James 4

World English Bible 119 include this book

1 Where do wars and fightings among you come from? Don’t they come from your pleasures that war in your members?

2 You lust, and don’t have. You murder and covet, and can’t obtain. You fight and make war. You don’t have, because you don’t ask.

3 You ask, and don’t receive, because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your pleasures.

4 You adulterers and adulteresses, don’t you know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.

5 Or do you think that the Scripture says in vain, “The Spirit who lives in us yearns jealously”?

6 But he gives more grace. Therefore it says, “God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble.”

7 Be subject therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.

8 Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners. Purify your hearts, you double-minded.

9 Lament, mourn, and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom.

10 Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and he will exalt you.

11 Don’t speak against one another, brothers. He who speaks against a brother and judges his brother, speaks against the law and judges the law. But if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law but a judge.

12 Only one is the lawgiver, who is able to save and to destroy. But who are you to judge another?

13 Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow let’s go into this city and spend a year there, trade, and make a profit.”

14 Yet you don’t know what your life will be like tomorrow. For what is your life? For you are a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away.

15 For you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will both live, and do this or that.”

16 But now you glory in your boasting. All such boasting is evil.

17 To him therefore who knows to do good and doesn’t do it, to him it is sin.

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Where this was written

Not known unknown Traditionally associated with Jerusalem, but the letter gives no indication.

When this was written

Traditions differ. Each position is shown rather than one asserted as settled.

Traditional: 45 AD–62 AD James, the brother of Jesus
Often held to be the earliest New Testament writing, before the Jerusalem council.
Critical: 80 AD–100 AD Written in James' name
The polished Greek and the engagement with a settled Pauline vocabulary suggest a later hand.

Who ruled Rome

Emperors reigning while this book is dated. Where the traditions differ, they often fall under different rulers.

Critical

Titus 79 AD–81 AD
Commanded the army that destroyed the Jerusalem temple before becoming emperor.
Domitian 81 AD–96 AD
An autocratic reign under which Revelation is traditionally placed, on the testimony of Irenaeus.
Nerva 96 AD–98 AD
A brief reign that eased the pressures of Domitian's last years.
Trajan 98 AD–117 AD
His correspondence with Pliny the Younger is the earliest surviving statement of official Roman policy toward Christians.

Traditional

Claudius 41 AD–54 AD
Expelled Jews from Rome, which is why Priscilla and Aquila were in Corinth when Paul met them.
Nero 54 AD–68 AD
The fire of Rome in 64 was followed by the first state persecution of Christians. Paul and Peter are traditionally martyred in this reign.

Elsewhere in the world

Events overlapping the period this book is dated to (45 AD–100 AD).

1070 BC–350 AD The kingdom of Kush Africa
A Nubian power on the upper Nile that ruled Egypt itself as its twenty-fifth dynasty.
500 BC–500 AD The Nazca lines South America
Vast figures drawn on the Peruvian desert, visible only from the surrounding hills.
206 BC–220 AD The Han dynasty China
Four centuries of Chinese rule contemporary with the whole of Roman expansion.
150 BC–100 AD Roman concrete and the aqueducts Rome
Hydraulic concrete let Rome build harbours, domes and aqueducts that still stand.
100 BC–550 AD Teotihuacan Mesoamerica
A city of perhaps a hundred thousand people in the valley of Mexico, with monumental pyramids.
43 AD–84 AD Rome conquers Britain Britain
Claudius invaded and the province was gradually extended to the Scottish lowlands.
66 AD–73 AD First Jewish–Roman war Levant
Revolt against Rome ending in the destruction of the Jerusalem temple in AD 70 — the decisive rupture in Second Temple Judaism.
27 BC–100 AD Roman road and sea network matures Rome
Consolidated roads, harbours and suppressed piracy made long-distance travel unusually safe, a precondition for the rapid spread of early Christian communities.

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