
2Your riches have rotted and moths have eaten your clothes. 3Your gold and silver are corroded. Their corrosion will testify against you and consume your flesh like fire. You have hoarded treasure in the last days. 4Look, the wages you withheld from the workmen who mowed your fields are crying out against you. The cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of Hosts.…

Cross References
James 5:7
Be patient, then, brothers, until the Lord's coming. See how the farmer awaits the precious fruit of the soil--how patient he is for the fall and spring rains.

James 5:8
You, too, be patient and strengthen your hearts, because the Lord's coming is near.


Treasury of Scripture

Your gold and silver is corroded; and the rust of them shall be a witness against you, and shall eat your flesh as it were fire. You have heaped treasure together for the last days.

cankered.

2 Timothy 2:17
And their word will eat as doth a canker: of whom is Hymenaeus and Philetus;

a witness.

Genesis 31:48,52
And Laban said, This heap is a witness between me and thee this day. Therefore was the name of it called Galeed; …

Joshua 24:27
And Joshua said unto all the people, Behold, this stone shall be a witness unto us; for it hath heard all the words of the LORD which he spake unto us: it shall be therefore a witness unto you, lest ye deny your God.

Job 16:8
And thou hast filled me with wrinkles, which is a witness against me: and my leanness rising up in me beareth witness to my face.

and shall.

Jeremiah 19:9
And I will cause them to eat the flesh of their sons and the flesh of their daughters, and they shall eat every one the flesh of his friend in the siege and straitness, wherewith their enemies, and they that seek their lives, shall straiten them.

Micah 3:3
Who also eat the flesh of my people, and flay their skin from off them; and they break their bones, and chop them in pieces, as for the pot, and as flesh within the caldron.

Revelation 17:16
And the ten horns which thou sawest upon the beast, these shall hate the whore, and shall make her desolate and naked, and shall eat her flesh, and burn her with fire.

Ye have.

Deuteronomy 32:33,34
Their wine is the poison of dragons, and the cruel venom of asps…

Job 14:16,17
For now thou numberest my steps: dost thou not watch over my sin? …

Romans 2:5
But after thy hardness and impenitent heart treasurest up unto thyself wrath against the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God;

the last.

Genesis 49:1
And Jacob called unto his sons, and said, Gather yourselves together, that I may tell you that which shall befall you in the last days.

Isaiah 2:2
And it shall come to pass in the last days, that the mountain of the LORD'S house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations shall flow unto it.

Micah 4:1
But in the last days it shall come to pass, that the mountain of the house of the LORD shall be established in the top of the mountains, and it shall be exalted above the hills; and people shall flow unto it.

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Amassed Burning Canker Consume Covered Eat Eaten Evidence Fire Flesh Gold Heaped Hoarded Laid Rotted Rust Silver Store Stored Testify Testimony Together Treasure Waste Wasted Wealth Witness
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Amassed Burning Canker Consume Covered Eat Eaten Evidence Fire Flesh Gold Heaped Hoarded Laid Rotted Rust Silver Store Stored Testify Testimony Together Treasure Waste Wasted Wealth Witness
James 5
1. Rich oppressors are to fear God's vengeance.
7. We ought to be patient in afflictions, after the example of the prophets, and Job;
12. to forbear swearing;
13. to pray in adversity, to sing in prosperity;
14. to acknowledge mutually our several faults, to pray one for another;
19. and to correct a straying brother.














(3) Your gold and silver . . .--In like manner, the gold and silver are said to be "cankered," or eaten up with rust. The precious metals themselves do not corrode, but the base alloy does, which has been mixed with them for worldly use and device. The rust of them shall be a witness to you: not merely against, but convincing yourselves in the day of judgment; and, moreover, a sign of the fire which shall consume you. So will the wages of the traitor, and the harlot, the spoil of the thief and oppressor, burn the hands which have clutched them; the memories of the wrong shiver through each guilty soul, like the liquid fires which Muhammedans say torture the veins of the damned in the halls of Eblis.

Ye have heaped . . .--Read, Ye heaped up treasures in the last days:--the days of grace, given you for repentance, like the years when "the long-suffering of God waited in the days of Noah" (Genesis 6:3; 1Peter 3:20), or the time during which God bore with Canaan, "till the iniquity of the Amorite" was "full" (Genesis 15:16).

Some expositors have seen in this verse an instance of James's belief that he was "living in the last days of the world's history;" and compared his delusion with that of Paul and John (1Thessalonians 4:15, and 1John 2:18). But there was no mistake on the part of the inspired. writers; freedom from error in their Sacred office must be vindicated, or who shall sever the false gospel from the true? The simple explanation is an old one--the potential nearness of Christ, as it is called. In many ways He has been ever near each individual, as by affliction, or death, or judgment; but His actual return was probably nearer in the first ages of faith than in the brutality of the tenth century, or the splendid atheism of the fifteenth, or the intellectual pride of the nineteenth. His advent is helped or hindered by the state of Christendom itself: "one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day" (2Peter 3:8), there is: neither past nor future in His sight; only the presence of His own determination: and nought retards Christ's Second Coming so much as the false and feeble Christianity which prays "Thy kingdom come" in frequent words, but waits not as the handmaid of her Lord, with "loins girded about and lights burning" (Luke 12:35), "until the day dawn, and the day star arise" (2Peter 1:19). . . .

Verse 3. - With this and the preceding verse contrast our Lord's words of treasure laid up in heaven, "where moth and rust do not corrupt" (Matthew 6:19). Cankered (κατίωται); better, rusted. Only here in the New Testament; never in the LXX. except Ecclus. 12:11. The rust of them. Ἰός: used here for "rust" as in the LXX. in Ezekiel's parable of the boiling pot (Ezekiel 24:6, etc.) - a passage which (according to one interpretation) may have suggested the following clause, "and shall eat your flesh," etc. (see vers. 9-12). Shall he a witness against you (εἰς μαρτύριον ὑμῖν). The rendering of the A.V. is quite defensible (see Winer, p. 265), but it is equally possible to take the words as the R.V. margin," for a testimony unto you." "The rust of them," says Alford, "is a token of what shall happen to yourselves; in the consuming of your wealth you see depicted your own." Two interpretations of the latter part of the verse are possible, depending on the punctuation adopted.

(1) As the A.V. and R.V., putting the stop after πῦρ: "Their rust... shall eat your flesh as fire. Ye have laid up your treasure in the last days." The "fire," if this rendering be adopted, may be explained from Ezekiel 24:9, etc.

(2) Putting the stop after ὑμῶν and before ὡς πῦρ: "Their rust... shall eat your flesh. Ye have heaped up as it were fire in the last days." This has the support of the Syriac ("Ye have gathered fire for you for the last days"), and is adopted by Drs. Westcott and Herr. The "fire" will, of course, be the fire of judgment; and the expression, ὡς πῦρ ἐθησαυρίσατε, may easily have been suggested by Proverbs 16:27, Ἀνὴρ ἄφρων ὀρύσσει ἑαυτῷ κακά ἐπὶ δὲ τῶν ἑαυτοῦ χειλέων θησαυρίζει πῦρ. The whole form of expression also reminds us of St. Paul's "treasurest up for thyself wrath in the day of wrath" (Romans 2:5), to which it is exactly parallel, the "wrath in the day of wrath" there answering to the "fire in the last days" here. (The rendering of the Vulgate is evidently influenced by this parallel, as it has thesaurizastis tram.) For the last days; rather, in the last days (ἐν ἐσχάταις ἡμέραις); cf. 2 Timothy 3:1. If the words are connected with πῦρ as suggested above, there is no difficulty in them. If the punctuation of the A.V. be retained, we must suppose that the writer is speaking from the point of view of the last day of all. "When the end came it found them heaping up treasures which they could never use" (Dean Scott). But the other view, though not so generally adopted, seems fat' preferable.

Parallel Commentaries ...


Greek
Your
ὑμῶν (hymōn)
Personal / Possessive Pronoun - Genitive 2nd Person Plural
Strong's 4771: You. The person pronoun of the second person singular; thou.

gold
χρυσὸς (chrysos)
Noun - Nominative Masculine Singular
Strong's 5557: Perhaps from the base of chraomai; gold; by extension, a golden article, as an ornament or coin.

and
καὶ (kai)
Conjunction
Strong's 2532: And, even, also, namely.

silver
ἄργυρος (argyros)
Noun - Nominative Masculine Singular
Strong's 696: Silver as a metal. From argos; silver.

are corroded.
κατίωται (katiōtai)
Verb - Perfect Indicative Middle or Passive - 3rd Person Singular
Strong's 2728: To rust; pass: To be rusted, tarnished. From kata and a derivative of ios; to rust down, i.e. Corrode.

Their
αὐτῶν (autōn)
Personal / Possessive Pronoun - Genitive Masculine 3rd Person Plural
Strong's 846: He, she, it, they, them, same. From the particle au; the reflexive pronoun self, used of the third person, and of the other persons.

corrosion
ἰὸς (ios)
Noun - Nominative Masculine Singular
Strong's 2447: Poison, rust; an arrow. Perhaps from eimi or hiemi; rust; also venom.

will
ἔσται (estai)
Verb - Future Indicative Middle - 3rd Person Singular
Strong's 1510: I am, exist. The first person singular present indicative; a prolonged form of a primary and defective verb; I exist.

testify
μαρτύριον (martyrion)
Noun - Accusative Neuter Singular
Strong's 3142: Neuter of a presumed derivative of martus; something evidential, i.e. evidence given or, the Decalogue.

against you
ὑμῖν (hymin)
Personal / Possessive Pronoun - Dative 2nd Person Plural
Strong's 4771: You. The person pronoun of the second person singular; thou.

and
καὶ (kai)
Conjunction
Strong's 2532: And, even, also, namely.

consume
φάγεται (phagetai)
Verb - Future Indicative Middle - 3rd Person Singular
Strong's 5315: A primary verb; to eat.

your
ὑμῶν (hymōn)
Personal / Possessive Pronoun - Genitive 2nd Person Plural
Strong's 4771: You. The person pronoun of the second person singular; thou.

flesh
σάρκας (sarkas)
Noun - Accusative Feminine Plural
Strong's 4561: Flesh, body, human nature, materiality; kindred.

like
ὡς (hōs)
Adverb
Strong's 5613: Probably adverb of comparative from hos; which how, i.e. In that manner.

fire.
πῦρ (pyr)
Noun - Nominative Neuter Singular
Strong's 4442: Fire; the heat of the sun, lightning; fig: strife, trials; the eternal fire. A primary word; 'fire'.

You have hoarded treasure
Ἐθησαυρίσατε (Ethēsaurisate)
Verb - Aorist Indicative Active - 2nd Person Plural
Strong's 2343: To store up, treasure up, save, lay up. From thesauros; to amass or reserve.

in
ἐν (en)
Preposition
Strong's 1722: In, on, among. A primary preposition denoting position, and instrumentality, i.e. A relation of rest; 'in, ' at, on, by, etc.

[the] last
ἐσχάταις (eschatais)
Adjective - Dative Feminine Plural
Strong's 2078: Last, at the last, finally, till the end. A superlative probably from echo; farthest, final.

days.
ἡμέραις (hēmerais)
Noun - Dative Feminine Plural
Strong's 2250: A day, the period from sunrise to sunset.


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NT Letters: James 5:3 Your gold and your silver are corroded (Ja Jas. Jam)
James 5:2
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