Verse 15 is not a new sentence but the hinge of the one begun at v. 13. James has quoted the merchants’ itinerary — today or tomorrow we will go … spend a year … trade … make gain — interrupted it with the vapor of v. 14, and now supplies the alternative form of speech they are not using. ἀντὶ τοῦ λέγειν ὑμᾶς is a substitution: what they say stands in place of what they ought to say.

Three features carry the weight.

First, the fault named is not planning. The corrected sentence still has a plural first-person future and a destination: “we shall live and we shall do this or that.” James does not replace the itinerary with resignation; he replaces an unconditioned itinerary with a conditioned one. The five futures of v. 13 survive into v. 15 reduced to two, both now standing under a protasis.

Second, the conditional itself is deliberately conditional. ἐὰν … θελήσῃ is a third-class condition, a live possibility neither asserted nor denied. James does not write ‘since the Lord wills’ or ‘when the Lord permits’. The whole point is that the outcome is not in the speaker’s hands, and the mood is what says so.

Third, and most easily lost in English, the correlative καὶ … καί puts living itself under the condition. The traders had assumed continued existence and asked only about profit; the corrected sentence subordinates the assumption. Rendering ‘if the Lord wills, we will live and do this’ quietly drops the first καί and with it the claim that survival is as contingent as commerce.

What James does not do here is also worth noting. He gives no reason for the formula, invokes no doctrine of providence, and supplies no object for θελήσῃ. The bare Ἐὰν ὁ κύριος θελήσῃ is left to do its own work, and the verdict falls in v. 16.

ἀντί + genitive articular infinitive with an accusative subject (ὑμᾶς). The construction is well attested in Koine (cf. Heb 12:2, ἀντὶ τῆς προκειμένης αὐτῷ χαρᾶς) and expresses substitution: one thing standing in the place of another.

Two consequences for rendering.

(i) ἀντί is not a comparative. English ‘rather than’ invites the reading that James is recommending a preferred alternative among options. ἀντί says that the words of v. 13 occupy a slot the words of v. 15 should have filled — a replacement, not a preference. ‘Instead of’ is retained in every tier.

(ii) The clause is syntactically dependent, and its attachment is a live question. It may govern the whole quoted boast of v. 13 (so that vv. 13-15 are one long suspended sentence, resumed by νῦν δέ in v. 16), or it may attach more loosely to the οὐκ ἐπίστασθε of v. 14. NA28’s punctuation favors the first, and the νῦν δέ of v. 16 — the standing Koine idiom for ‘but as it is’, naming the actual state over against a stated ideal — strongly supports it: v. 15 is the ideal, v. 16 the actuality.

The accusative ὑμᾶς is the subject of the infinitive and stands where Greek regularly puts it, after the infinitive. English cannot show the case, so the literal tier keeps ‘the saying [on the part of] you’ with the supplement bracketed; smooth registers resolve to ‘your saying’. The Vulgate’s pro eo ut dicatis resolves the infinitive into a finite subjunctive clause, which is a legitimate Latin equivalence but hides the nominal construction.

The present infinitive is durative: a settled manner of speaking, not a single sentence. What James wants replaced is an idiom, not one remark.

Built onbdf · bdag

Third-class condition: ἐάν + aorist subjunctive. The corpus policy is settled — a live possibility, neither asserted (first class) nor contrary to fact — and two renderings are excluded.

‘Since the Lord wills’ overcommits: it converts the contingency into a premise and makes the formula a statement about divine sovereignty rather than an admission of ignorance. ‘When the Lord permits’ converts a condition into a schedule.

The aorist is complexive: the willing taken as a single whole act, not a continuing disposition. This is not the same as saying the Lord’s will fluctuates; it is that each stretch of life and each undertaking falls under a particular determination.

On θέλω the corpus already records that it overlaps βούλομαι but with less deliberative colouring, and that the two must stay on distinguishable English roots. James has run three volition-verbs through this chapter — ἐπιθυμεῖτε (4:2), βουληθῇ (4:4), θελήσῃ (4:15) — and the movement is instructive: craving, then a resolve to be the world’s friend, then finally the Lord’s willing set over all of it. In the first two the human will is the problem; in the third a different will is the boundary.

On κύριος: rendered ‘Lord’ per §1, never converted to YHWH. The referent is contested. James uses κύριος of God (1:7; 3:9 with πατήρ; 5:4 Κύριος Σαβαώθ; 5:10-11) and of Christ (1:1; 2:1; and probably 5:7-8, ἡ παρουσία τοῦ κυρίου). At 4:10 the immediately preceding κυρίου is most naturally God; at 5:14-15 the anointing is ἐν τῷ ὀνόματι τοῦ κυρίου. The apparatus records the range and adopts no identification, since the formula is doing the same work either way. The article is present and is retained.

Built onbdf · bdag

The doubled καί is correlative — ‘both … and’ — not two connectives. The corpus entry on καί … καί is explicit: repeated καί with parallel members is correlative (BDF §444), and in argument the correlation is structure and must be rendered.

Here it is exegetically decisive. Under one condition James puts two things: continued existence and the carrying out of the plan. The traders of v. 13 had put only the plan in question; life they assumed. The correlative refuses the assumption.

Compare the standing decision at Phil 4:12, where καί … καί is retained because the whole point is that abundance requires learning no less than want. The same discipline applies: dropping the first καί (‘if the Lord wills, we will live and do this’) reduces a correlative to a coordinating connective and makes ζήσομεν an unremarkable preliminary rather than the first thing surrendered.

On the futures: ζήσομεν is the Koine sigmatic active for the classical middle ζησόμεθα (cf. Rom 6:2; 8:13), a morphological development with no semantic weight; the variant ζήσωμεν (aorist subjunctive) in part of the tradition is discussed under Text. Both futures are plain predictive futures inside quoted speech and must not be modalized in English — ‘we may live and may do’ imports into the apodosis the tentativeness the protasis already carries, and doubles the hedging.

Built onbdf · bdag

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

The near and far demonstratives paired as an indefinite placeholder — ‘this or that’, i.e. whatever happens to be in view. The idiom is ordinary Greek and the pairing is the point: James deliberately declines to name the undertaking.

The corpus already fixes τοῦτο as ‘this’ with the bare demonstrative retained even where cataphoric (Phil 2:5), and notes at Jas 4:13 the rare deictic ὅδε (τήνδε τὴν πόλιν, ‘this-here / such-and-such city’), where the same reticence about specifics appears. The two verses are of a piece: an unnamed city, then an unnamed project. James is not describing one firm’s plans but supplying a form of words for any.

Consequences for rendering. Do not specify (‘do this business’, ‘carry out our plans’, ‘do what we intend’) — each fills a blank the Greek leaves open, and the second additionally imports a noun. Do not compress to a single member (‘do this’), which loses the disjunctive breadth. The Vulgate’s hoc aut illud keeps both and is the right restraint.

On ἐκεῖνος: the corpus records at Jas 1:7 that where a nearer pronoun was available the far demonstrative carries distancing force. That is not in play here — in a τοῦτο/ἐκεῖνο pair the far form is simply the second member of a fixed correlative, and no gesture of distance should be read into it.

Built onbdag · bdf

The ἐὰν ὁ κύριος θελήσῃ formula and its near relatives are attested across three bodies of literature, and the relation between them bears on how the verse should be heard.

Greek and Hellenistic. θεῶν θελόντων, σὺν θεῷ, ἐὰν οἱ θεοὶ θέλωσιν, and in Latin deo volente are commonplace in Greek prose and in the documentary papyri, including in commercial correspondence — precisely the register of Jas 4:13. Plato (Alcibiades I 135d) has ἐὰν θεὸς θέλῃ; the phrase belongs to the ordinary furniture of pious speech.

Jewish. The rabbinic im yirṣeh ha-Shem is the direct counterpart, and the sentiment is standing in the wisdom tradition (Prov 16:9; 19:21; 27:1 — do not boast of tomorrow, which stands immediately behind Jas 4:13-14).

Early Christian. Paul uses the formula more than once: ἐὰν ὁ κύριος θελήσῃ (1 Cor 4:19), ἐὰν ὁ κύριος ἐπιτρέψῃ (1 Cor 16:7), τοῦ θεοῦ θέλοντος (Acts 18:21), ἐάν πως … ἐν τῷ θελήματι τοῦ θεοῦ (Rom 1:10; cf. 15:32). Heb 6:3 has ἐάνπερ ἐπιτρέπῃ ὁ θεός.

Two observations follow.

First, James is not coining a phrase but naming one already in circulation. That the formula is conventional does not make it empty; it makes the absence of it in v. 13 conspicuous. The traders’ itinerary is not shocking speech — it is normal speech with a normal qualifier omitted.

Second, and more importantly, James is plainly not legislating a verbal tag. He does not say say these words; he supplies a form of speech that acknowledges what v. 14 has just established, and then in v. 16 indicts not silence about the formula but the ἀλαζονεῖαι — the pretensions — of those who plan as though the vapor were not a vapor. The reading that makes this a rule about appending D.V. to letters is an old and persistent misuse. Calvin’s observation on the passage is apt and has been widely followed: the formula on the lips of a man who does not believe it is worth nothing, and the man who believes it may sometimes speak without it.

Built onbdag · muraoka-lxx

Proposed — pending reviewSophie Laws, A Commentary on the Epistle of James, Black's New Testament Commentaries (London: A. & C. Black, 1980) · Martin Dibelius, James: A Commentary on the Epistle of James, rev. Heinrich Greeven, Hermeneia (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1976)

The early commentators on this passage are agreed on two points and divided on a third.

They agree that the target is presumption about the future rather than planning as such. The Catena tradition on James, drawing on the Greek expositors, reads vv. 13-16 as a rebuke of those who dispose of time as though it belonged to them, and takes v. 15 as supplying the acknowledgment of dependence that the boast omitted. Bede, in his commentary on the Catholic Epistles, is explicit that the fault is not the journey or the trade but the presumption of certainty, and he notes that the apostle Paul both made plans and qualified them.

They agree, too, that the formula is not a verbal charm. Bede observes that many say if the Lord wills while trusting entirely in their own arrangements, and that saying it does not make the arrangement humble.

They divide over the referent of ὁ κύριος. The Greek expositors, reading in the wake of 4:10 (ἐνώπιον κυρίου) and 4:12 (the one lawgiver and judge), generally take it of God; those who read forward from 5:7-8 (ἡ παρουσία τοῦ κυρίου) take it of Christ. Neither side treats the question as decisive for the verse’s force, which is a reasonable judgment: the formula subordinates the speaker’s plans to a will that is not his own, and it does that on either reading.

The Latin tradition’s pro eo ut dicatis (Vulgate) resolves the articular infinitive into a finite clause and, in the English versions descended from it, tends toward ‘whereas ye ought to say’ — supplying a word of obligation the Greek does not contain. ἀντί states a substitution; it does not name a duty. The obligation is a legitimate inference from v. 16, but it belongs to the exposition and not to the rendering.

Proposed — pending reviewBede the Venerable, Commentary on the Seven Catholic Epistles, trans. David Hurst, Cistercian Studies 82 (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1985)

The verse is textually stable in its structure; three points of variation are worth recording, none of which changes the sense.

ζήσομεν / ζήσωμεν. The future indicative ζήσομεν is read by the primary Alexandrian witnesses and by NA28; a substantial part of the tradition, including much of the Byzantine text, reads the aorist subjunctive ζήσωμεν and correspondingly ποιήσωμεν. The itacistic confusion of ο and ω in Koine makes the variation phonetically trivial in origin, but the reading chosen has a syntactic consequence: the subjunctive would pull both verbs inside the protasis (‘if the Lord wills that we should both live and do this’), whereas the indicative keeps them as the apodosis. The indicative is adopted; it is also the reading that preserves the parallel with the futures of v. 13, and the subjunctive looks like an assimilation to the mood of θελήσῃ standing beside it.

καὶ ζήσομεν / ζήσομεν. Some witnesses omit the first καί, producing ‘if the Lord wills, we shall live and shall do this or that’. This is the easier reading and removes the correlative construction; it is secondary, and the direction of the change (toward the simpler coordination) is clear. The harder correlative reading stands.

ὁ κύριος / ὁ θεός. A small number of witnesses read ὁ θεός, assimilating to the commoner Christian and Hellenistic forms of the formula (τοῦ θεοῦ θέλοντος, Acts 18:21; ἐάνπερ ἐπιτρέπῃ ὁ θεός, Heb 6:3). κύριος is firmly attested and is retained.

Built onna28 · metzger-tc

Vulgate: pro eo ut dicatis: Si Dominus voluerit, et: Si vixerimus, faciemus hoc aut illud. Three things happen here. The articular infinitive becomes a finite subjunctive clause (ut dicatis), which is ordinary Latin equivalence. Dominus voluerit keeps the future perfect for the Greek aorist subjunctive, correctly. But the Latin tradition reorganizes the correlative καί … καί into two coordinated conditions — si Dominus voluerit, et si vixerimus — making living a second protasis rather than the first member of the apodosis. That is a real shift: on the Greek, life is what the Lord’s will grants; on the Latin, life is a further contingency alongside it. The Greek construction should not be read through the Latin here.

Peshitta: renders with a conditional clause and coordinated verbs, keeping ‘Lord’ and preserving both futures. It does not reproduce the correlative doubling, which Syriac idiom does not require.

English tradition: ‘if the Lord will, we shall live, and do this, or that’ (retained above in the liturgical tier) follows the Greek closely, including the ‘both’ implicitly by the comma placement. Later renderings that give ‘if it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that’ lose the correlative and, by converting the verb θελήσῃ into a noun phrase, also lose the fact that a subject wills rather than a will obtaining.

The unit runs 4:13-17 and has four movements.

v. 13 — the summons (Ἄγε νῦν) and the quoted itinerary, five futures in polysyndeton. v. 14 — the interruption: you do not know the matter of tomorrow; you are a vapor. v. 15 — the substituted form of speech: two futures under one condition. vv. 16-17 — the verdict: but as it is (νῦν δέ) you boast in your pretensions; every boast of that kind is evil — followed by the closing maxim on knowing the good and not doing it.

The structure is diagnostic, not merely hortatory. James does not command the formula of v. 15; he places it as the alternative that has not been taken, and then names what has taken its place. This is why v. 16 opens with νῦν δέ — the standing idiom for the actual state of affairs over against a stated ideal (Rom 7:17; 1 Cor 12:20; Heb 11:16).

Two threads from earlier in the chapter converge here. The first is the volition-thread: ἐπιθυμεῖτε (4:2), βουληθῇ (4:4), θελήσῃ (4:15) — the chapter has been about wills in conflict from its first line (ἡδοναὶ στρατευόμεναι, appetites on campaign), and it ends by naming the one will that decides. The second is the ταπεινώθητε of 4:10, which the itinerary of v. 13 flatly contradicts and which v. 15 embodies: the man who says if the Lord wills has been brought low before the Lord, whether or not he uses the words.

One further connection is worth stating, since it is easily missed. The rich planners of 4:13-17 are not obviously the same people as the ἁμαρτωλοί and δίψυχοι of 4:8 or the πλούσιοι of 5:1-6, and James does not identify them. Whether 4:13-17 addresses members of the assembly or outsiders in prophetic apostrophe is contested, and the summons Ἄγε νῦν recurring at 5:1 (where the addressees are more plausibly outsiders) is the chief evidence on that side. The rendering settles nothing either way.

Proposed — pending reviewJames B. Adamson, The Epistle of James, New International Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1976)