The verse is the legal premise beneath v. 9. James has just ruled that partiality is sin and that the partial man is convicted ὡς παραβάτης — as a transgressor. Verse 10 supplies the reason: the law is not a set of independent obligations from which one may score well on aggregate, but a single whole whose violation at any point is violation of the whole.

Three features carry the argument.

1. The construction is a generalizing conditional relative (ὅστις + aorist subjunctive), not a narrative report. It states a rule, not an incident.
2. τηρήσῃ and πταίσῃ are set against each other inside one clause. The Greek grants the keeping — the whole of it — and then removes the benefit with a single δέ. The concession is real and is part of the rhetoric; flattening it (‘tries to keep’) destroys the force.
3. γέγονεν is perfect. The man has entered a standing condition. He is not merely reckoned at fault for the one act; he now stands answerable, and the extent of that answerability is what πάντων specifies.

What the verse does not say is worth marking as carefully as what it does. It does not say the one who stumbles at one point has broken every commandment, nor that all sins are of equal gravity (v. 11 immediately distinguishes adultery from murder as distinct commands). It says he is ἔνοχος πάντων — answerable in respect of them all, because the authority behind each is one and the same (v. 11: ὁ … εἰπών … εἶπεν καί).

γάρ grounds v. 9. The sequence is: partiality is sin (v. 9a) → the law itself convicts you as a transgressor (v. 9b) → for the law admits no partial compliance (v. 10) → for the one Lawgiver stands behind each command (v. 11).

Two γάρ clauses in succession, each supporting the one before it. Per §10 the connective is rendered, never dropped: the epistolary and paraenetic argument structure is theologically load-bearing, and an unmarked English asyndeton would present v. 10 as a fresh maxim rather than as the warrant for the charge of v. 9.

The force of the verse depends on this subordination. Read as a free-standing aphorism it becomes a general statement about moral perfection; read as the ground of v. 9 it is specifically about why the partial man cannot appeal to his record elsewhere.

Built onbdf

ὅστις with the aorist subjunctive (the ἄν is unexpressed — see the textual note) forms a generalizing conditional relative: ‘whoever, in any instance, should …’. The clause describes a class by a condition, not an individual by a history.

Per the standing ὅστις policy, the qualitative force (‘of such a kind as to’) is live wherever the pronoun opens a class. Here the class-defining function is unmistakable, so the literal tier keeps a bare ‘whoever’ and the note carries the qualitative sense rather than padding the English.

The internal δέ is genuinely adversative, and it is doing the whole work of the clause. The construction is a concession followed by a reversal within a single subject: the same man keeps the whole and trips at one. Greek can hold both subjunctives under one relative pronoun; English cannot without a conjunction, so ‘but’ is supplied and marked.

Built onbdf · bdag

Proposed — pending reviewMartin Dibelius, James: A Commentary on the Epistle of James, rev. Heinrich Greeven, Hermeneia, Philadelphia: Fortress, 1976

τηρήσῃ is the maintenance-verb: to keep something in the condition it has, to observe and preserve. The corpus already fixes it as ‘keep (maintain in an existing state)’ at Jas 1:27, distinguishing it from φυλάσσω (‘keep, guard’ — the custodial sentry-verb, fixed at Gal 6:13) and from ποιέω (‘do’).

The choice matters. James had both other verbs available, and both are standard LXX equivalents for שָׁמַר in commandment contexts (φυλάσσω at Exod 20:6; Deut 4:2; ποιέω at Deut 6:25). τηρέω in commandment contexts is at home in the Johannine literature (John 14:15; 1 John 2:3-5; Rev 12:17; 14:12) and in Matt 19:17. Its force is ongoing observance kept intact — which is exactly the notion the second verb then punctures.

Render ‘keep’ at every occurrence, per the standing entry.

Built onbdag · muraoka-lxx

πταίω is the foot-verb: to strike against something and trip. Five NT occurrences (Rom 11:11 twice; Jas 2:10; 3:2 twice; 2 Pet 1:10), and James is the heaviest user.

The image is live, not spent. James returns to it eleven verses later — πολλὰ γὰρ πταίομεν ἅπαντες (3:2), immediately followed by the bit, the rudder, and the spark. He is a writer who unpacks his metaphors, and per §8 a metaphor the author himself develops is treated as live and rendered literally. Rom 11:11 makes the same point from the other side: Paul distinguishes tripping (πταίω) from falling flat (πίπτω), which shows the physical picture still governing the word’s use.

Rendering. ‘Stumble’ preserves the foot and the road, and keeps the verse inside the walking-field the corpus maintains for περιπατέω, στοιχέω, ὁδοί, and πλανάω. Excluded:

• ‘offend’ (Vulgate offendat, and the older English tradition) — accurate to the Latin but modern English ‘offend’ now means causing displeasure, which is not the sense.
• ‘fail’ — abstracts the trip into a verdict.
• ‘break [the law]’ — supplies a different verb entirely and pre-empts the question of gravity.

Note that πταίω is a light word. One does not πταίω deliberately; one trips. The rhetorical point sharpens accordingly: even the small, half-accidental lapse puts the man in the dock.

Built onbdag · muraoka-lxx

The substantive is unexpressed and its gender is formally open, since ἑνί is identical for masculine and neuter in the dative.

• Neuter — ‘in one thing, at one point’. Supported by the pairing with πάντων in the same clause, which then means ‘all the requirements taken together’.
• Masculine — ‘in one [commandment]’, supplying λόγῳ or ἐντολῇ from νόμον. Supported by v. 11, which immediately names two specific commandments.

ἐν here marks the sphere or respect in which the tripping occurs, not the instrument. Retain ‘in’ in the literal tier; ‘at’ in the reading text, where English idiom prefers it with ‘point’.

Built onbdf · bdag

ὅλος stands outside the article-noun unit — predicate position — and asserts totality (BDF §275). The corpus entry fixed at Gal 5:3 applies directly: render ‘the whole law’, and note that the emphasis falls on completeness rather than on identifying one law among several.

The collocation is the same as Gal 5:3 (ὅλον τὸν νόμον ποιῆσαι) and Gal 5:14 (ὁ πᾶς νόμος), and the verbal echo is close enough that the relationship between James and Paul on this point is a live question. What must be resisted is reading James’s νόμος through the Pauline polemical lens of Gal 3-4. James’s law is articular and is glossed by his own phrases: νόμος τέλειος ὁ τῆς ἐλευθερίας (1:25), νόμος βασιλικός (2:8), νόμος ἐλευθερίας (2:12). It is the Torah as read in the light of the love-command, and it is something one is expected to keep, not escape.

Per §9, the diachronic finding governs the base rendering: ‘law’, articular here because the Greek is articular, with no capitalization and no supplied qualifier.

Built onbdf · bdag

Perfect indicative, and the tense is the hinge of the verse. Per the standing γίνομαι policy (‘come to be / become’), the perfect renders as an English present perfect: a completed transition whose result stands.

The force: the man does not merely incur a charge at the moment of the trip; he has entered a standing condition of answerability, and that condition is now his. James uses the same perfect of the same construction one verse later — γέγονας παραβάτης νόμου (2:11) — which shows the tense is chosen, not incidental.

Excluded:

• ‘becomes’ (present) — converts a standing status into a general truth about what happens. Some later witnesses and the Vulgate’s factus est pull in different directions here; neither may govern.
• ‘is’ — erases the transition, which is the whole point. He was not answerable, and now he is.
• ‘is guilty’ — see the next section on ἔνοχος.

Built onbdf · bdag

ἔνοχος (from ἐνέχομαι, ‘be held in’ — the same root as ἐνέχω, fixed at Gal 5:1 as ‘be held fast in’) is a courtroom word: liable to a charge, answerable before a tribunal, subject to a penalty. Ten NT occurrences, and the construction varies instructively:

• + genitive of the penalty — ἔνοχος … τῆς κρίσεως, τοῦ συνεδρίου (Matt 5:21-22); ἔνοχος θανάτου (Matt 26:66; Mark 14:64) — liable to that punishment.
• + genitive of the party wronged — ἔνοχος … τοῦ σώματος καὶ τοῦ αἵματος τοῦ κυρίου (1 Cor 11:27) — answerable with respect to that person.
• + dative of the court — ἔνοχος ἔσται τῷ συνεδρίῳ (Matt 5:22).
• + ἐν — ἔνοχος … αἰωνίου ἁμαρτήματος (Mark 3:29, with genitive of the offense).

At Jas 2:10 the genitive πάντων names neither penalty nor person but the body of commands in respect of which the man is answerable. This is the 1 Cor 11:27 type: answerable with reference to the whole.

Rendering. ‘Liable’ or ‘answerable’ keeps the forensic register and the reference-sense of the genitive. ‘Guilty of all’ (the traditional English, from the Vulgate’s omnium reus) is not wrong in Latin but is badly misleading in modern English, where ‘guilty of all of them’ says the man has committed all of them — which is precisely what James does not claim, and what v. 11 rules out by distinguishing the commands.

Built onbdag · bdf

The question the verse forces is: liable for what?

Reading A — the law as an indivisible whole. The one who trips has violated the law, and there is only one law. He is answerable to it entire, because it is not divisible into detachable obligations. This is the reading v. 11 most naturally supports: the argument there is not about the equivalence of sins but about the unity of the Lawgiver — the one who said the one thing said the other.

Reading B — liable in respect of every individual command. He stands answerable with reference to each commandment, since the authority of each is the same authority he has defied.

These are not far apart, and the difference is largely one of emphasis. Both are ancient. The rabbinic parallels frequently cited (the tractate material on breaking one commandment as breaking the yoke) and the Hellenistic-Jewish material (4 Macc 5:20-21, where transgressing the law in small things and great is equally weighty) both stand behind the general idea, though neither should be pressed as a source.

What the verse settles decisively is the pastoral question in view: the man who is scrupulous about the law and partial toward the rich cannot plead his record. That is why the verse stands where it does.

Proposed — pending reviewRichard Bauckham, James: Wisdom of James, Disciple of Jesus the Sage, New Testament Readings, London: Routledge, 1999 · Dale C. Allison Jr., A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle of James, International Critical Commentary, London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2013

NA28 prints ὅστις γὰρ ὅλον τὸν νόμον τηρήσῃ with no variant marked in the hand edition; the reading is secure in the primary witnesses.

Two points worth recording:

1. The absence of ἄν. Classical Greek would expect ὅστις ἄν (or ὃς ἄν) with the subjunctive in a generalizing relative clause. Koine frequently drops it, and the omission carries no semantic weight — the indefiniteness is supplied by ὅστις and the subjunctive mood. Some later witnesses supply ἄν, which is the direction of literary normalization and should not be followed. Compare the corpus policy on ἐάν for ἄν in indefinite relatives (Gal 5:17; 6:7): the harder, less classicizing form is original.

2. τηρήσῃ. A variant τηρήσει (future indicative) appears in part of the tradition. This is almost certainly itacistic — ῃ and ει had converged in pronunciation — and not a deliberate change; the parallel subjunctive πταίσῃ in the same clause fixes the mood. Some witnesses also read πληρώσῃ (‘fulfil’) for τηρήσῃ, an assimilation toward the πληρόω/τελέω vocabulary of vv. 8-9; secondary.

Neither point affects the sense. Both are recorded because §4 requires that the seam be shown rather than hidden.

Built onna28 · metzger-tc

Vulgate: Quicumque autem totam legem servaverit, offendat autem in uno, factus est omnium reus.

Three observations.

• servaverit for τηρήσῃ is exact — Latin servare is the maintenance-verb, matching the τηρέω/φυλάσσω distinction the Greek preserves.
• offendat for πταίσῃ retains the stumbling sense in Latin (offendere = strike against), but it is the source of the English ‘offend in one point’, which in modern English has lost that sense entirely. Reception, not evidence (§11).
• omnium reus is a precise legal rendering — reus is the defendant, the party answerable — and is a better guide than the English ‘guilty of all’ that descends from it.

Peshitta renders the final clause with a term in the debt/liability domain, which supports the forensic-answerability reading over the commission reading. Consulted for the general shape of the clause only; no weight is placed on it against the Greek.

The Fathers are largely agreed on the unity-of-the-law reading and are careful to block the inference that all sins are equal.

Augustine treats the verse at length in Letter 167 (to Jerome), written precisely because the verse seemed to underwrite the Stoic paradox that all sins are equal — a position Augustine rejects. His resolution is that the man is reus omnium because charity is the fullness of the law (Rom 13:10), so that a failure of love at any point is a failure of the whole, the whole being one thing. He is explicit that this does not level the gravity of individual sins.

Chrysostom and the Greek commentators generally take the point to be the single authority behind each command, reading v. 11 as James’s own explanation of v. 10 — which is the safest guide, since it is the author’s.

The patristic discussion is useful chiefly as a warning: the verse has been felt, from very early, to press toward a conclusion its own context excludes. The rendering must not help it along. Keeping ἔνοχος in the liability domain rather than the commission domain is the translational discipline that answers Augustine’s worry.

Proposed — pending reviewAugustine, Epistula 167 (Ad Hieronymum, De sententia Iacobi), in Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum 44, Vienna, 1904