James Chapter 5 verse 12 Holy Bible

Pulpit Commentary

Pulpit CommentaryVerse 12. - Exhortation against swearing, founded on our Lord's teaching in the sermon on the mount, Matthew 5:33-37 - a passage which was evidently present to St. James's thoughts. He, like his Master, "lays down rules and maxims and principles without specifying the limitations and exceptions." The sermon on the mount, as interpreted by our Lord's own actions, is a clear witness that this formed Ms method of teaching. If, then, his words do not touch the case of oaths solemnly tendered to men in a court of justice (and his own acceptance of an adjuration on his trial shows that they do not), no more do St. James's. Both our Lord and his apostle had probably in view "only those profane adjurations with which men who have no deep-seated fear of God garnish their common talk" (see Sadler's 'Commentary on St. Matthew,' p. 66). The special oaths mentioned were those in vogue among the Jews, and just the very ones which our Lord himself had specified (comp. Lightfoot's 'Horae Hebraicae,' vol. 2. p. 127, edit. Gandell). On the need of such teaching as this, see Thomson's 'Land and the Book,' p. 190: "This people are fearfully profane. Everybody curses and swears when in a passion. No people that I have ever known can compare with these Orientals for profaneness in the use of the names and attributes of God. The evil habit seems inveterate and universal. When Peter, therefore, 'began to curse and to swear' on that dismal night of temptation, we are not to suppose that it was something foreign to his former habits. He merely relapsed, under high excitement, into what, as a sailor and a fisherman, he had been accustomed to all his life. The people now use the very same sort of oaths that are mentioned and condemned by our Lord. They swear by the head, by their life, by heaven, by the temple, or what is in its place, the church. The forms of cursing and swearing, however, are almost infinite, and fall on the pained ear all day long." So, too, Aben Ezra speaks of the practice of swearing as almost universal in his day, so that he says, "men swear daily countless times, and then swear that they have not sworn!" With regard to the translation of the verse, two renderings are possible: (1) that of the A.V. and of the R.V. (text), "Let your yea be yea, and your nay, nay." (2) That of the R.V. margin, "Let yours be the yea, yea, and the nay, nay;" viz. those enjoined by our Lord (Matthew 5:37), "Let your communication be Yea, yea; Nay, nay; for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil." On behalf of this latter rendering, may be pleaded (a) the clearness of the reference to our Lord's teaching; and . . .

Ellicott's Commentary

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers(12) The question of the lawfulness of oaths has oftentimes perplexed alike the doctors of the Church and its simpler hearers of God's word. The text, taken as it stands, would support the views of the Essenes, and many of the Paulicians, and other ancient sectaries. With equal force it might be urged by the followers of Peter Waldo, or the Unitas Fratrum (the Moravians), or the Society of Friends.Swear not.--The words are put quite distinctly in Greek and English--neither by the heaven, nor by the earth. And it sounds like special pleading, worthy of a rabbi, to hear such a divine as Huther say that "swearing by the name of God is not mentioned," nor accordingly is such an oath prohibited. "We must not imagine," he continues (and his argument had best be fairly given), "that this is included in the last member of the clause, the Apostle evidently intending by it (i.e., 'neither by any other oath') to point only at certain formulae, of which several are mentioned in Matthew 5:34-37. Had he intended to forbid swearing by the name of God he would most certainly have mentioned it expressly; for not only is it in the Law, in contradistinction to other oaths, commanded (see Deuteronomy 6:13; Deuteronomy 10:20; Psalm 63:11), but in the prophets is announced as a token of the future turning of men to God" (Isaiah 65:16; Jeremiah 12:16; Jeremiah 23:7-8). There were, we learn, many subtle distinctions in Jewish oaths; and the unlucky foreigner who trusted in an apparently firm one, too often found out his mistake. Certainly all such subterfuges are utterly condemned; and further, every word which breaks the letter or spirit of God's Third Commandment. As to the higher judicial forms of oaths, remembering that our Lord answered such before Caiaphas (Matthew 26:63-64), we can fearlessly conclude, with the 39th Article of Religion, that "a man may swear, when the magistrate requireth, in a cause of faith and charity, so it be done according to the prophet's teaching--in justice, judgment, and truth." . . .