James has just forbidden speaking against a brother (v. 11) on the ground that the one who does so speaks against and judges the law. Verse 12 supplies the reason the whole move works: there is exactly one lawgiver and judge, and he is the one with power to save and destroy. The verse is built as a two-part strike — a monotheistic assertion, then a personal question — and the whole weight of it falls on two words the English can easily lose: the fronted εἷς at the head and the expressed σύ at the pivot.

Three things drive the exegesis:

1. One person, not two offices. A single εἷς and a single ἐστιν govern both νομοθέτης and κριτής. James is not saying that lawgiving and judging both belong to God as separate functions; he is saying one being holds both, and the human critic has intruded on a role that is not distributed.
2. σῶσαι καὶ ἀπολέσαι is a jurisdiction claim, not a threat. The pairing is fixed LXX and Synoptic language for total authority over life (Deut 32:39; 1 Sam 2:6; Matt 10:28). It defines the judge by what he can execute — which is precisely what the congregational critic cannot.
3. The question is not rhetorical decoration. σὺ δέ … τίς εἶ is diatribe form (cf. Rom 9:20; 14:4), and the articular participle ὁ κρίνων τὸν πλησίον is appositional to σύ, so the questioner is identified by the very act being questioned.

The closing τὸν πλησίον is the surprise. James has been saying ἀδελφός three times in v. 11; here he switches to the Leviticus word he had already quoted at 2:8. The judge of the brother turns out to be the transgressor of the royal law.

Proposed — pending reviewDibelius, Martin. James: A Commentary on the Epistle of James. Rev. Heinrich Greeven. Hermeneia. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1976.

εἷς stands first, anarthrous, and predicative; νομοθέτης καὶ κριτής follow, also anarthrous. Two renderings are grammatically available and they are not far apart:

• Existential: “There is one lawgiver and judge.”
• Predicative with an understood definite subject: “The lawgiver and judge is one,” i.e. one only.

The fronting of the numeral makes the second nuance audible in either case, and English “There is one …” carries it adequately. What must not happen is the loss of the numeral’s emphasis: “God is the lawgiver and judge” is a true statement that is not what this sentence asserts. James is counting, and the count is the argument.

The construction belongs to a recognizable Jewish idiom of the one-God confession (cf. εἷς ἐστιν ὁ θεός, Jas 2:19, where εἷς is likewise fronted). Here the confessional shape is applied not to God’s being but to his office, which is why the sentence bites: the reader who assents to the Shema has already conceded the point.

One article and one verb over two nouns marks one referent (the standing corpus policy for a single element governing coordinated substantives). English must not repeat the article — “the lawgiver and the judge” manufactures two parties.

νομοθέτης is a NT hapax (cognate νομοθεσία, Rom 9:4; νομοθετέω, Heb 7:11; 8:6). In Greek civic usage it names the framer of a city’s constitution — Solon, Lycurgus — and Hellenistic Jewish writers applied it both to God and, very frequently, to Moses. Philo and Josephus call Moses ὁ νομοθέτης almost as a title.

That is what makes James’s choice pointed. He does not say ὁ θεός; he does not name Moses either. He asserts that the lawgiver-and-judge is one, and leaves the identification to be made from what follows (ὁ δυνάμενος σῶσαι καὶ ἀπολέσαι can only be God).

Render lawgiver, keeping the νομ- root visible against νόμος four times in v. 11 and νόμου in the same breath. Avoid “legislator” (modern parliamentary register) and “the one who gave the law” (dissolves the agent-noun and imports a past event where the noun names a standing office).

κριτής is the agent-noun of κρίνω and closes a chain that runs across two verses: κρίνων … κρίνει … κρίνεις … κριτής (v. 11) → κριτής … κρίνων (v. 12). English must use one root at every point — judge / judging / judge — or the argument becomes invisible.

Note the reversal James executes. At v. 11 the critic, by judging the law, has made himself a κριτής rather than a ποιητής. At v. 12 the word κριτής is reclaimed: there is one, and it is not him. The same noun is first an accusation and then a divine title.

Keep κριτής distinct in English from κρίσις (the judicial process) and κρίμα (the verdict), both of which James uses elsewhere (2:13; 3:1).

The articular participle is appositional, identifying the one lawgiver-judge by what he is competent to execute. δύναμαι here is possessed capacity, not exercised action; the two aorist infinitives are complexive, naming each act as a whole rather than as a process.

The pair σῴζω / ἀπόλλυμι is a fixed idiom of total jurisdiction over life, with deep LXX roots:

• Deut 32:39 LXX — ἐγὼ ἀποκτενῶ καὶ ζῆν ποιήσω
• 1 Kgdms (1 Sam) 2:6 LXX — κύριος θανατοῖ καὶ ζωογονεῖ
• Matt 10:28 — τὸν δυνάμενον καὶ ψυχὴν καὶ σῶμα ἀπολέσαι ἐν γεέννῃ

Per the standing corpus policy, ἀπόλλυμι in the active is transitive “destroy,” against the intransitive middle “perish” (Jas 1:11 ἀπώλετο). The active here is deliberate: the point is agency.

Render σῴζω with the corpus gloss “save.” Its scope is not narrowed by this verse — James has already used the verb of physical rescue (5:15), of the reception of the word (1:21), and of turning a wanderer back from death (5:20). Do not import a specifically eschatological qualifier into the English; the breadth is the force of the claim.

Avoid “who is able to save and to destroy you.” No object is expressed. Supplying one turns a statement about God’s competence into a threat aimed at the addressee, which the Greek does not make.

σύ is expressed where the verb ending already carries the person, so it is marked; and it stands first in its clause, before the postpositive δέ, which throws further weight onto it. This is the diatribe’s turn on the interlocutor, and it has close Pauline analogues: σὺ τίς εἶ ὁ ἀνταποκρινόμενος τῷ θεῷ (Rom 9:20); σὺ τίς εἶ ὁ κρίνων ἀλλότριον οἰκέτην (Rom 14:4) — the latter almost verbatim, and worth flagging as evidence that the formula was current rather than as evidence of literary dependence in either direction.

English must render the pronoun visibly. “But you — who are you …” keeps the pronoun in initial position and marks the confrontation with a dash. Absorbing it into the verb (“But who are you …”) is the standard flattening and removes the one word by which James turns and points.

δέ is genuinely adversative here (the corpus permits continuative, adversative, and ascensive classifications per context): a second party is set over against the one just described. “Now” or a bare “and” understates it.

The question is not a request for information. It expects no answer beyond the one the hearer must supply: nobody with any such standing. But per §6 the English does not supply it — “you have no right to judge your neighbor” converts an interrogative into a declarative and writes the answer into the text.

The articular present participle stands in apposition to σύ and is characterizing: it names the addressee by the practice in which he is currently engaged. Two features carry weight.

Aspect. The present is durative — a practice under way, not a verdict already delivered. Mark it in the literal and study tiers (“you who are judging”); smooth registers may compress to “judging your neighbor” with the compression noted.

The apposition. English idiom pulls toward a relative clause (“you who judge”), which is acceptable in reading tiers. But the construction is nominal, and a comma-plus-participle (“But you — who are you, judging your neighbor?”) reproduces the appositional weight more closely: the identification is thrown in after the question, as a last accusatory clause, rather than being folded into it.

Note that the participle is not restrictive in the English sense. James is not distinguishing this addressee from other addressees who do not judge; he is naming what the one he addresses is doing.

James has said ἀδελφός three times in v. 11 (ἀδελφῶν, ἀδελφοῦ, τὸν ἀδελφὸν αὐτοῦ). Here he switches, and the switch is data.

πλησίον is the substantivized adverb (“the one nearby”), the LXX standard for רֵעַ and the term of Lev 19:18 — which James has already quoted at 2:8 as the νόμος βασιλικός and identified as the standard by which partiality is condemned (2:9). The move at 4:12 is therefore an inclusio with chapter 2: the man judging the law turns out to be judging under a law he is himself breaking, and the word James chooses to end on is the word from the commandment.

Per the standing corpus policy the scope of πλησίον is a §5 flashpoint and must not be adjudicated in the rendering. Retain neighbor; do not narrow to “fellow believer” (which would follow from ἀδελφός but not from this word) and do not universalize to “fellow human being.” Note that modern English “neighbor” misleadingly suggests residential proximity.

The possessive is not in the Greek. “Your neighbor” is permitted in smooth registers as English idiom; the literal tier keeps “the neighbor.”

Proposed — pending reviewMcKnight, Scot. The Letter of James. New International Commentary on the New Testament. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2011.

Three points of variation, all instructive about the direction of scribal work.

καὶ κριτής. NA28 reads εἷς ἐστιν νομοθέτης καὶ κριτής with the earliest witnesses. A substantial part of the later tradition, followed by the Textus Receptus, reads simply εἷς ἐστὶν ὁ νομοθέτης — dropping καὶ κριτής. The shorter reading is easily explained as an accidental omission or as a simplification of an unusual double title; the longer reading is what the argument requires, since κριτής is the word v. 11 has just made an accusation and v. 12 reclaims. Retain it.

σὺ δὲ τίς εἶ. Some witnesses read σὺ τίς εἶ, without δέ — assimilation to the wording of Rom 14:4, which has no particle. Others reverse or omit the pronoun. The reading with the pronoun and the particle is both best attested and the harder arrangement.

ὁ κρίνων τὸν πλησίον. Later witnesses supply an object pronoun (τὸν πλησίον σου, or τὸν ἕτερον), assimilating either to the full Lev 19:18 citation form or to Rom 2:1. The bare τὸν πλησίον is original and the supplements show how quickly readers wanted the Leviticus allusion made explicit.

James cites nothing here with a formula, but the verse is saturated.

The save/destroy pair is the Song of Moses and the Song of Hannah: “I put to death and I make alive” (Deut 32:39 LXX ἐγὼ ἀποκτενῶ καὶ ζῆν ποιήσω); “YHWH kills and brings to life, he brings down to Sheol and raises up” (1 Kgdms 2:6 LXX). The Hebrew behind both is a merism asserting exhaustive sovereignty over life. James’s Greek pairing σῶσαι καὶ ἀπολέσαι matches the Synoptic form of the same claim (Matt 10:28; cf. Luke 6:9).

The one lawgiver. The νομοθέτης is God, not Moses — a distinction Second Temple Judaism was capable of blurring, and which James’s ὁ δυνάμενος σῶσαι καὶ ἀπολέσαι decisively unblurs. The confessional shape (εἷς fronted) recalls Deut 6:4 LXX, and James has already used the same shape of God at 2:19.

τὸν πλησίον is Lev 19:18 LXX, ἀγαπήσεις τὸν πλησίον σου ὡς σεαυτόν — the verse James called the royal law at 2:8. Note that Lev 19 also supplies the verb of v. 11: οὐ … λήμψῃ πρόσωπον πτωχοῦ … ἐν δικαιοσύνῃ κρινεῖς τὸν πλησίον σου (Lev 19:15), and οὐ πορεύσῃ δόλῳ ἐν τῷ ἔθνει σου (Lev 19:16), the LXX’s slander prohibition. James 4:11-12 is working the Leviticus 19 paragraph as a whole, not quoting one verse from it.

Per §1, κύριος does not appear in this verse; where the Hebrew substrate has YHWH (Deut 32:39; 1 Sam 2:6), that is footnoted and not imported.

Proposed — pending reviewJohnson, Luke Timothy. The Letter of James: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary. Anchor Bible 37A. New York: Doubleday, 1995. · Rahlfs, Alfred, and Robert Hanhart, eds. Septuaginta. Editio altera. Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 2006.

The verse is regularly pressed into service against all evaluative judgment, and it will not bear that weight.

What James forbids in v. 11 is καταλαλέω — speaking against, running down behind the back — and the κρίνειν that goes with it. The same letter commands the rebuke of favoritism (2:1-9), the correction of a wanderer (5:19-20), and the assessment of teachers (3:1). Chapter 2 assumes that partiality can be identified and named as sin.

The rhetorical structure supports locating the fault in standing rather than in accuracy. James never says the critic’s assessment is mistaken. He says the critic is not the one.

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

The Greek commentary tradition on James is thin, but the reading of this verse is stable where it survives.

The Greek catenae on James consistently take ὁ δυνάμενος σῶσαι καὶ ἀπολέσαι as the identification of the νομοθέτης with God rather than Moses, and treat the question σὺ δὲ τίς εἶ as an argument from disproportion: the one who cannot execute either sentence has no business pronouncing either.

Bede, in the earliest full Latin commentary on the catholic epistles, ties v. 12 back to v. 11 by way of the law of love, reading the switch from frater to proximus as deliberate and as recalling the diliges proximum tuum — which is, so far as the evidence goes, the correct instinct about the Lev 19:18 allusion.

Augustine, who cites James often against presumption, uses the verse against confidence in one’s own standing rather than against discernment as such; his interest is in the unus and its implication that the human critic has no bench of his own.

Worth noting what the tradition does not do: it does not read the verse as forbidding church discipline, which the same writers everywhere presuppose. The modern use of the verse against all moral assessment has no patristic footing.

Proposed — pending reviewBede the Venerable. Commentary on the Seven Catholic Epistles. Translated by David Hurst. Cistercian Studies 82. Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1985. · Cramer, J. A., ed. Catenae Graecorum Patrum in Novum Testamentum. Vol. 8. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1844.

Where this verse’s English was decided, and why:

• “There is one lawgiver and judge” — the numeral fronted and stressed; one English article for both nouns, marking one referent.
• “the one who is able to save and to destroy” — participle kept articular and appositional; no object supplied to the infinitives.
• “But you — who are you” — the expressed σύ rendered visibly and kept clause-initial, with a dash carrying the confrontation that Greek carries by word order.
• “judging your neighbor” — participle kept participial rather than converted to a relative clause in the reading text, so the appositive lands after the question as it does in Greek; “your” supplied per English idiom and marked as supplied in the literal tier.
• Question mark retained. Note that punctuation in the earliest majuscules is absent; the interrogative here rests on τίς, which is unambiguous, so no editorial caveat is needed for the question itself — only for the sentence divisions around it.