Albert Barnes Commentary James 4:14

"whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. What is your life? For ye are a vapor, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away." — James 4:14 (ASV)

Whereas, ye know not what shall be on the morrow. They formed their plans as if they knew; the apostle says it could not be known. They had no means of ascertaining what would occur; whether they would live or die; whether they would be prospered, or would be overwhelmed with adversity.

Of the truth of the remark made by the apostle here, no one can doubt; but it is amazing how men act as if it were false. We have no power of penetrating the future so as to be able to determine what will occur in a single day or a single hour, and yet we are almost habitually forming our plans as if we saw with certainty all that is to happen.

The classic writings abound with beautiful expressions regarding the uncertainty of the future and the folly of forming our plans as if it were known to us. Many of those passages, some of them almost precisely in the words of James, may be seen in Grotius and Pricaeus, in the passage cited.

Such passages occur in Anacreon, Euripides, Menander, Seneca, Horace, and others, suggesting an obvious but much-neglected thought, that the future is to us all unknown. Man cannot penetrate it; and his plans of life should be formed in view of the possibility that his life may be cut off and all his plans fail, and consequently in constant preparation for a higher world.

For what is your life? All your plans must depend, of course, on the continuance of your life; but what a frail and uncertain thing that is! How transitory and evanescent as a basis on which to build any plans for the future! Who can calculate on the permanence of a vapour? Who can build any solid hopes on a mist?

It is even a vapour. The marginal reading is, For it is. The margin is the more correct rendering. The previous question had turned the attention to life as something peculiarly frail, and of such a nature that no calculation could be based on its permanence. This expression gives a reason for that, namely, that it is a mere vapour. The word vapour (ἀτμίς) means a mist, an exhalation, a smoke—such a vapour as we see ascending from a stream, or as lies on the mountainside in the morning, or as floats for a little time in the air, but which is dissipated by the rising sun, leaving not a trace behind. The comparison of life with a vapour is common and is as beautiful as it is just. Job says:

remember that my life is wind;
Mine eye shall no more see good. (Job 7:7)

So the Psalmist:

For he remembered that they were but flesh,
A wind that passeth away and that cometh not again. (Psalms 78:39)

(Compare 1 Chronicles 29:15; Job 14:10–11).

And then vanisheth away. It wholly disappears. Like the dissipated vapour, it is entirely gone. There is no remnant, no outline, nothing that reminds us that it ever was. So it is with life. Soon it disappears altogether. The works of art that man has made—the house that he has built or the book that he has written—remain for a little time, but the life has gone. There is nothing of it remaining, any more than there is of the vapour which in the morning climbed silently up the mountainside. The animating principle has vanished forever. On such a frail and evanescent thing, who can build any substantial hopes?

The textual reading is It is even or For it is, referring to a vapour, that appeareth for a little time .