Charles Ellicott Commentary James 5:4

"Behold, the hire of the laborers who mowed your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth out: and the cries of them that reaped have entered into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth." — James 5:4 (ASV)

Behold, the hire of the labourers.—Not merely the wrong of the poor, but the wages kept back from him by the miserly master, contrary to the merciful Jewish law (Leviticus 19:13), which permitted no delay in payment whatever (Malachi 3:5). And the indignant protest of the text is a swift witness also against the like-minded of this generation—whose God is self, whose religion political economy, and whose one great object in life is to buy in the cheapest market and sell in the dearest: as if for these ignoble purposes the Lord God had given them a brain and a soul.

The hire of the labourers . . . kept back by fraud, cries (out).—A question has arisen concerning the right position of the word translated “of,” or from you, in this clause; whether the withheld dues appeal “from the wronger to God,” or as the Authorized Version has it above, “the hire of the labourers of you kept back by fraud.” The balance of opinion seems to be with the latter.

Are entered into the ears of the Lord of sabaoth.—“A sublime and awe-inspiring picture” is in the mind of the Apostle. The Lord of Hosts, the name by which He is called, especially by the last of the prophets, Malachi, is seated as a judge on His throne, to hear the right; the charge is laid, the guilty called, the witnesses are heard: the cries of the wronged have entered into His ears:—

“The Lord of the Vineyard beholds afar;
The arm of His fury is bared to the war:
The day of His terrible wrath is at hand.”

It is the reflection of our own Bede that St. James thus speaks of the Lord of Sabaoth, or armies, to terrify those who suppose that the poor have no helpers . God’s majestic title is proclaimed, we may believe, by a Hebrew to Hebrews, for a warning against their darling sin of covetousness, and in hope that the vision of Isaiah (Isaiah 6:1–4) would move them to consider who and what the Lord of Hosts, of angels, of cherubim, of seraphim, might be when He makes inquisition for blood, forgetting not the complaint of the poor (Psalms 9:12).