Two aorist imperatives and a promise, hinged on the Proverbs citation of v. 6. Because God opposes the arrogant but gives grace to the lowly, two things follow: order yourselves under God, and take up position against the devil. The sentence is built as a mirror. God is the one to whom you submit; the devil is the one against whom you stand. The same military-positional vocabulary runs through both halves and back into v. 6: God ἀντιτάσσεται the arrogant (‘draws himself up against’), the readers are to ὑποταγῆναι to God (‘be ordered under’) and ἀντιστῆναι to the devil (‘stand opposite’). Three τάσσ-/στη- words in two verses. James is drawing a battle line and telling his readers which side of it to occupy.

This is the first of ten imperatives that run from v. 7 to v. 10 — the densest concentration of commands in the letter. They are not a random pile: they open with position (submit, resist), move to approach (draw near, cleanse, purify), then to mourning (be wretched, grieve, weep), and close with the promise that inverts the opening (ταπεινώθητε … ὑψώσει, answering ταπεινοῖς … δίδωσιν χάριν of v. 6). Verse 7 is the entry point.

Two things the verse is regularly made to say and does not. It does not say ‘resist the devil’s temptations’ — the object is a person, not a set of enticements. And it does not promise permanent riddance; φεύξεται is a flight, and Luke 4:13 (ἄχρι καιροῦ) shows what the early tradition expected of such flights.

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

οὖν is inferential and its scope matters. The nearest antecedent is the Prov 3:34 quotation of v. 6 (Ὁ θεὸς ὑπερηφάνοις ἀντιτάσσεται ταπεινοῖς δὲ δίδωσιν χάριν), and the imperatives spell out what it is to be among the ταπεινοί rather than the ὑπερήφανοι. On a wider reading it draws on the whole indictment of vv. 1-6. Either way the particle is load-bearing and must be rendered (§10); a bare ‘therefore’ is thin, ‘so then’ carries both the inference and the discourse turn.

δέ between the two imperatives is the more delicate question. Three readings are live:

• Mildly adversative — the shift of addressee is the point: to God, submission; to the devil, resistance. This is the reading the mirror-structure favors, and it is what the reading text adopts.
• Simple continuative — δέ as connective only, joining a second command to a first (the sense already fixed at Jas 1:15).
• Correlative — some read the pair as answering each other in a μέν-less correlation.

What is not open is dropping it. The Byzantine tradition and much of the English tradition render the two imperatives asyndetically (‘Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil’), and the loss is real: it turns one sentence with an internal pivot into two free-standing commands, and the pivot is where the theology sits. You are not neutral between the two parties; the posture you take toward the one determines the posture you take toward the other.

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

ὑποτάσσω is military-administrative: ordering under, placing in rank beneath. The corpus gloss is already fixed as ‘subject / subordinate’, and the aorist passive imperative addressed to persons is already fixed as functionally middle — self-ordering under an established order (1 Pet 2:13; 3:1; 5:5; Eph 5:21).

The voice question deserves a word, because the English tradition’s ‘submit yourselves’ (Vulgate subditi ergo estote Deo) overtranslates and the flat passive ‘be subjected’ undertranslates. Greek has a genuine passive form here doing genuinely middle work, and the reason matters: ὑποτάσσομαι does not name the invention of a hierarchy but the recognition of one. God’s rank is not conferred by the reader’s compliance. What the imperative asks is that the reader take the place that already belongs to him.

The τάσσ- root is what binds the verse to what precedes. God ἀντιτάσσεται (v. 6) — draws himself up in battle order against — the arrogant. The remedy is not to array oneself better but to get out of the line of battle entirely by taking rank underneath. Any English rendering that drops the ordering-image (‘yield to God’, ‘give in to God’) severs that.

Aorist is complexive, not punctiliar: the act taken as a whole. It does not mean a single decisive submission at a moment in time as against a habit, and nothing about the addressees’ spiritual biography can be inferred from the tense.

ἀνθίστημι in the second aorist is intransitive and positional: ἀντί + ἵστημι, to stand opposite. The picture is two parties drawn up facing each other — armies (Josh 1:5 LXX; Deut 7:24), litigants, an opponent in debate (Acts 6:10; 2 Tim 3:8), Paul confronting Peter to his face (Gal 2:11).

Three distinctions the English must preserve:

• Against ἀντίκειμαι (‘be set against’, already fixed at Phil 1:28): that names the resulting state of standing opposed; ἀνθίστημι names the act of taking the position.
• Against στήκω (‘stand firm / hold one’s ground’, fixed at Phil 4:1; Gal 5:1): that is holding ground already occupied; this is assuming it.
• Against ὑπομένω (‘endure’, fixed at Jas 1:3, 12): that is remaining under pressure; this is facing an adversary.

‘Resist’ is permitted in smooth registers and is the traditional English (Vulgate resistite), but in modern usage it has drifted toward passive endurance of pressure — which is precisely ὑπομένω, a word James uses twice in ch. 1 and does not use here. ‘Take your stand against’ keeps the posture visible. ‘Oppose’ abstracts it away; ‘fight’ imports a combat the verb does not name.

The aorist is ingressive: assume the position. Not a protracted campaign — the verse gives no combat at all, only a stance and a flight.

Proposed — pending reviewHenry George Liddell and Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, rev. Henry Stuart Jones, 9th ed. with revised supplement, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996

διάβολος is the verbal adjective of διαβάλλω, ‘bring a charge against, slander’, and it is the LXX equivalent of הַשָּׂטָן in Job 1-2, Zech 3:1-2, and 1 Chr 21:1. The accusation-sense is not spent in the first century — the NT still uses the word non-titularly for ‘slanderous’ (1 Tim 3:11; 2 Tim 3:3; Titus 2:3).

That matters here more than usual, because of what stands four verses later. James’s next paragraph forbids καταλαλεῖν ἀλλήλων (4:11) — speaking against one another — and the letter’s whole argument from 3:1 forward has been about the tongue. To be told to stand against ὁ διάβολος, the Slanderer, immediately before being forbidden to slander, is not accidental. The reading text keeps ‘devil’, which is required (the article plus the surrounding personal verbs make it titular), but the literal tier records ‘slanderer’ so the connection stays recoverable.

James does not use Σατανᾶς anywhere, and the word must not be substituted. Nor may later demonological content be read in (§9): what the verse asserts is that a personal adversary flees before a stance taken, and nothing about mechanism, hierarchy, or ritual.

The dative is the regular complement of ἀνθίστημι, as of ὑποτάσσω in the first clause. The two datives are parallel, which is part of the mirror; English ‘to God’ and ‘against the devil’ obscures the formal symmetry, but the alternative — ‘against God’ — is impossible, so the note carries what the rendering cannot.

Imperative + καί + future indicative is a Semitizing construction well established in the LXX and in Koine: the future is not a second command but the promised consequence of obeying the first. The corpus has already fixed the analogous imperative + καί + οὐ μή at Gal 5:16, and the same policy applies here. Render the plain ‘and’ — this preserves the coordination James wrote and lets the consequential force be heard, whereas ‘then he will flee’ or ‘so that he will flee’ over-specifies. Never dropped (§10).

The construction runs three times in a row through vv. 7-8, 10: ἀντίστητε … καὶ φεύξεται, ἐγγίσατε … καὶ ἐγγιεῖ, ταπεινώθητε … καὶ ὑψώσει. Three commands, three promises, one pattern. English must reproduce all three with the same shape or the pattern disappears.

φεύγω in the future middle is the ordinary verb of flight — running away from danger or pursuit (Matt 2:13; 8:33; John 10:5, 12; Rev 12:6). Retain a flight-verb: ‘will leave you’, ‘will give up’, and ‘will be defeated’ all name an outcome and discard the running.

ἀπό + gen is separation, never agency (standing policy). ‘Flee from you’ is right; the elision ἀφʼ before the rough breathing of ὑμῶν is orthographic and carries no weight.

The imperatives hang on Prov 3:34 LXX, quoted verbatim at Jas 4:6 with θεός substituted for the LXX’s κύριος: κύριος ὑπερηφάνοις ἀντιτάσσεται, ταπεινοῖς δὲ δίδωσιν χάριν. The same quotation, with the same θεός substitution, appears at 1 Pet 5:5 — and there too it is immediately followed by ταπεινώθητε (5:6), a command about anxiety (5:7), and then ἀντίστητε … τῷ διαβόλῳ (5:9). The overlap of quotation, imperatives, and adversary across two independent letters is one of the more striking data points in NT source-criticism.

What the substrate contributes exegetically: ἀντιτάσσεται in the quotation and ἀντίστητε in v. 7 are not the same verb but are in the same domain, and the τάσσ-/στη- play is what makes vv. 6-7 one argument. God draws up against the arrogant; the reader is to draw up against the devil. The arrogant man finds himself facing God; the lowly man finds himself standing beside him.

Per §1 the Greek κύριος of the LXX is not converted to YHWH, and in any case James has written θεός. The Hebrew substrate of Prov 3:34 (יְהוָה absent — MT has לַלֵּצִים הוּא־יָלִיץ) differs from the LXX at the crucial point, and James is quoting the Greek.

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

The Greek commentators read the verse as one argument in two halves rather than two detached maxims. The characteristic patristic observation is the asymmetry of the two datives: the same posture cannot be taken toward both parties, and the one determines the other. Submission to God is what makes resistance to the devil possible; resistance attempted from any other footing is arrogance, which v. 6 has just placed on the wrong side of the battle line.

A second common patristic emphasis is the modesty of the promise as stated. Nothing in the verse describes a struggle. There is no weapon, no formula, no exorcism. There is a stance and a flight — which the Fathers read as testimony to the weakness of the adversary before one who is rightly positioned rather than to the strength of the one resisting.

The Latin tradition’s Subditi ergo estote Deo; resistite autem diabolo, et fugiet a vobis preserves the autem (δέ) that most English versions drop, and is on this point a better guide than the reception history in English.

Proposed — pending reviewPatrick J. Hartin, James, Sacra Pagina 14, Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 2003

The verse is textually stable in the critical tradition. Two items worth recording:

• δέ after ἀντίστητε is read by the major uncials and by NA28 without brackets. Its omission in part of the later tradition, and its consistent non-representation in the English versions, is a smoothing toward two independent imperatives; the harder reading with the connective is original and the direction of change is clear.
• Some later witnesses expand ἀφʼ ὑμῶν or add clarifying material; these are secondary and follow the general Byzantine tendency to fill out imperative-plus-promise constructions.

Nothing here touches the sense. The interpretive weight of the verse sits in the voice of ὑποτάγητε, the force of δέ, and the scope of the future — none of which is a manuscript question.