We might puzzle over James’s
image of corroded, or rusted, silver or gold. Was he unaware that neither
silver nor gold rusts (hence, their later inclusion among the so-called noble gases)?
Does he refer to rusting silver and gold in order to hint that these fortunes
are fake? More likely, James’s images are not to be read with an eye on
chemical properties. After all, even if these metals were subject to rust, they
still would not be able to “eat your flesh like fire” (5:3). James seems less
concerned with metallurgy and more interested in highlighting the fleeting
nature of wealth, wealth’s vulnerability to ruin, and the capacity of wealth to
disfigure and destroy those who accumulate it.
Strong images thus bolster
James’s message, but so do the ways his writing works with the Jesus tradition
and with language reminiscent of Israel’s Scriptures. In the Sermon on the
Plain, Jesus matches his beatitudes point for point with corresponding woes: “How
terrible for you who are rich. . . .How terrible for you who have plenty now. .
. . How terrible for you who laugh now, because you will mourn and weep” (Luke
6:24-25 CEB). James’s pronouncements are similar, both with regard to the
alarming fate of the wealth and wealthy and with his appeal to “weep and wail.”
In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus warns against storing up “treasures on earth,
where moth and rust consume, . . . but store up for yourselves treasures in
heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes.” He then adds, “For where you treasure
is, there your heart will be also” (Matt 6:19-20 NRSV; cf. Luke 12:21, 33-34).
Parallels with James’s message are easy to discern, suggesting his indebtedness
to Jesus’s teaching, now imaginatively appropriated for this new context. With these
words from the Jesus tradition in the background, note how James, with biting irony,
introduces his belief that the affluent have not heeded Jesus’s message. They have
accumulated treasure, yes, but of the wrong sort. Their assets are earthbound, worldly.
And so they are moth-eaten and ruined. Rather than outfitting them for life
with God, their overflowing stockpile invites God’s end-time judgment. If the moneyed
ranks were to hear James well, they would recognize the calamity coming on them
and respond with weeping and wailing. After all, Jesus and, before him, Israel’s
Scriptures associate howling in grief and pain with present and anticipated
disaster—as in Isa 13:6: “Wail, for the day of the Lord is near and a
destruction will come from God!” (NETS). Jesus’ words from the Sermon on the
Mount provide little hope for such perception, however, since the hearts of the
wealthy are wedded to a corruptible—indeed, a corrupt and corrupting—treasure. (Joel
B. Green, James [The New Testament Library; Louisville, Ky.: Westminster
John Knox Press, 2025], 150-51)
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