This wisdom is not such as comes down from above: the Greek may be translated either as “This wisdom is not that which comes down from above” (New American Standard Bible), or “This is not the wisdom which comes down from above” (Barclay). In order to make it clear that this refers back to the kind of wisdom described in verses 13-14, it is possible to render This wisdom as “Such wisdom” (Goodspeed, Good News Translation, Revised English Bible). As already mentioned in 1.5, 17, the wisdom that comes down from above is from heaven, namely from God. What James wants to say here is that any wisdom that results in envy and rivalry has nothing to do with God.

Using a strong but as a contrast, James goes on to use three adjectives to describe the kind of wisdom that is not from God. The three adjectives are arranged in the form of a crescendo, a gradual increase in strength to a climax, from earthly to unspiritual to devilish.

First, the claim to have true wisdom without consistent lifestyle is earthly. The word earthly is the opposite of heavenly. This word may have a neutral meaning, but it is often used in a negative sense to refer to something as weak, temporary, and inferior. In Phil 3.18-19 Paul uses the same adjective to describe the enemies of the cross of Christ, those “going to end up in hell,” as the ones who “think only of things that belong to this world” (Good News Translation). The earthly person, then, is someone who thinks and does things with earth-bound and inferior motives. In some languages this may have to be rendered as “People who have this wisdom are only concerned with things in the world” or “This is the kind of wisdom that people in the world have.”

Secondly, such wisdom is also unspiritual. This adjective derives from the word usually translated as “soul,” and is used in contrast to the word “spiritual” in 1 Cor 2.14. This is possibly the reason why a number of translators have rendered it as “unspiritual.” The difficulty in bringing out the meaning of the word is reflected in the variety of English translations; for example, “animal” (Goodspeed, Traduction œcuménique de la Bible), “carnal” (La Sainte Bible: Nouvelle version Segond révisée), “sensual” (King James Version), “sensuous” (Moffatt), “natural” (New American Standard Bible), “human” (Luther 1984, New Jerusalem Bible), “lowly” (Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch), “this worldly” (Parola Del Signore: La Bibbia in Lingua Corrente, Japanese New Interconfessional Translation), “selfish” (Contemporary English Version). It is obvious that the word has a large area of meaning, and that each of the above renderings covers just part of the total range of meaning of the original. In any case it refers to something of sinful human origin, something related to the natural life that human beings and animals share, something worldly and devoid of the Spirit. In some languages this may be translated as “It does not come from God’s Spirit” or “This is not the kind of wisdom that God’s Spirit causes us to have.”

Finally, such wisdom is devilish or “demonic” (Good News Translation; so also Revised English Bible), “from the devil himself” (Contemporary English Version). Devilish is the opposite of divine. This adjective is used only here in the New Testament. It may be taken to mean “demon-like” (Goodspeed), stressing that the behavior and wisdom of those described in verse 13 is similar to that of a demon. It may also be taken in the sense of “demon-inspired” (so Barclay), emphasizing that the so-called wisdom of those who are selfish and ambitious is demonic in origin, not from God. In many languages it will be helpful to render this as “It comes from the Devil himself” or “It is the Devil who gives it.”

An alternative translation model for this verse may be:
• God does not give wisdom like this to people. On the contrary it is the kind of wisdom that people in the world have. God’s Spirit does not give it. Rather it comes from the Devil himself.

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 .