James has just told the assembly to let endurance have its complete work, so that they may be τέλειοι καὶ ὁλόκληροι, ἐν μηδενὶ λειπόμενοι — “lacking in nothing” (v. 4). Verse 5 then does something unexpected: instead of moving to a new topic, it catches the last word of v. 4 and turns it into a case. If anyone of you is in fact lacking — and specifically lacking the one thing needed to read a trial rightly — here is what to do.

Three things carry the verse:

1. The catchword λείπεται. This is not a fresh subject. James has just said “lacking in nothing”; now he concedes the deficiency and prescribes for it. Wisdom is not a bonus attached to trials but the faculty by which trials are navigated (cf. 1:2-4, and the contrast with earthly σοφία at 3:13-18).
2. A characterization of God, not a technique of prayer. The imperative is one word (αἰτείτω). Everything else is a description of the One asked: he gives, he gives to all, he gives ἁπλῶς, and he does not ὀνειδίζω. The verse’s weight falls on divine character, and the confidence of the closing promise rests entirely there.
3. ἁπλῶς — the crux. A NT hapax whose root (ἁπλοῦς, “single, unfolded”) yields two live senses: without duplicity / single-heartedly and, by a well-attested Hellenistic-Jewish extension, without reserve, generously. The choice is not trivial: one reading sets God’s undivided giving against the divided asker of v. 6 (δίψυχος, “double-souled,” v. 8); the other simply asserts liberality. The rendering here keeps both audible.

The closing καὶ δοθήσεται αὐτῷ is a divine passive future — flat, unhedged, and immediately qualified in v. 6, not by any limit on God’s giving but by a condition on the asking.

Proposed — pending reviewPeter H. Davids, The Epistle of James: A Commentary on the Greek Text, New International Greek Testament Commentary, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1982

εἰ with the present indicative λείπεται is a first-class condition: the protasis is entertained as real for the sake of argument. Per standing corpus policy, ‘since’ is excluded — James chose the conditional form, and the reader must see the gap it leaves open. But neither is this a remote hypothesis: the very next clause issues a command, which presumes the case obtains.

δέ is mildly contrastive rather than adversative. It marks the seam: v. 4 has said lacking in nothing, and v. 5 immediately says but if anyone is lacking. Rendering ‘now’ is acceptable; dropping the particle is not (§10).

ὑμῶν is a partitive genitive with τις. The deficiency is located inside the community already addressed as ἀδελφοί μου (v. 2). James is not describing outsiders.

The verb means to be left behind, fall short, be deficient — the state of one for whom something is still wanting. James uses it three times in three verses: λειπόμενοι (v. 4), λείπεται (v. 5), and again at 2:15 (λειπόμενοι of the destitute, lacking daily food). The concordance link is load-bearing, so English must keep one root at all three points: ‘lack / be lacking.’

The form is middle/passive. In Koine the middle of λείπω is the ordinary way of saying ‘be deficient in,’ construed with a genitive of the thing wanting, and no reflexive force should be over-read. But the passive shape is not accidental to the sense: the subject is the one left short, not the one who has failed to acquire. Rendering ‘if any of you needs wisdom’ shifts the verse from a deficiency the person is in to an item on a shopping list.

σοφίας is a genitive of the thing lacked (BDF on verbs of want with the genitive), anarthrous and qualitative: wisdom as such, not a defined body of teaching.

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The base gloss is wisdom, and no alternative serves. But the diachronic question matters (§9): what did James’s readers hear?

Not Greek philosophical σοφία as speculative knowledge. The controlling background is the LXX wisdom literature, where σοφία renders חָכְמָה: practical skill in living rightly before God, given by God and to be asked for. The paradigm is Solomon at 3 Kgdms 3:9-12 — he asks for a heart to discern, and God gives, and gives more besides without reproach. Prov 2:3-6 (“if you call upon wisdom … for the Lord gives wisdom”) and Wis 7:7; 8:21 and 9:4 (Solomon prays and σοφία is given) supply the exact shape of James’s imperative. Sir 1:1-10 has God pouring wisdom out on all his works.

James himself defines the content later: ἡ ἄνωθεν σοφία is pure, peaceable, forbearing (3:17), set against a σοφία that is ἐπίγειος, ψυχική, δαιμονιώδης (3:15). Wisdom in this letter is not information about trials but the capacity to conduct oneself in them — which is why it stands here rather than in a chapter on knowledge.

Do not narrow the rendering to ‘insight,’ ‘discernment,’ or ‘understanding’ (the last belongs to σύνεσις/νοῦς), and do not expand to ‘wisdom to endure the trial,’ which supplies a purpose the Greek withholds.

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Proposed — pending reviewRichard Bauckham, James: Wisdom of James, Disciple of Jesus the Sage, New Testament Readings, London: Routledge, 1999

αἰτέω is the ordinary verb of requesting from someone able to grant — the register of a petition addressed upward. It must stay lexically distinct from the corpus’s other request-verbs, all of which the epistolary literature deploys separately: ἐρωτάω (‘ask,’ already fixed at Phil 4:3), δέομαι (‘beg / entreat,’ from need, fixed at Gal 4:12), παρακαλέω (‘appeal to / urge,’ Phil 4:2), and the noun pair προσευχή / δέησις (Phil 1:4; 4:6). James builds a whole thread on αἰτέω: 1:5, 1:6, then negatively at 4:2-3 (οὐκ αἰτεῖσθε … αἰτεῖτε καὶ οὐ λαμβάνετε). One English root — ‘ask’ — at every occurrence.

αἰτείτω is a third-person present imperative. Two consequences:

• English has no third-person imperative, so a ‘let’ periphrasis is unavoidable, per the policy already fixed at γνωσθήτω (Phil 4:5) and αἰσχυνέσθω / δοξαζέτω (1 Pet 4:16). The third person must not be converted to a second-person exhortation (‘ask God’), since the shift from the plural address of vv. 2-4 to the singular τις is a discourse choice — James individuates the case.
• The present aspect is durative: a standing practice of asking, not one decisive petition. Mark it in the literal and study tiers; do not import ‘keep on asking’ into smooth English.

The object of the asking is left unexpressed. Greek withholds ‘it’ or ‘for wisdom’; English may leave the verb bare, and the closing δοθήσεται supplies the referent without naming it.

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παρά with the genitive marks the source from beside a person — the one at whose side the thing originates and from whose hand it comes. It is to be kept distinct in English from ἀπό (origin), ἐκ (source/derivation), ὑπό (personal agency of a passive), and διά (means), all four of which the corpus already differentiates.

James repeats the preposition three verses later: λήμψεταί τι παρὰ τοῦ κυρίου (v. 7). The repetition frames the paragraph — asking from him, receiving from him — and one English word (‘from’) must serve both, or the frame is invisible.

Rendering ‘of God’ in smooth English (the older idiom) is acceptable and is retained in the reading text because it flows; the literal tier keeps ‘from,’ which displays the genitive.

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The construction is worth slowing over. Greek has παρὰ τοῦ διδόντος θεοῦ πᾶσιν ἁπλῶς καὶ μὴ ὀνειδίζοντος — a single article governing two coordinated present participles, with θεοῦ interposed between the first participle and its complements.

Three observations:

1. One article, two participles. Per standing policy (single article governing coordinated participles, fixed at Phil 3:3), this marks a single composite characterization, not two separate descriptions. God is the-giving-to-all-single-heartedly-and-not-reproaching One. English cannot bind them as tightly; a relative clause with two verbs (‘who gives … and does not reproach’) is the closest available, and the participles must not be converted into finite main clauses, which would make them assertions alongside the imperative rather than the description qualifying it.
2. Present aspect. Both participles are present: characteristic, habitual, timeless. This is not a report of what God did but of what he is like. ‘Who gave’ would be a mistranslation.
3. Word order. θεοῦ stands inside the article-participle unit, between διδόντος and πᾶσιν. The effect in Greek is to lead with the activity and only then name the actor: ‘from the giving — God — to all …’ English cannot reproduce the interruption intelligibly. Per standing hyperbaton policy the literal tier keeps the sequence woodenly and the reading tiers relocate the noun; the displacement is recorded here rather than compensated for with emphasis words.

On the substance: the imperative is one word and the characterization is eleven. The verse’s confidence is not generated by the technique of asking but by the nature of the One asked.

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Dative plural of recipient, anarthrous and unbounded: to all. Per the corpus rule distinguishing anarthrous from articular πᾶς, the anarthrous plural is unrestricted — not the collective, bounded οἱ πάντες (‘they all, the whole group,’ fixed at Phil 2:21).

The scope is not further specified. Read against the LXX background (Sir 1:10, wisdom poured out on all flesh; Ps 144:16 LXX, the Lord opening his hand to every living thing), the natural sense is that no asker is turned away — the giving is not rationed by rank, standing, or prior performance. But James does not say all people without exception receive; he says God is the sort of giver who gives to all, and v. 6 immediately addresses how the asking must be done.

Do not supply a qualifier (‘to all who ask,’ ‘to all his people’). The Greek leaves it bare and the reader must be allowed to feel the breadth.

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The crux of the verse. ἁπλῶς is a NT hapax; the cognate noun ἁπλότης occurs eight times in Paul and the adjective ἁπλοῦς twice in the Gospels (Matt 6:22; Luke 11:34, of the ‘single’ eye).

The root sense is transparent: ἁ- + πλόος, ‘once-folded,’ hence single, simple, unfolded, without duplicity. From this two attested first-century senses branch:

• Singleness / sincerity / absence of double-mindedness. This is the dominant sense of ἁπλότης in the moral vocabulary of Hellenistic Judaism — the Testament of Issachar is built on it — and of ἁπλοῦς in the Matthean eye-saying, whose antonym is πονηρός.
• Liberality, open-handedness, giving without holding back. Securely attested for ἁπλότης in Paul’s collection language (Rom 12:8; 2 Cor 8:2; 9:11, 13), where the sense is unmistakably generosity, and the semantic bridge is obvious: the single-minded giver does not calculate, and so gives freely.

Rendering policy. ‘Generously’ (the commonest modern choice) closes the question and severs the link to δίψυχος. ‘Simply’ is now unusable in modern English (it reads as ‘merely’). ‘Sincerely’ drops the generosity. The compound phrase without reserve is adopted for the reading text because it holds both: what is unreserved is at once undivided and unstinting. single-heartedly is used where the ἁπλ- root and the δίψυχος contrast must be visible. The Latin affluenter (Vulgate) is one reading of the word, not evidence for it (§11).

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Proposed — pending reviewRalph P. Martin, James, Word Biblical Commentary 48, Waco: Word, 1988

ὀνειδίζω is already fixed in the corpus as ‘revile / reproach’ — verbal abuse specifically, insult and taunting, not physical persecution (διώκω) or blasphemy (βλασφημέω). The LXX register is the psalms of the righteous sufferer (Ps 41:11; 68:10 LXX), and Matt 5:11 uses it of the reviling of disciples.

Applied here to God as a negation, the sense is that he does not throw the request back at the asker. Two dimensions are live and both belong to the lexeme:

• Not insulting the asker for asking — no contempt for the neediness that prompts the request.
• Not reproaching afterwards — not casting up the gift later, which is the specific vice Sirach names at 20:14-15 and 41:22 (the fool’s gift, given with reproaches attached; the giver who reproaches after giving). Sir 20:15 is close enough in thought to be the operative background.

English ‘without reproach’ is retained because it holds both, and because it keeps the ὀνειδ- root’s forensic-verbal register. Excluded: ‘without finding fault’ (relocates the reproach into criticism of the person’s conduct), ‘without grumbling’ (that is γογγυσμός, already fixed, and it makes the fault reluctance rather than insult), ‘ungrudgingly’ (belongs to φθόνος vocabulary).

μή is the regular negative with a participle and carries no independent emphasis — the standing corpus rule. Do not add English emphasis words on the strength of it.

The two participles together characterize God by what he does and what he refuses to do. Read against Sirach’s catalogue of bad givers, the effect is pointed: the God addressed here is nothing like the human patron whose gift arrives with strings and a lecture.

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καί here is consecutive after an imperative — the Koine idiom already fixed at Phil 4:7 and Gal 5:16. Render plain ‘and’: this preserves the coordination James wrote while letting the consequential force be heard. ‘Then it will be given’ or ‘so that it will be given’ over-specifies; dropping the connective is excluded (§10).

δοθήσεται is a future passive of δίδωμι — the same lemma as διδόντος four words earlier. The English must keep one root at both points (‘gives … will be given’) so that the promise is visibly the same act as the characterization.

It is a divine passive: the agent is unexpressed and must stay unexpressed. ‘God will give it to him’ supplies what the Greek withholds, and the reticence is not accidental — the giver has just been named, so the passive lets the gift, not the giver, occupy the final position.

The object is likewise unexpressed. English needs a subject, so ‘it’ is supplied; the referent is σοφία, recoverable from the protasis.

αὐτῷ is singular, resuming τις. The promise is made to the individual asker, not to the congregation collectively. Do not pluralize for inclusivity — per §3 the masculine singular here is referentially generic (anyone among you) and the generic force is noted, not neutralized.

On the flatness of the promise: James states it without hedge or condition. The qualification arrives in v. 6, and it is worth noting exactly where it falls — not on God’s willingness but on the asking (αἰτείτω δὲ ἐν πίστει, μηδὲν διακρινόμενος). §6 forbids shading a hard or bold statement toward comfort in either direction; the future indicative stands as written.

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The patristic handling of this verse is consistent on one point: the asking is not a technique that extracts a gift but a posture answering to God’s disclosed character.

The Latin tradition. Jerome’s Vulgate renders ἁπλῶς as affluenter — ‘abundantly, in flowing measure’ — which fixes the generosity reading for the whole Western tradition and is the reason ‘liberally / generously’ dominates English versions. This is significant as reception history, and it is one reading of the adverb, not independent evidence for it (§11). The Latin also renders μὴ ὀνειδίζοντος as non improperat, ‘does not reproach,’ which preserves the insult-sense accurately.

Greek commentators. The catena tradition on James consistently ties v. 5 forward to vv. 6-8, reading the undivided God against the δίψυχος man — which is the internal evidence for the singleness sense of ἁπλῶς. Where the Fathers press the contrast between God’s single giving and the asker’s divided soul, they are reading the ἁπλ-/δι- opposition that a rendering like ‘generously’ makes invisible.

The Solomonic pattern. Early readers heard 3 Kgdms 3 behind this verse without needing it cited: the young king asks for the one thing he lacks, and receives it and more, and is not upbraided for the asking. Wis 7:7 and 9:4 had already turned that narrative into a prayer-model, and James’s imperative is that model compressed into two words.

Worth naming for what it is not: nothing in the early reception treats this verse as a general warrant for petitionary success. The object is σοφία specifically — the faculty for living rightly under trial — and 4:3 (αἰτεῖτε καὶ οὐ λαμβάνετε, διότι κακῶς αἰτεῖσθε) shows the same author placing a hard limit on requests aimed elsewhere.

Proposed — pending reviewDale C. Allison Jr., A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle of James, International Critical Commentary, London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2013 · Biblia Sacra iuxta Vulgatam Versionem, ed. R. Weber and R. Gryson, 5th ed., Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 2007

The verse is textually stable. NA28 prints no variant in the apparatus warranting discussion, and the reading above is supported by the whole tradition without meaningful division. Nothing here bears on the sense.

Worth recording as orthography rather than text: some later witnesses show minor variation in the position of θεοῦ relative to διδόντος — the marked word order noted above is the kind of thing scribes and later editors were tempted to regularize. Where such smoothing occurs the direction is always toward the easier sequence, which confirms the harder order as original.

The absence of variation is itself worth a note in a verse this heavily used devotionally. The interpretive difficulty at ἁπλῶς is lexical, not text-critical: every manuscript reads the same word, and the question is what it means.

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