With this verse James begins to explain that hearing without doing is a self-deception. This may be considered one of the major themes of the letter. The thought is strikingly similar to that of Rom 2.13, where both “hearers” and “doers” appear.

According to James the word demands response by action. His command is But be doers of the word. The particle translated But is often used by James to introduce an imperative (for example, 1.6, 22; 5.12) and to serve as a transition between thoughts without having an adversative force. For this reason many translations have left the particle untranslated and instead have chosen to begin a new paragraph to mark the transition (so Good News Translation, La Sainte Bible: Nouvelle version Segond révisée, Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch).

The imperative be, translating a verb that normally means “become,” is in the present tense and therefore has the force of “continue to be,” or even more strongly, “make sure that you continue to be.”

The expression doers of the word is apparently a Hebrew idiom that if rendered literally would mean “a word maker,” namely a writer or orator. This, however, is not the intended meaning. Paul has a similar usage in Rom 2.13, where he uses “a law maker” to mean someone who observes and obeys law. It is obvious then that doers of the word here means those who put the word into practice (compare Good News Translation), who “obey the message” (Goodspeed), “who live by the word” (Knox), and who “act on the message” (Revised English Bible).

James goes on to caution his readers not to remain hearers only. The word hearers is used in the New Testament only in this context and in Rom 2.13. It suggests hearing the public reading of Scriptures, but in the present context it obviously refers to hearing the gospel message. The author is emphasizing that merely hearing, or even knowing, the message is not enough. What really counts is to practice what you hear and know, that is, to live out the gospel message, transforming it into action. Therefore to think that hearing is enough is deceiving yourself. To deceive means, literally, to reason beside the point and therefore to misjudge, to deceive by false reasoning (see La Sainte Bible: Nouvelle version Segond révisée) or to fool yourself (so Living Bible).

Grammatically deceiving yourselves is a phrase that can modify both “doers” and “hearers,” assuming that they refer to the same group of people; or it can be taken as referring only to the “hearers,” if they are two separate groups. In the first case the reflexive pronoun should be yourselves, “you” (the readers) being the subject of the imperative be. In the second case, taking the phrase to be modifying only the hearers, the pronoun should be changed to “themselves”; for example, “who deceive themselves” (New Revised Standard Version). Most translations take it to be the first.

The exhortation has two sides, one positive, be …, and the other negative, not …. In translation we can begin with the positive first, as Revised Standard Version, New Revised Standard Version, Revised English Bible, Contemporary English Version, and others have done. However, in some languages it may be more appropriate, and indeed more forceful, to begin with the negative, such as Translator’s New Testament, Good News Translation, Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch, and others have done.

Alternative translation models for this verse may be:
• You must obey [or, follow] God’s message and not just listen to it. If you only listen, it is the same as lying to yourself.
• Don’t just listen to God’s message, but obey it. Otherwise you simply deceive yourself.

Quoted with permission from Loh, I-Jin and Hatton, Howard A. A Handbook on The Letter from James. (UBS Handbook Series). New York: UBS, 1997. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .