Draw near to God and he will draw near to you: this statement may be considered as opposite to the previous one. Here again we have command and a promise. The other side of the coin of taking a stand against the devil is drawing near to God. To Draw near to God does not mean simply to come close to God physically, as “come near to God” (Good News Translation, New International Version) or “come close to God” (Revised English Bible) may suggest to some people. It is to meet and maintain a close relationship with God, and therefore the clause may be rendered “Come to meet God” (Barclay). In some languages it will be necessary to express Draw near in a way similar to the following: “Put your trust in God,” or “Rely completely on God.” Then the following statement, and he will draw near to you, may be rendered something like “and he will come and stay close to you” or “… will remain with you.” In certain languages translators will find it better style to show the conditional relationship between these two clauses and say, for example, “If you draw near to God, he will draw near to you.”

Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you men of double mind: in meeting with God, a person has to come prepared. Hence this command. Here we see what is called synonymous parallelism; that is, the two statements are more or less a poetic way of saying the same thing in different words. They represent two expressions of one action. The language James uses is very blunt. In Greek the two commands are without any articles or possessive pronouns, literally “Cleanse hands, sinners, and purify hearts, double-minded.” Here we are reminded of a saying in Psa 24.3-4; to the question “Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord?” the Psalmist answers, “Those who have clean hands and pure hearts…” (New Revised Standard Version).

Cleanse your hands refers to an outward purification in deeds. The washing of hands was originally a purely external custom or rite. The priests in Israel had to wash their hands and feet before they were allowed to perform any ceremonial duties (Exo 30.20). Ceremonial washing of hands was also practiced at the time of Jesus by zealous Jews like the Pharisees (Mark 7.3-4). These actions were often used figuratively for the removal of moral defilement. And this is obviously the sense intended here by James. When he calls for his readers to wash their hands, he wants them to do right deeds. The connection of “hands” and “deeds” is seen in (Barclay) rendering “cleanse your hands from evil deeds.” In some languages the idea of “life” will be more appropriate; for example, “Make your lives pure, you sinners” or “Clean up your lives, you sinners” (Contemporary English Version).

Purify your hearts emphasizes purification of thoughts or inner attitudes. For the meaning of hearts see the discussion in 1.26 and 3.14. Purity of heart is an important teaching throughout the Bible. Jesus also pronounced true happiness to those pure in heart, for “they will see God” (Matt 5.8, TEV). To have a pure heart, a person must purify his or her inner desires and motives and must be totally and single-mindedly committed to God.

The bluntness of James is also seen in his using strong language, calling his readers sinners and men of double mind. He is addressing Christians—but Christians are sinners too; they also need to repent. Since the two statements are similar in meaning, we should consider these two expressions as referring to the same people; that is “men of double mind” are “sinners.” The author does not intend to refer to two different classes of Christians. The sinners here are Christians who fail to fulfill the law of Christ. Men of double mind translates the Greek word that means literally “two-souled.” It is a word already used in 1.8 (see comments there), where it describes the person whose faith is unstable. In this context the “double-souled” persons are considered sinners, as they are the kind of people who have conflicting allegiances; they seek to be friends of both the world and God (4.4). These people are “hypocrites” (Good News Translation); they are those “whose motives are mixed” (Revised English Bible) and “whose loyalty is divided” (Phillips; similarly Barclay). The masculine men is not meant to be exclusive, and so it is desirable to render it inclusively as “you double-minded” (New Revised Standard Version) or “you people who don’t make up your minds” (similarly Contemporary English Version). If a translator feels that retaining the two terms in two separate sentences gives the impression that two classes of people are being addressed, it is possible to say, for example, “So you hypocritical sinners must wash your hands of evil deeds and purify your hearts.”

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 .