Albert Barnes Commentary James 5:8

"Be ye also patient; establish your hearts: for the coming of the Lord is at hand." — James 5:8 (ASV)

Be you also patient. As the farmer is. In due time, as he expects the return of the rain, so you may anticipate deliverance from your trials. Establish your hearts. Let your purposes and your faith be firm and unwavering. Do not become weary and fretful; but bear with constancy all that is laid upon you, until the time of your deliverance will come.

For the coming of the Lord draws near. (Compare to Revelation 22:10, 12, 20; see Barnes on 1 Corinthians 15:51).

It is clear, I think, from this passage, that the apostle expected that what he understood by "the coming of the Lord" would soon occur, for it was to be the means by which they would obtain deliverance from the trials they then endured .

Whether this means that He was soon to come to judgment, or to bring an end to the Jewish system and establish His kingdom on the earth, or that they would soon be removed by death, cannot be determined from the mere use of the language.

The most natural interpretation of the passage, and one which will accord well with the time when the epistle was written, is that the predicted time of the destruction of Jerusalem (Matthew 24) was near. There were already indications that this would soon occur, and there was a prevalent expectation among Christians that this event would be a release from many trials of persecution and would be followed by the establishment of the Redeemer's kingdom.

Perhaps many expected that the judgment would occur at that time and that the Savior would establish a personal reign on the earth. But the expectation of others might have been merely—what is indeed all that is necessarily implied in the predictions on the subject—that after that, there would be a rapid and extensive spread of the principles of the Christian religion in the world.

The destruction of Jerusalem and the temple would contribute to this by bringing an end to the whole system of Jewish types and sacrifices. It would do so by convincing Christians that there was not to be one central rallying point, thus destroying their lingering prejudices in favour of the Jewish mode of worship, and by scattering them abroad throughout the world to propagate the new religion. The epistle was written, it is supposed, some ten or twelve years before the destruction of Jerusalem (Introduction, section 3), and it is not improbable that there were already some indications of that approaching event.