This is the second and heaviest blow of the three-part indictment of the rich in vv. 2-3. James has already declared wealth rotted (σέσηπεν) and clothing moth-eaten (σητόβρωτα γέγονεν); now he says gold and silver are corroded through — of the three, the one that cannot literally happen. Grain rots and wool is eaten, but gold does not oxidize. That is the point: the prophetic perfect declares the verdict already executed, and the impossibility of the image forces the reader to hear a judgment rather than an inventory of losses.

Four things carry the verse. (i) The three perfects of vv. 2-3 are prophetic perfects — LXX-style declarations of a future so certain it is spoken as accomplished. (ii) The corrosion becomes a witness in court (εἰς μαρτύριον), turning the hoard into a prosecution exhibit; the same accusatory turn drives v. 4, where withheld wages cry out. (iii) The corrosion then eats their flesh, and the metaphor slips from the metal to the men who own it. (iv) The verse ends in a sentence whose punctuation is disputed and whose object is missing: ἐθησαυρίσατε with no accusative, hard against ἐν ἐσχάταις ἡμέραις. Whatever they stockpiled, they did it at the wrong point in the calendar of God.

The register throughout is prophetic woe-oracle, not moral advice. Nothing here is a call to repent; the sentence is passed. Translation decisions in this verse are mostly about refusing to relieve that pressure.

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

κατίωται is a NT hapax, from ἰός (‘rust, corrosion’) with perfective κατά-: not merely tarnished at the surface but eaten through. The compound is rare outside the biblical sphere; the cognate noun family (ἰός, ἰόω, κατίωσις) is at home in metalwork and in the LXX judgment oracles, above all Sir 29:10 (ἀπόλεσον ἀργύριον … καὶ μὴ ἰωθήτω ὑπὸ τὸν λίθον εἰς ἀπώλειαν — let it not rust away under a stone) and Ezek 24:6-12, the oracle of the corroded cauldron whose ἰός will not come off.

The physical difficulty is well known and is not a mistake: gold does not rust, and silver only tarnishes. Three explanations circulate and none is decisive. (i) Rhetorical: the impossible corrosion is the shock, precisely because gold’s incorruptibility was proverbial. (ii) Generalizing: the verb is applied loosely across the metals from silver, which does discolor, the way Sir 29:10 speaks of silver rusting. (iii) Eschatological: this is the destruction of the last day already spoken as done, not a chemical process at all.

Rendering: keep a corrosion-word with the κατά- force audible. ‘Rusted’ alone loses the perfective and, in modern English, sounds like iron; ‘tarnished’ is far too light and turns a judgment into a housekeeping complaint; ‘corroded through’ carries both. ‘Cankered’ is retained in liturgical register only.

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Proposed — pending reviewJames Hope Moulton and George Milligan, The Vocabulary of the Greek Testament Illustrated from the Papyri and Other Non-Literary Sources (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1930)

σέσηπεν … γέγονεν … κατίωται form a chain of three perfects, all with standing result. Two readings are live and both are ancient.

On the prophetic-perfect reading (the Hebrew qatal of certain future judgment, reproduced in LXX Greek and audible throughout Isaiah and Amos), James speaks the coming ruin as accomplished. The following futures (ἔσται, φάγεται) then unfold what the already-declared ruin will do. This is the majority modern reading and it fits the woe-oracle genre of vv. 1-6 exactly, where the ταλαιπωρίαι of v. 1 are explicitly ἐπερχόμεναι — still coming.

On the present-condition reading, the perfects report a state now obtaining: the hoard is already worthless in the only accounting that matters, and the futures describe the assize at which that worthlessness will be produced in evidence.

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

Two features of the phrase are marked. First, ὑμῶν attaches to χρυσός only and is not repeated with ἄργυρος — Greek economy, but worth noting because English idiom naturally supplies ‘your gold and your silver,’ which is a supplement. Second, the verb is singular (κατίωται) with two coordinated subjects. This is regular Greek: a verb may agree with the nearer subject, or two coordinated nouns forming a single conception may take a singular. Here the two metals are one hoard, which is why the following ἰός takes a plural genitive αὐτῶν and then a singular verb again.

The second article (ὁ ἄργυρος) marks the metals as two distinct items even while the verb treats them as one mass. Do not delete either article in the literal tier.

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ἰός is the same lexeme rendered ‘venom’ at Jas 3:8 (ἰοῦ θανατηφόρου). Greek carries two distinct senses under one form — snake venom and metallic verdigris/rust — and James uses both within three chapters. The glossary already fixes the policy: the referent determines the sense, and here κατίωται plus χρυσός and ἄργυρος fix it as corrosion.

But the two senses are not sealed off from each other in the reader’s ear. The corrosion here does what venom does: it eats flesh. Whether James intends the resonance is undecidable, but the note must record that the same word served for poison eleven verses earlier. What is excluded is building the pun into the rendering (‘their poison will eat your flesh’), which would adopt a reading and would also make nonsense of κατίωται.

Use the same English root for ἰός and κατίωται (‘corrosion’ / ‘corroded’) so that the noun is visibly the product of the verb — Greek has it that way and English can.

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εἰς μαρτύριον is Semitizing εἰς of predication, calquing Hebrew לְ: not motion or purpose but ‘as, for [the purpose of being]’ — the same construction as εἰς δικαιοσύνην at Gen 15:6 LXX, already fixed in the glossary as ‘as righteousness.’ The phrase itself is a set LXX/NT formula (Deut 31:26, the book of the law placed beside the ark εἰς μαρτύριον; Mark 6:11; Matt 8:4; 10:18; 24:14).

The live question is the dative ὑμῖν.

The reading text takes ‘against you,’ which the surrounding oracle strongly favors, but the literal tier keeps the bare dative and the alternative stands. Note that ‘against you’ is not what the Greek preposition says — it is an inference from the genre.

Render μαρτύριον ‘testimony’ rather than ‘evidence’ (too forensic-modern) or ‘proof’ (already fixed for ἔνδειξις).

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φάγεται is the suppletive future of ἐσθίω, deponent middle with no reflexive force. τὰς σάρκας is the LXX plural for the fleshy parts of a body — the idiom of Ps 26:2 LXX (τοῦ φαγεῖν τὰς σάρκας μου), Mic 3:3, and the birds’ feast of Rev 19:18, 21. English idiom prefers the singular ‘flesh’; the plural is retained in the literal and study tiers so the Semitic construction is visible, and its loss is recorded where reading tiers use the singular.

The standing σάρξ policy holds: one gloss ‘flesh’ across neutral, physical, and polemical uses. Here the referent is plainly the physical body of the rich man, so ‘bodies’ is tempting and excluded — σῶμα is a distinct lexeme, and the concordance link to the ethically loaded σάρξ elsewhere is data the reader should be able to trace.

The metaphor has slipped. Corrosion eats metal; here it eats them. The transfer is not sloppiness but the mechanism of the oracle: what they trusted turns and consumes them, exactly as the withheld μισθός of v. 4 turns and cries out. Retain the eating-verb; ‘consume,’ ‘destroy,’ and ‘devour your bodies’ each blunt or relocate it. ‘Devour’ is acceptable where the register wants weight.

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Two words, and the whole shape of the sentence’s end turns on where they attach. Greek manuscripts carry no punctuation, so the choice is editorial in every printed edition, NA28 included.

The case of πῦρ is no help: nominative and accusative are identical for a neuter noun, and either construal yields a legitimate elliptical comparison. This apparatus follows NA28’s punctuation in the smooth text only to the extent of setting ὡς πῦρ close to both clauses; the modern rendering above places it with φάγεται for English readability, and the literal tier places it forward with ἐθησαυρίσατε. Both are printed deliberately, and the reader should see that neither is settled.

What is excluded is any rendering that hides the seam — e.g. paraphrasing to ‘you have hoarded wealth that will burn,’ which supplies both an object and a fate.

Built onna28 · metzger-tc · bdf

Proposed — pending reviewJoseph B. Mayor, The Epistle of St. James: The Greek Text with Introduction, Notes and Comments, 3rd ed. (London: Macmillan, 1913)

θησαυρίζω (from θησαυρός, ‘treasury, store’) means to lay up in store. It is not intrinsically pejorative — Paul uses it of parents providing for children (2 Cor 12:14) and of the collection (1 Cor 16:2) — so the charge here comes from the context, not from the lexeme.

The governing fact is that the object is unexpressed. Greek permits the verb absolutely, and James withholds the accusative. Every English version that supplies one (‘you have hoarded wealth,’ ‘you have laid up treasure for the last days,’ ‘you have stored up judgment’) is filling a blank. Two supplements are live: the wealth just described (vv. 2-3a), or — reading ὡς πῦρ forward — the fire itself. A third construal, ‘you stored up wrath’ on the model of Rom 2:5 (θησαυρίζεις σεαυτῷ ὀργήν), is attractive but requires importing a noun from another author.

Policy: supply no object in the reading text. English can carry the verb absolutely — ‘you stored up treasure’ uses the cognate noun the verb already contains, which is the least additive option available.

‘Hoard’ is excluded from the reading text: it builds the verdict into the verb, and per §5 the indictment is delivered by the sentence, not smuggled into the gloss.

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Anarthrous, and this is the crux. The fixed eschatological formula in Jewish Greek and the NT is articular or otherwise definite: ἐν ταῖς ἐσχάταις ἡμέραις (Acts 2:17 = Joel 3:1 LXX; 2 Tim 3:1), ἐπʼ ἐσχάτου τῶν ἡμερῶν (Heb 1:2; 2 Pet 3:3). James writes neither. A significant part of the tradition supplies the article, which is exactly the direction of scribal clarification to be avoided — the harder anarthrous text stands.

Three construals:

The rendering keeps ‘in the last days’ with the supplied article bracketed in the literal tier, and the em dash in the smooth text preserves the abruptness of the clause-final placement, which is where the sentence lands. No temporal softening (‘in these last days,’ ‘in the closing days of the age’) may be introduced; and per §9 the phrase names a position within the two-age scheme, not a chronological countdown.

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The verse is stable in its substance; three points deserve record.

ἐν ἐσχάταις ἡμέραις. Part of the tradition reads ἐν ἐσχάταις ἡμέραις with the article supplied (ἐν ταῖς ἐσχάταις ἡμέραις), harmonizing to the standard eschatological formula (Acts 2:17; 2 Tim 3:1). The anarthrous reading is the harder and is printed. This is the one variant with exegetical consequence, since it bears on whether James is naming a known period or characterizing one.

Punctuation before ὡς πῦρ. Not a variant in the manuscripts at all, since the majuscules are unpunctuated. NA28 prints a high point before ὡς πῦρ; other editions and the versional traditions divide differently. This must be reported as editorial judgment, never as manuscript evidence — the same discipline this corpus applies at Gal 5:11 (ἄρα/ἆρα), Gal 6:15 (τι/τί), and Jas 1:19 (Ἴστε).

Orthography. κατίωται is spelled variously in the minuscules (κατιῶται and the like); the variation is phonetic and carries no weight.

Metzger’s committee records no substantive difficulty here; the verse’s problems are exegetical and punctuational rather than text-critical.

Built onna28 · metzger-tc

The verse is built out of prophetic materials, none of them quoted verbatim.

Ezekiel 24:6-12 supplies the corroded-metal oracle: the cauldron whose ἰός will not come off, set on the fire so that the corrosion may be consumed. James’s κατίωται stands in that field.

Sirach 29:10 is the closest verbal parallel: ‘Lose your silver for the sake of a brother and a friend, and do not let it rust away under a stone to no purpose.’ Sirach already speaks of silver rusting, and already treats the rust as the mark of wealth withheld from a neighbor rather than as chemistry.

Judith 16:17 supplies the flesh-eating: πῦρ καὶ σκώληκες εἰς σάρκας αὐτῶν, of the nations at the day of judgment — fire and worms into their flesh.

Amos 5-6 and Isaiah 5:8-10 supply the genre: the woe against those who stockpile while the poor go unpaid. James 5:4’s Κύριος Σαβαώθ, a transliterated LXX title he uses nowhere else, confirms that he is writing inside this register deliberately.

The conclusion for translation is that this verse should not read like ethical advice with strong adjectives. It should read like Amos.

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

The Fathers read the corrosion as accusation rather than as loss. The Greek catena tradition on James takes εἰς μαρτύριον as prosecution: the rust is produced in evidence because the metal was never spent, and its untouched, corroded state is itself the charge. What condemns is not that they had gold but that the gold sat long enough to corrode.

The Latin tradition, following the Vulgate’s aerugo eorum in testimonium vobis erit et manducabit carnes vestras sicut ignis, attaches sicut ignis backward with the eating — which is why the whole Western versional stream reads ‘eat your flesh as it were fire’ and the forward attachment to ἐθησαυρίσατε has been comparatively invisible in English. That is reception, not evidence (§11), and it should not be allowed to settle the punctuation question.

The patristic emphasis on unspent wealth as itself the crime is worth registering, because it is not a moralizing addition: it is what κατίωται asserts. Metal in circulation does not corrode.

Proposed — pending reviewGerald Bray, ed., James, 1-2 Peter, 1-3 John, Jude, Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture: New Testament 11 (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2000)