But you have dishonored the poor man: James goes on to accuse his readers, pointing out that their action of showing partiality to the rich is in conflict with the purpose of God, who chooses the poor as his special concern. He goes on to say that it is an irony that the rich are actually the ones who exploit them.

But you is a strong contrast. The particle rendered as But indicates that what the readers are doing is in contrast to God’s attitude. The pronoun you in Greek is in emphatic position, in contrast to God; God chose the poor, but you, the Christians, the dear brothers and sisters (verse 5), have dishonored him. In order to bring out the emphatic force of you in the original, we may render But you in English as “You, on the other hand” (New Jerusalem Bible).

The verb dishonored has the sense of an outward expression of contempt, of treating someone with disrespect. It is rendered in various ways; for example, “ye have despised” (King James Version), “you have humiliated” (Translator’s New Testament, Revised English Bible), “you have insulted” (New English Bible, New International Version). In cultures where the concept of “face” is important, we may express dishonored as “you have made the poor lose face,” or “you have taken away the face of the poor.” The aorist tense in Greek and the reference to the poor here have convinced some scholars that the author is referring to the incident mentioned in verses 2-4 rather than speaking in general terms. In this case the force is best brought out in English as a perfect, as a number of translations have done. However, it is more likely that James is referring to the general action or inclination of the Christians in showing partiality. If this is so, it is best to use the present tense in English; for example, “but you dishonor the poor” (Good News Translation; so also Barclay), “but you humiliate the poor” (Goodspeed), “and you insult the poor” (Moffatt), “you mistreat the poor” (Contemporary English Version), “you make the poor lose face” and so on.

James goes on to list three charges against the rich expressed in two rhetorical questions. First, literally “Is it not the rich who oppress you, and they who drag you into court?” Most translations, for stylistic reasons, have split this sentence into two; for example, “Is it not the rich who oppress you? Is it not they who drag you into court?” (New Revised Standard Version). The verb oppress is often used in the Septuagint to describe the rich and powerful exploiting the poor (Amos 4.1), the foreigners, widows, and orphans (Ezek 22.7, 29). In the New Testament the underlying Greek word is used only here and in Acts 10.38, where it refers to the oppression by the devil. The verb means literally “to exercise power over,” or in a bad sense “to lord it over” (so Moffatt and New Jerusalem Bible), suggesting an abuse of power. Barclay‘s rendering of the first charge is graphic and interesting: “the rich treat you as tyrants treat their slaves.” Contemporary English Version translates “But isn’t it the rich who boss you around…?” Other ways to express the phrase oppress you are “treat you badly,” “be cruel to you,” or “show you no mercy.” In view of its social and economic sense in this context, it can also be rendered as “the rich are exactly the kind of people who cheat and oppress you!” (Today’s Chinese Version). The verb oppress, as well as the verb drag, is in the present tense, giving the sense of habitual action. Phillips tries to bring this out by rendering the sentence as “Isn’t it the rich who are always trying to rule your lives…?”

The second charge is that they, that is, the very same rich people, are the ones who drag you into court. It is very likely that this means the rich are applying legal pressures to the poor Christians over such things as wages, debts, rents, and so on, and does not necessarily refer to physical oppression or persecution of the Christians. The verb drag is a strong term. It is used in Acts 21.30 of people dragging Paul out of the Temple. It is often used of hauling someone into court (so New American Bible “haul you off to court”). The phrase may also be rendered as “they are the ones who force you to go before the judges.” In cultures where “chiefs” do the judging, we may say, for example, “they are the ones who illegally take you before the chiefs to judge you.” The court here may be the local synagogue or church court, or even the Jewish sanhedrin. In any case it will not affect the translation if we use the general term “court” without trying to state what kind of court it is.

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 .

For the next two examples, James turns to plants. A fruit tree produces fruit according to its nature, and no tree can bear two different kinds of fruits. The idea is similar to Jesus’ teaching about the good tree producing good fruit (Matt 7.16), but the language is different.

The point is emphasized by repeating the address my brethren. Here again we may wish to render it inclusively as “my brothers and sisters” (New Revised Standard Version) or “my friends” (Revised English Bible). (See also comments at 1.2.)

Fig tree, olives, and grapevine are very common plants in the Middle East. The reference to these fruits does not keep to the precise point made in verses 10 and 11. To be fully logical, James would have to speak of a fruit tree bearing two kinds of fruit. However, it is not necessary for the analogy to be as precise in detail as this. The point James wants to make is clear enough: just as it is out of the question for one fruit tree to produce a different fruit against its nature, in the same way the presence of good and bad speech in one Christian person is inadmissible and self-contradictory. The verb yield may be rendered “produce” (Goodspeed, Barclay, Revised English Bible) or “bear” (Good News Translation, New International Version).

In translation we may break the sentence into two; for example, “Can a fig tree bear olives? Or can a grapevine bear figs?” Again these rhetorical questions, expecting a negative answer, may be rendered as negative statements, as Good News Translation has done. Another way to handle this is to add the answer “Of course not” at the end of the questions, as Translator’s New Testament has done. In cultures where “figs,” “olives,” and “grapes” do not exist and there are no words for these types of fruit, translators may use cultural equivalents; for example, “a mango tree cannot produce bananas; a breadfruit tree cannot produce custard apples.” The point here is that a tree produces only its own kind of fruit.

James closes this section by going back to the contrast of two different kinds of water. There are a couple of textual variants in the last sentence No more can salt water yield fresh. Some manuscripts add “so” or “similarly” before the negative in order to harmonize and to enhance the comparison. But this adverb is absent from important manuscripts and so represents a later attempt to smooth out the connection. A second problem is seen in the King James Version rendering “so can no fountain both yield salt water and fresh,” where the words “so,” “no fountain both,” and “and” represent a different Greek text than that translated by Revised Standard Version and Good News Translation. Obviously the word “fountain” is added after “salty” to avoid the strange and difficult notion that salty water can produce fresh. The most reliable text, adopted by Revised Standard Version and most modern translations, is perfectly intelligible though a bit awkward. The use of the word salt here, instead of “bitter” in verse 11, probably has no significance; it is simply a matter of stylistic variation. The salt water may be taken to be a salt water spring, thus the rendering “salty spring” (Good News Translation, Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch; similar also Goodspeed). The Contemporary English Version rendering provides a good alternative translation model: “Does fresh water come from a well full of salt water?” This translation seems to take account of the fact that in most places known by human beings springs normally don’t produce salt water.

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 .

This verse contains a third plea for patience, using the example of the prophets. The indication that this is a third plea is seen in the use of the address brethren, meaning fellow believers, for the third time in the paragraph. The prophets are used as an example of suffering and patience. “Prophets” are primarily not people who predict the future, as the rendering in some languages suggests. They are basically spokesmen for God and interpreters of God’s will, and the term is often expressed as “persons who speak [or, proclaim] God’s message.” Here the term refers to the Old Testament prophets. Not only did they often fail to gain a hearing for their message (Isa 6.9-10), they were also frequently the targets of persecution (Jer 20.8; Matt 5.12). A Handbook on the Gospel of Mark, page 7, provides a list of helpful examples on the translation of “prophet” from a number of languages; for example, “one who speaks for God,” “one who speaks the voice of God,” “God’s sent-word person,” and others. The word example is used of Jesus washing his disciples’ feet (John 13.15) and of Jesus’ suffering (1 Peter 2.21). In some languages it may be desirable to use a word like “model” or “pattern” for example, as Revised English Bible has done. And in certain languages this clause may be translated as “you must act as they did” or “you must behave as they did.”

The word suffering in suffering and patience is used only here in the New Testament. It basically means “hardship” (so New American Bible) suffered at the hand of others and therefore may be rendered as “ill-treatment” (New English Bible/ Revised English Bible) or “adversity” (so R.P. Martin). The pair of nouns can be taken as a hendiadys, that is, two terms expressing one idea, and may be rendered in a single phrase such as “patient endurance under suffering” (Good News Translation), “patience under ill-treatment” (Revised English Bible), or “suffering patiently endured” (Goodspeed).

The prophets are people who spoke in the name of the Lord. Here the Lord refers to God. By making this statement James seems interested in conveying the thought that these spokesmen for God were subject to suffering because of their service to him, not because of their wrongdoing. And despite their suffering the prophets remained patient. To speak in the name of the Lord means to speak as a representative of the one who sent them, indicating that their messages bear the authority of God (compare Contemporary English Version “spoke for the Lord”). In languages where prophets will be expressed as “people who proclaim God’s message,” we may render the clause the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord as “those people who proclaimed the Lord’s message,” it being understood that they spoke in his name.

In translating this verse it may be desirable to structure the sentence somewhat differently. In some languages we may have to take the prophets as the primary focus, and so they are best identified at the beginning of the sentence; for example:
• My brothers and sisters, remember the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord. Take them as examples of patient endurance under suffering.
• My fellow believers, the prophets proclaimed the message on behalf of the Lord. Take them as examples of people who endured suffering patiently.
• My fellow believers, do you remember those people who proclaimed God’s message long ago? They were patient even when they had to suffer. You should be patient like this too.

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 .