James goes on to give his readers a series of practical exhortations, using ten imperatives in the next four verses. It begins with a call to submit to God, serving as the theme of the exhortation, and ends with a command to humble themselves before the Lord. Between these two commands there are three couplets, that is, pairs of parallel clauses or sentences. Basically the two clauses of the first couplet are opposite in meaning, while in the second and third couplets the two lines have similar meaning.
Submit yourselves therefore to God: the most visible sign of humility is the willingness to submit to others. Hence this call. A person can submit to others only if he or she recognizes and accepts that the others are better, worthier, and greater. To Submit is therefore to be subordinate to, to be obedient to, and to put yourself under the authority of someone, in this case God. To submit to God is to be absolutely obedient to God’s will. With this in mind we may express the first sentence as “So then, you must be completely obedient to God,” or even “Therefore you must do all that God wants you to do.”
Having stated the theme, James goes on to give a twofold saying in the form of a prohibition and a promise: Resist the devil and he will flee from you. The verb translated Resist is used in Eph 6.13, where the readers are called to “withstand” the forces of evil. It means to “stand up to” (so Translator’s New Testament, Revised English Bible) or “take a stand against” (Barclay). The word devil (the Greek means “slanderer”) is used in the Septuagint to translate the Hebrew word from which comes the word “Satan”—the adversary, slanderer, and accuser. The two words are used as identical in Rev 20.2. The devil is the source of temptation and evil, and his job is to separate people from God.
In cultures where Christianity has only arrived recently, a suitable term for Satan or the Devil may have not yet been agreed upon by the Christian community. In this case translators should carefully select, in consultation with the churches, a term that adequately translates the biblical idea of “Devil” or “Satan.” In many cultures people often recognize an evil supernatural spirit being who is active in the universe. The term used for this being may be a good translation of the devil if it refers to a spirit of demonic origin. In other cultures, however, people talk about the “chief” or “head” of the evil or bad spirits. The title for this bad spirit can almost certainly be used for the devil in the present context. However, if a suitable term cannot be found, then the name Satan may be used. If a community chooses to use the name Satan here, it will be helpful to include an item in the glossary explaining who Satan is. Other ways to express the clause Resist the devil may be “do not give in to the devil,” “do not do as the devil suggests,” “refuse to listen to the devil,” or even “fight back against the devil.”
The command is followed by a promise. The consequence of standing up to the devil is that he will flee from you. The devil can be resisted (Eph 6.13; 1 Peter 5.8-9). What James says here is this: If you fully accept the authority of God and are obedient to him, you can overcome the devil’s power; then he will “turn and run” (Revised English Bible), or “run away from you” (Barclay, Good News Translation). In certain languages it will be helpful to show the conditional relationship between the two sentences here and say, for example, “If you do not give in to the devil, he will run away from you.”
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 .