John Calvin Commentary James 5:1

"Come now, ye rich, weep and howl for your miseries that are coming upon you." — James 5:1 (ASV)

Go to now. In my opinion, those who consider that James here exhorts the rich to repentance are mistaken. It seems to me to be a simple denunciation of God’s judgment, by which he intended to terrify them without giving them any hope of pardon, because everything he says tends only to despair.

He, therefore, does not address them in order to invite them to repentance. On the contrary, he is concerned for the faithful, so that they, hearing of the miserable and the rich, might not envy their fortune, and also, knowing that God would be the avenger of the wrongs they suffered, they might bear them with a calm and resigned mind.

But he does not speak of the rich indiscriminately, but of those who, immersed in pleasures and inflated with pride, thought of nothing but the world, and who, like inexhaustible gulfs, devoured everything. For by their tyranny, they oppressed others, as is apparent from the whole passage.

Weep and howl, or, Lament, howling. Repentance indeed has its weeping, but since it is mixed with consolation, it does not extend to howling. Then James intimates that the weight of God’s vengeance on the rich will be so horrible and severe that they will be compelled to break forth into howling, as if he had briefly said to them, “Woe to you!”

But this is a prophetic manner of speaking: the ungodly have the punishment that awaits them set before them, and they are represented as already enduring it. Thus, while they were now flattering themselves and promising themselves that the prosperity in which they thought themselves happy would be perpetual, he declared that the most grievous miseries were very near.