24-12-02

Campbell Scholars Seminar

THE CLAMOR OF THE SALARY

HUNGER FOR JUSTICE IN ARGENTINA, AND JAMES 5:1-6

Cristina Conti

Situation in Argentina during the crisis in 2002

Argentina is undergoing the worst crisis in its

entire history. Aged people, who lived through the

economic depression of the ‘30s, say they have

never seen what it is happening now.

About 53 % of the population is below the

poverty line. That means they cannot satisfy their

basic needs. The rate of unemployment is 24%. The

unemployed are part of the people who are below the

poverty line, but their condition is even worse. As

the Argentine welfare state is dismantled, and

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there is no unemployment insurance, those who have

lost their jobs have nothing at all.

Only a privileged 10 % owns most of the wealth,

the land, and the means of production. The rest,

about 36 % is divided into a shrinking middle class

and an ever-growing low class that still manages to

survive

Causes of the crisis:

Corruption inside the country (government,

authorities, elites).

Greed of the transnational corporations. They

are now the real power behind the political

power 1.

Lack of humanity of the international agencies

(namely IMF and World Bank).

External debt that has really been paid over

and over, but will never be paid off, because

the payments hardly cover the usurious interest

1 William T. Cavanaugh, “The World in a Wafer: A Geography of the Eucharist as Resistance to Globalization”, Modern Theology 152 (1999) 181-196.

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rates. The IMF loans actually have to be used

mostly for paying these rates.

International politics of the First World and

all its obscure reasons for helping some

countries while letting others sink.

Outcome of all this:

Crime has risen as never before, especially in

and around the cities. Buenos Aires, which used

to be one of the safest big cities in the world,

has now become a dangerous place to live.

The crops of 2002 have been the best in many

years. This fact and the devaluation of the

Argentine peso have allowed food producers to

make big profits in exportation. But in spite

of this year’s great production of food, four

children died of hunger in the province where

sugar cane is grown.

Even for many children who do not die of

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hunger, the prospect is not too bright. Masses

of them will never reach their full potential,

because the lack of sufficient food has damaged

their brains for life.

Most families of the unemployed have to live on

recycling items from the garbage. These are the

honest people who look for an honest way to

survive. The not so honest have become

criminals: robbers, drug dealers, pickpockets,

kidnappers, and even people who murder for the

“pleasure” of murdering. In those criminal

circles, for instance, murdering policemen has

become a status symbol, like the signature of

the notorious criminal.

In later times, a new phenomenon has emerged

out of the crisis. You can see men and women,

who wear middle-class clothes, searching for

food and recyclables in the garbage. They are

people who belonged to the middle-class but

have lost their jobs and will not be able to

find others until the situation of the country

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gets better. And, according to analysts, it

will take a good number of years for Argentina

to recover.

Positive outcome:

There has been a remarkable rise of solidarity

among Argentines, which is evident even among the

former individualistic inhabitants of Buenos Aires.

Everybody knows that any misfortune –like losing a

job, or being unable to pay the debts, or the

deepening of the crisis– may leave them as

impoverished as any of the poorest members of the

Argentine society. They feel that they are all in

the same boat, and that unless they help one

another, everything will get even worse.

In the winter following the onset of the crisis

–which was unusually cold– the left-winged

mayor of Buenos Aires issued a campaign to

shelter the ever-growing number of homeless

people. The motto, which could be seen in signs

all over the city, was “Es un invierno muy frío; que

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nadie duerma en la calle” (This is a very cold

winter, nobody should sleep in the street). The

homeless were invited to go and live in modest

small hotels that were paid by the city

government.

The work of the scavengers –cirujas in the local

slang– is now considered a useful ecological

contribution and everybody is trying to help

them. Whole neighborhoods, especially the most

exclusive, have agreed on using two different

bags for trash: the green one (notice the

ecological implication of the color) should be

used for cardboard, tin, glass, and other

recyclables. When these neighbors are

discarding food that is still in good

condition, they wrap it in clean paper or

plastic with a sign that says that the food is

apt to be eaten. The cirujas then have seen their

work made easier by the solidarity of other

people.

In downtown Buenos Aires, some volunteer women

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created a new child-care program for the

children of the scavengers. These kids had to

be up and in the open until their parents

finished their work of salvaging recyclables

from the garbage; only then were they and their

families able to return home, usually after 2

in the morning. Now these children can be in a

warm place, eat properly, and be under the

loving care of these women, who even try to

make up for the absenteeism from school of many

of the children.

Shared aims resulted in the creation of new

agencies of solidarity, like barter groups,

where people who are now unemployed or

underpaid –and therefore virtually outside the

system– can do without the use of money. They

can exchange what they need –food, clothing or

whatever– for hours of work, homemade articles,

or something they do not need much.

Cooperatives are also another example of shared

aims. The workers of many manufacturing plants

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that were about to be closed by their owners

organized themselves as cooperatives to keep

the plants operating. Hence they managed to

retain their occupations and become independent

workers at the same time.

There are also widespread forms of passive

resistance, like pickets and cacerolazos.

Cacerolazos are perhaps more widely known through

the media. It is a form of noisy passive

resistance performed by the urban middle-

classes, who have seen their way of life

endangered by unemployment and inflation, and

whose savings have been frozen by the banks

with the complicity of the government. It

consists on protest marches of people armed

with pots and pans that are incessantly beaten

in order to produce a strident kind of

demonstration. The origin of such practice is

largely debated. Some say it originated in

Chile during the ‘70s, others say it began much

earlier. Whatever its history may be, this

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noisy protest was extensively used in South

America during the military regimes of the ‘70s

and ‘80s, when people banged their pots and

pans from their homes, not daring to go out on

the streets. In the present democracy,

imperfect as it may be, people can have

marching cacerolazos that converge as a rule from

different parts of the cities into a gathering

place, which in Buenos Aires is usually the

famous Plaza de Mayo.

Pickets are set up by groups of people (called

piqueteros), who block bridges, roads or streets

to demand for their rights and their needs.

This form of passive resistance is more popular

among the low classes and the unemployed,

especially in the outskirts of the big cities.

But it is not unusual, during protest marches,

to hear people chanting a new slogan: “Piquete y

cacerola; la lucha es una sola” (Picket and pan, the

struggle is only one). The low class of the

pickets and the middle class of the cacerolazos

are remarkably united in solidarity, helping

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each other to cope with the crisis.

An incident that happened at the beginning of

October 2002 is a good example of the new

solidarity of the Argentines. Sixty Mapuche

native families who live in a reserve at the

foot of the Chapelco mountain –that has an

exclusive ski complex at the top– organized a

picket cutting the route that leads to the

complex on the eve of an international

snowboard competition. After years of unheard

claims, they were demanding that the sewers of

the ski complex stopped contaminating the

drinking water of their reserve. Five thousand

tourists and participants were stuck on the

route, but they got off their expensive cars

and joined the picket, taking the side of the

natives. Risking their jobs, the employees of

the complex came down and joined the natives

and the tourists. In the end, a female judge

decreed the provisional closing of the ski

complex and ordered the owners to repair the

sewers. The Mapuches will be able to drink

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clean water again.

Even in the midst of the worst crisis, there are

signs of hope. Like a popular Argentine song puts

it: “Who said that everything is lost? I’m coming

to offer my heart.”

What the Bible has to say

The Bible is by no means indifferent to the

plight of the poor and the powerless. On the

contrary, one of the axis-of-meaning that run from

Genesis to Revelation is precisely God’s concern

for all those who are poor, weak and despised by

society at large. Some textual references will be

enough to prove this point; those who are

interested in deepening the topic can refer to a

concordance.

In the story of Jacob and Laban (Gen 29-31), God

prospers the exploited young man at the expense of

his oppressive father-in-law. Within the same

story, Leah, the unloved wife of Jacob, is blessed

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with children, while the favorite wife is left

barren for a long time (Gen 29:30-35). In the story

of Joseph (Gen 37 and 39-48), God protects a boy

sold into slavery and, through him, his whole

family is preserved from the famine. The issue of

physical hunger appears in this story in all its

magnitude. The well-known story of the book of

Exodus, relates how God liberates and chooses a

slave nation to be God’s people.

The Mosaic Law has plenty of regulations that

protect the powerless: laws that deal with

slavery2; rules concerning aliens, widows, and

orphans3; those that protect women4; those that

protect the poor and the powerless5.

Of course, the prophets have always been the

defenders of the people without power: Elijah

reproaches Ahab for his greed for Naboth’s vineyard

(1 Kgs 21:17-29); Isaiah shows his concern for the

powerless and the oppressed6; so does Ezekiel

(22:7, 29); Amos condemns the covetousness of the

2 Exod 21:1-11; Deut 15:12-18; 23:15. 3 Exod 22:21-24; 23:9; Lev 19:33-34; Deut 24:17-22; 27:19.4 Exod 21:7-11; 22:16-17; Lev 19:29; 27:1-11; Deut 21:10-14.5 Exod 25-27; 23:1-3, 6-8; Lev 19:9-10, 13-16; Deut 15:7-11; 24:12-15.6 Isa 1.16-17, 23; 3:14-15; 5:8-10, 23; 10:1-4; 58:3, 7, 10.

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rich who oppress the poor (Amos 4:1; 8:4-8). The

list of texts is endless.

The Christian Testament is certainly concerned

with this issue as well. Matthew shows that the

determining factor in the final judgment will be

the love expressed in helping those in need (Matt

25: 31-46); in the gospel of Mark, Jesus denounces

the scribes who devour widows’ houses (Mark 12:38-

40); Luke’s Magnificat sings to the reversal of

fortunes in favor of the poor (Luke 1:52-53); Jesus

opening speech at Nazareth (Luke 4:18) draws its

liberating words from Isaiah; the beatitudes in

Luke have a definite social interest (6:20-21); the

first church in Jerusalem was a community of equals

(Acts 2:44-47; 4:32-37); some churches helped other

churches in need (2 Cor 8–9); the church took care

of its destitute widows (1 Tim 5:3-16); the rich

are advised to be generous (1 Tim 6:17-19); James

is perhaps the book that shows a greater concern

for the poor (Jas 1:9-11: 1:27; 2:1-17; 5:1-6).

The Greek language has two words for what we

call the poor: pénētes and ptōchoí. The first applies

to the people who have to work to make a living,

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but are above the level of subsistence. They may be

hired laborers, craftsmen, or might even own a

small piece of land and have some savings, but they

still have to earn their living7.

The ptōchoí, on the other hand, have no means of

life. They are forced to live on other people’s

charity8. The ptōchoí are those poor that Jesus was

always talking about, and that he declared blessed

because the Kingdom of God belonged to them (Luke

6:20). In our times, they are the people who are

below the poverty line, the unemployed, the

scavengers, the homeless, the children who live in

the streets of our big cities . . .

The modern day pénētes, are those who belong to

the low and working classes. They may not live too

well, but they still have a job and at least can

make ends meet.

God’s blessing will come when people do God’s will

(Isaiah 58)7 Friedrich Hauck, Art. “pénēs, penichrós”, TDNT, 37-41.8 F. Hauck, Ernst Bammel, Art. “ptōchós, ptōcheía, ptōcheúō”, TDNT, 886-915.

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The chapter is elaborated according to a precise

scheme:

A Oracle of reproach (vv. 1-5)

a Conditions to please Yahweh (vv. 6-7)

b Blessings (vv. 8-9a)

X a’ Conditions to please Yahweh (vv. 9b-

10a)

b’ Blessings (vv.10b-12)

a” Conditions to please Yahweh (v. 13)

b” Blessings (v.14abc)

A’ Oracle of blessing (v. 14d)

We find thus in the center an ab/ab/ab

parallelism framed by two oracles from God, the

first (A) reproaching the people for their lack of

justice, the second (A’) with a promise of blessing

if they do Yahweh’s will.

Verses 6-7; 9b-10a; 13 (a / a’ / a”) declare

that the real service to God consists on undoing

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injustice, freeing the oppressed from their yokes,

helping and sharing their bread –or whatever they

have– with the needy, stop judging others, keep the

Sabbath. In short, to serve the neighbor in need is

the best way to serve God.

Verses 7-9; 10b-12; 14 (b / b’ / b”) affirm that

God’s blessing will come when people do God’s will.

The similarity between this chapter of Isaiah

and some injunctions in the book of James –written

centuries later– shows that some human practices

hardly ever change, and God has to warn every

generation in like terms.

James also has a word to say

The book of James is an instance of wisdom

literature in the Christian Testament. As in the

book of Proverbs, the issues recur and are often

repeated along the chapters, but the book of James

is not merely a collection of sayings. The author

has a plan that becomes evident in an analysis of

the manifest structure of the whole book. It has a

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concentric structure, in which the main topics are

minimally exposed in the first chapter, followed by

a central passage (2:1-13), and then those topics

are fully developed in the opposite order in the

second part (2:14 up to the end)9.

What James?

Biblical scholars have largely debated about the

authorship of this letter, which, according to

tradition, was written by James of Jerusalem,

Jesus’ brother.

Tradition, though, is not eternal or God-given.

All traditions had their origin at one point in

time and were started by one person or group. The

tradition that assigns this book to the brother of

Jesus seems to have started with Jerome in the

fourth century. He included the book in his Vulgate

–his Latin version of the Scriptures– and later

defended its canonicity ascribing it to James, the

brother of the Lord.

9 See the structure of the whole book in my article on James in The GlobalBible Commentary (Nashville: Abingdon Press, forthcoming ).

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But also in the fourth century, Eusebius in his

Ecclesiastical History doubted that Jesus’ brother could

have written this book because of the vocabulary

and the style of its Greek. On the same grounds and

in 1516, Erasmus questioned the tradition in the

introduction to his Greek NT 10. So, let us forget

tradition for a while and examine some of the

evidence concerning the authorship of this book.

James, the brother of the Lord, died in 62 AD,

but the book of James is not an early writing.

There are several references to a widespread

persecution of the church (1:2-3, 12-13; 4:6; 5:10-

11) that cannot be earlier than the one issued by

the emperor Domitian during 94-96, as it was the

first to reach all the extension of the empire. The

only previous persecution was that of Nero, but it

never went beyond the outskirts of the city of

Rome. Another fact is that, according to 5:7-8,

Christ’s second coming does not seem imminent.

Quite the contrary, around the middle of the first

10 Cited by Elsa Tamez, The Scandalous Message of James: Faith Without Works is Dead (New York: Crossroad, 1990) 2.

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century the church believed in an imminent parousía,

as it is evident in Paul’s writings.

Apart from the above reflections that point to a

later date, there are other considerations to be

reckoned. The most obvious is what Eusebius and

Erasmus noticed centuries ago: the author of the

book shows a mastery of the Greek language

unsurpassed by any other writer in the Christian

Testament. Only an educated Greek-speaking person

could write using such a high literary Greek. This

fact, which seems to escape most conservative

scholars, is only too evident for those of us who

have to write in a language other than our own. We

know that, no matter how much we try, we will never

be able to write like an educated person who is

writing in his or her mother tongue. The

paradigmatic biblical examples –which I usually

cite in my Greek classes– are the gospel of John

and the book of James. John was obviously an

Aramaic-speaking person who had to write in Greek;

James, on the other hand, was writing in his own

language, and very well indeed.

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In addition, all the First Testament quotations

are taken from the LXX, the Greek version of the

Hebrew Scriptures; none of them depends on the MT,

the Palestine Hebrew Scriptures. Also, there are

some details that confirm the Hellenistic

background and the scholarly education of the

author: he uses a Stoic paradox11 (2:10) and the

Stoic expression “law of liberty” (2:12), also a

distinctively Greek literary resource, Hellenistic

diatribe12 (1:3; 2:14-17: 3:2-4); he embarks in a

discussion with an imaginary opponent, a straw man

(2:18-26), which is a stylistic device of Greek

literature13; he uses two phrases from secular Greek

“food for the day” and “the needs of the body”

(2:15-16), which never happen in the LXX or

elsewhere in the Christian Testament14; most of his

metaphors have a Greek –not biblical– background

(3:3-4; 3:7; 4:14); the Hellenistic idiom “If the

11 Marjorie O’Rourke Boyle, “The Stoic Paradox in Js 2:10”: New TestamentStudies 31 (1985) 611-617. 12 Though some scholars say this can also be “features of the Jewishsynagogue homily”: Peter H. Davids The Epistle of James. A Commentary on the GreekText (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1982) 23.13 P. H. Davids, James, 120.14 Sophie Laws, A Commentary on the Epistle of James (London: Adam & CharlesBlack, 1980) 120.

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Lord wills” (4:15) is not found elsewhere in the

Bible, but it has parallels in Greek and Latin

literature15. Moreover, in the book there are 63

hapax legómena16, a fact that further stresses the

author’s mastery of the Greek language.

He was in all probability a Hellenistic Jew,

according to his name (Iákōbos), his constant use of

Semitic concentric structures, his arguments from

the Hebrew Scriptures, and his skill on the genre

of Jewish wisdom literature.

In view of all the evidence, it is amazing that

many an otherwise well-founded commentary on James

still insists on keeping itself bound to tradition

concerning the authorship of this book. In fact, if

there is any certainty on this issue, it is that

the brother of Jesus could never have written the

book of James.

The insistence of the conservative scholars in

assigning this book to the brother of the Lord has

to do with their horror for pseudoepigraphy or

15 Ibid., 5.16 Words that occur only once in a given text, in this case the Greek NT. Of the 63 hápax legómena in James’ book, 45 come from the LXX, and 18are new.

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pseudonymous writing. However, they should already

know that writing in the name of someone else was a

common practice in antiquity. It was a way of

addressing the present situations as the rabbi,

teacher or historical hero would, if they were

still alive. In philosophical schools, former

students of a great master used to write in his

name as a proof of humility, implying that they had

no name of their own because they owed all they

were to their master. Of course, there were also

forgeries, but they were by far not as many as the

humble and legitimate examples of pseudonymous

writings. Anyway, the author of this book never

even suggests that he is the brother of the Lord.

In the opening verse (1:1) he says he is “James,

slave of God and the Lord Jesus Christ.” He is

therefore identifying himself basically as a

Christian. So there is no “danger” of

pseudoepigraphy here.

The only possibility for pseudonymity would be

if the author were writing in the name of the

patriarch Jacob –i. e. Israel– the founder of the

Jewish nation. The Greek form of the author’s name

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is precisely Iákōbos. This would be a good

justification for the address to “the twelve tribes

of Israel in the dispersion.”17 But the Greek

salutation chaírein (rejoice) would then be out of

place. He should have used the traditional Jewish

salutation eirēnē (peace), the Greek rendering of the

Hebrew šālôm.

If this is not a pseudonymous writing, then this

James must have been very well known by the time he

wrote the letter, so that he had no need to go into

further details about himself. He only added,

almost indirectly, that he was a teacher (3:1). We

may include that he was a Greek-speaking Christian

of Hellenistic Jewish origin, who had an excellent

academic education.

The question about the authorship of the book of

James is not a mere exercise in historical and

linguistic research; it has to do with the

important issue of discovering the real historical

background of the author and his addressees. This

17 J. Severino Croatto, "La fe que llega a su teleíôsis o perfección. Santiago 2,22b (Retórica, estructura literaria y teología de Santiago 2,14-16)": Revista Bíblica 62 (2000) 101-120.

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in turn, will allow present-day readers to

interpret the text in its own historical and

cultural context. Such research liberates us from

tradition and enables us to see the book as it is:

the work of a Hellenistic Christian Jew who wrote

around the end of the first century or the

beginning of the second.

Even for Luther, it would have been useful to

know the real date of the book. He could have

understood in their right proportion those issues

that he found so disturbing for his theology, like

the relation between faith and works according to

James.

James is not contradicting Paul in 2:14-26; he

is supplementing Paul. In the decades between both

of them, the very concepts of faith and works had

evolved into a meaning that was foreign to Paul. As

it is clear in his letter to the Galatians, for

Paul, works were exclusively the works of the Law,

while faith meant a union with Christ that engaged

thoughts and actions in such a way that good works

flowed naturally. With the passing of time, these

Pauline conceptions began to be misunderstood and

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their meaning changed significantly. By the end of

the century, faith was no more than an intellectual

assent, so that James could openly say that even

demons can have that kind of faith (2:19). Works

were no more the works of the Law –an issue that

had long ceased to be a problem for any Christian–

but good deeds that were proof of a living faith.

James has much to say about social justice

James is part of the prophetic tradition of

Isaiah, Jeremiah, Amos, Micah, and others who have

written –like Elsa Tamez puts it– from the

perspective of the oppressed and the same “line of

Jesus’ prophetic preaching.”18

The issue of social justice is one of James’

main concerns. He deals with it in the central

passage of his work (2:1-13) and it recurs in

different parts of the book. What is more, it

frames the structural center (1:27 and 2:14-17),

18 Elsa Tamez, Scandalous Message, 26-27.

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and is found in two parallel passages (1:9-11 and

4:13-5:6).

Isaiah 58 anticipates James’ viewpoint on social

justice. Isaiah had accused the people of

oppressing their workers, and serving their own

interests when they were pretending to serve God

(Isa 58:3b). Also the laborers in James’ times –and

in too many places and times– were oppressed. This

is especially evident in 5:1-6.

The clamor for social justice (5:1-6)

In the first place, I shall begin with the

manifest structure of the passage19. It will help us

discover the main message that the author is trying

to convey.

(the rich will suffer)19 Whenever I cite texts from the Greek Scriptures, I am using my own translation. When we are working with structures, we must respect the order of the words, the terms derived from the same root, and the style of each biblical author. Those are aspects that translations hardly evertake into account. Sometimes it is even necessary to force the syntax ofour own language, but that is a lesser evil in this kind of work.

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a Come now, the rich,

A b weep howling

(v. 1) for your miseries that will come

upon [you].

y Your wealth

z has rotten

y’ and your dresses

z’ moth-eaten have become,

a y’’ your gold and silver

B z’’ have rusted

(vv. 2-3) y’’’ and their rust

z’’’ as witness against

you will be

and will eat your flesh

like fire

b You treasured

c in last

d days.

Behold,

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the pay

a of the laborers who

mowed your lands

the withheld by you

X b cries out,

(v.4) b’ and the cries

a’ of those who harvested

c into the ears of

the Lord of hosts have entered.

a’ You lived in luxury upon the

earth

B’ and you lived in pleasure,

(v. 5) b’ you fed your hearts

d’ in day

c’ of slaughter,

(the righteous has suffered)

A’ b’ you condemned,

(v. 6) murdered

a’ the righteous,

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[who] does not oppose you.

The passage has a concentric structure. Such

structures are a distinctive feature of Semitic

literature. In such structures, the argument is

developed up to a conclusion, that is in the

center, not at the end as in Greek –and all

Western– literature. The center is the main message

in this kind of structure. Then the ideas are

exposed again, but in the opposite order, and

colored or shaped by the center.

A and A’ show the future suffering (b) of the

rich (v. 1) and the past and present suffering (b’)

of the oppressed righteous (in singular) (v. 6).

The rich (a) are in parallel to the righteous (a`).

The structures of B (vv. 2-3) and B’ (v. 5) are

not so simple. They have four elements each, that

appear in a pattern a/b/c/d//a’/b’/d’/c’. Moreover,

in B, verses 2-3ab (a) are built in a symmetric

parallelism y/z/y/z, repeated four times. Wealth,

dresses, precious metals, and their rust turn into

hostile elements to the greedy rich. The last two

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elements (y’’’ and z’’’) add a new note to the

parallelism, thus becoming the most important, “and

their rust as witness against you will be and will

eat your flesh like fire.” The tense of the verbs

changes into future and the action is directed

against the rich: the rust of the hoarded and

unused metals will bear witness and will destroy

the rich. In a’ (v. 5a) the theme is again the

wealth, this time stressing the soft life it

provides. The end of verse 5 (b’/d’/c’) and the

last part of verse 3 (b/c/d) accuse the rich of

indulging in their pleasures and increasing their

possessions in the eschatological times, when

priorities should be different. And it is not until

the center that we are told how the possessions

that allow such pleasures are increased.

This takes us to the center (v. 4), where the

author denounces the specific sin of the rich

landlords. Their riches are based on the

exploitation and the hunger of their laborers. In

the synthetic parallelism a/b/b/a/c, the emphasis

rests on the element at the end, which has no

correspondence or parallel, in this case (c) “in

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the ears of the Lord of hosts have entered.” What

enters in God’s ears is the clamor (b/b`), of the

withheld salary (a) and of the laborers themselves

(a’).

The text as a literary work

The passage is framed between the unit about the

boastful businessmen (4:13-17) and the unit about

endurance (5:7-12).

For a number of reasons, 5:1-6 does not refer to

the same people addressed in 4:13-17.

1.Both texts begin with the same expression “Come

now” (áge nun). The repetition of the opening in

itself seems to imply two different groups.

2.They are identified in a different way. The

first group (4:13-17) is characterized as

“those who say, today or tomorrow we will

travel to...” The people of second group (5:1-

6) are simply called “the rich”.

3.Neither of the groups have the same activity.

The addressees of the first text are

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businessmen, merchants to be exact; those of

the second, rich landowners.

4.The sins of both groups are different. The

merchants of 4:13-17 are arrogant and self-

sufficient. The author disappoves them because

of their boasting and exhorts them to take God

into account. The rich of 5:1-6 are guilty of

oppression, exploitation, and greed. They may

even be murderers (v. 6), though this verse is

taken from Wisdom 1:16 and could well be a

wisdom metaphor20. The author predicts for

these oppressors a punishment that will come

directly from God.

God has heard the clamor of the poor these rich

are exploiting (in this case these poor would be

pénētes, as they have jobs, not ptōchoí). Because of

their sins, their punishment, and the wisdom

reference that classifies them among the impious,

they are not likely to be Christians. The use of

20 J. Severino Croatto, “La carta de Santiago como escrito sapiencial”. RIBLA (= Revista de Interpretación Bíblica Latinoamericana) 31 (1998) 24-42; Ernst Baasland,. “Der Jakobusbrief als neutestamentliche Weisheitsschrift” Studia Theologica 36 (1982) 119-39.

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the second person plural can be explained as a

rhetorical resource. The author is exhorting the

rich Christians not to behave like the rich of the

world.

In any case, in the first century there was a

strong link between landlords and merchants; both

groups joined forces in order to control the

market. Small farmers, then, were unable to compete

with them. Apart from this link between two

powerful groups, the small farmers were as a rule

pushed to the less fertile lands and the task of

cultivating them was hindered by the fact that

these farmers seldom had any surplus to buy tools.

They usually had to get loans in order to purchase

the tools they needed, or because of a bad harvest,

so they were in constant risk of expropriation,

which would force them to become hired laborers or

even sell themselves into slavery. In any case they

would probably be much better off as slaves,

because at least their masters would care for their

subsistence. Rural economy was based on slave

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labor; hired laborers were not indispensable21.

Except for slavery, the situation is almost the

same in the rural areas of Argentina, or even in

some First World countries. But anyway, still today

there are very subtle forms of slavery.

The literary form of the passage

The book of James belongs to the genre of Wisdom

literature

According to the form, James 5:1-6 is a

prophetic denouncement22 but with strong apocalyptic

undertones. The language is not only similar to

that of the prophets of Israel, but also to the

Jewish apocalyptic writings. Besides, the author

has archaized it intentionally (cf. 5:4.7). It is

not his usual language; he is trying to add force

to his argument by means of the archaic language23.

The rich, however, are not the addressees of

21 Pedrito U. Maynard-Reid, Poverty and Wealth in James (Maryknoll: Orbis,1987) 88-91.22 P H. Davids, James, 175.23 S. Laws, James, 196.

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this passage; it was written for Christians who

were suffering from oppression at the hands of the

rich24.

Analysis of the text, verse by verse

5:1 “Come now, the rich, weep howling for your

miseries that will come upon [you].

The verb ololyzō (howl) is a hápax legómenon (word

that appears only once) in the Greek Testament, but

can be found 21 times in the LXX, mostly in

prophetic literature (Isa 13:6; 14:31; 15:2-3;

16:7; Amos 8:3; Zech 11:2). It is an onomatopoetic

word, as it resembles precisely the sound of

howling.

This verse is similar to Luke 6:24, one of the

woes that follow the beatitudes. The rich are seen

as the antagonists of God and God’s people.

The word talaipōría (misery, desolation) is a

prophetic term (also in 4:9). The only other 24 P. U. Maynard-Reid, Poverty and Wealth, 81.

35

occurrence in the Christian Testament is Romans

3:16, a quotation from Isaiah 59:7.

5:2-3 “2 Your wealth has rotten and your

dresses moth-eaten have become, 3 your gold and

silver have rusted and their rust as witness

against you will be and will eat your flesh

like fire. You treasured in last days.”

Some exegetes have seen the use of the perfect

tense in 5:2-3a as an example of the prophetic

language of anticipation. But it is worth noting

that the tense of the verbs changes into future in

verse 3bc, “their rust as witness against you will

be (éstai) and will eat (fágetai) your flesh like

fire.” The stress is in the worthlessness of

wealth. It will turn against the rich as testimony

and punishment25. The rotten wealth probably refers

to grain, that was hoarded in order to make the

price soar up26. That would be in keeping with the

fact that the rich of the passage are landowners 25 S. Laws, James, 198.26 René Krüger, “Antisociales, anticomunitarios y asesinos (Santiago 5:1-6)”, Cuadernos de Teología XX (2001) 62.

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and producers of grain (v. 4a). The word chōra

(land, field) usually means estates, not small

pieces of land, which would be called agrós.

Verses 2-3 are in keeping with Matthew 6:19, “Do

not treasure for you treasures on earth, where moth

and rust (gr. brōsis) destroy.” The Greek term used

in James 5:3 for “rust” is not brōsis but iós, which

means the green rust of copper and bronze, and also

“poison.”

The figure of the rusting precious metals

belongs to a tradition that saw the lack of social

responsibility as the cause of the corrosion of

money27. Sirac 29:9-12 says that wealth should be

employed to help the needy. In the case of these

rich landlords, the rust is proof that their gold

and silver have been stored, instead of used. It is

a fact that gold and silver do not rust, but the

metaphor functions to show that those precious

metals have been amassed avariciously. The withheld

salary of the laborers (v. 4) is part of the

hoarded wealth of the rich landlords.

27 Ibid., 64.

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“The rich had treasured up as if they would

live and the world would go on forever.”28 The greed

of some people is incomprehensible. Some have

hoarded so much wealth that they would not be able

to spend it in a lifetime, no matter how much they

wasted. Even so, they still crave for more. They

are even more foolish than the rich man of Luke

12:15-21, who at least had decided he had enough

money for the rest of his life. But most of the

greedy rich never seem to have enough. They do not

hesitate to hang on to the pay of their laborers,

who depend on it for their survival. It is the

epitome of injustice.

In verse 3, the Jerusalem Bible and the Syriac

version join “like fire” to “you treasured”,

providing a direct object to the verb thēsaurízō

(treasure). The phrase would then stand “Like fire

you treasured for [sic] the last days” (JB), similar

to Romans 2:5.

5:4 “Behold, the pay of the laborers who mowed

your fields, the withheld by you, cries out, 28 P H. Davids, James, 177.

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and the cries of those who harvested into the

ears of the Lord of hosts have entered.”

The participle aphysterēménos (withheld, kept

back) is a better choice than apesterēménos

(defrauded), and it is also witnessed by better

manuscripts, namely the Sinaitic (א) and the Vatican of the original copyist (B*), that are more

reliable than the Alexandrinus (A), the second copy

of the Vatican (B2), the sixth-century P, the

eighth-century Ψ, or the Byzantine Text. The choice

of the NTG25 was therefore better than the

inexplicable option of the following editions (NTG26

and 27).

The clamor of the salary: ho misthós … krázei (the

pay … cries). The withheld pay claims to heaven,

as if it were on behalf of the deceived laborers.

The cry of the wages has a parallel in the cry of

the blood of the righteous Abel (Gen 4:10). The

metaphor of the humanized elements has a great

expressive force.

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Throughout history, agricultural laborers have

been the most exploited workers29. But the Law is

very clear on the topic of oppression and social

injustice30. “You shall not defraud your neighbor;

you shall not steal; and you shall not keep for

yourself the wages of a laborer until morning”

(Lev 19:13 NRSV). “You shall not withhold the wages

of poor and needy laborers . . . You shall pay them

their wages daily before sunset, because they are

poor and their livelihood depends on them;

otherwise they might cry to the Lord against you,

and you would incur guilt” (Deut 24:14-15 NRSV)31.

Day laborers had to be paid at the end of the day,

as they depended entirely on their wages for their

subsistence and that of their families. To withhold

their wages was like murdering them (v. 6).

The only other occurrence of “Lord of hosts”

(Yahweh Sebaoth) in the Greek Scriptures is in

Romans 9:29. In the LXX the expression appears in

Isaiah and 1 Samuel. It is most frequent in Isaiah,

29 P. U. Maynard-Reid, Poverty and Wealth, 84.30 See above, under the heading “What the Bible has to say.”31 See also, among other texts, Jer 22:13; Mal 3:5; Tob 4:14; Sir 34:22.

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about 60 times. A similar context is found in

Isaiah 5:8-12, where the prophet denounces the rich

who oppress the poor. And in this passage, verse 9

is the only place in the LXX where we find the

phrase “the ears of the Lord of hosts.” Also in a

situation of denunciation to rich oppressors, James

uses the very same phrase (5:4c).

Lord of Hosts is a title that belongs to the

Exodus tradition. It is generally used in contexts

where God is presented as a powerful presence, as

the Lord of the magnificent events of the past

5:5 “You lived in luxury upon the earth and you

lived in pleasure, you fed your hearts in day

of slaughter,”

This verse shows the stark contrast between the

soft life of the rich and the destitution of the

laborers in the previous verse. The rich landlords

have the same life style of the rich man in Luke

16:19-31, who lived in self-indulgence vis-à-vis

the poverty of others32. What is more, the text has 32 P. H. Davids, James, 178.

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already said (v. 4) that the pleasant life of the

landlords is based on the poverty of their workers.

As Elsa Tamez says, “The poor are poor generally

because they are oppressed and exploited.”33 The

main causes of poverty and exclusion are the unjust

distribution of goods, and the power decisions that

are taken for the sole benefit of the powerful.

The verb spataláō (live in pleasure) has a

pejorative sense (Ezek 16:49; Sir 21:15; 1 Tim

5:6). While ethrépsate tàs kardías hymón (fed your

hearts) (Isa 6:10; Ps 104:15; Matt 13:15; Mark

7:21; Luke 21:34; Acts 25:27) means indulge one’s

inclinations34.

The idiom hēméra sphagēs (day of slaughter)

conveys the idea that the rich are like cattle;

fattened until the day they are slaughtered35. The

expression does not occur in the LXX, but has

equivalents in the MT (Isa 30:24; Jer 12:3; 25:34).

It appears in the apocalyptic writings of Qumran36

and in 1 Enoch 94.8-10, where the rich who ignored

33 E. Tamez, Scandalous Message, 18.34 P. H. Davids, James, 178.35 S. Laws, James, 204.36 1QH 15:17-18; 1QS 10:19; CD 19:15, 19; 1QM 1:9-12; 13:14.

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God are ready for the day of slaughter. The meaning

is the same as the expression “judgment day”. Day

of slaughter (v. 5) is in parallel with “last days”

(v. 3).

5:6 “You condemned, murdered the righteous,

[who] does not resist you.”

In the Christian Scriptures, the righteous

appears in Acts 3:14; 7:52; 22:14; 1 Pet 3:18; 1

John 2:1. Righteous is a figure applied to Jesus in

early Christian writings, but in James it

represents the just people who have suffered at the

hands of the powerful. The murder of the righteous

epitomizes “the length to which oppression may be

carried.”37

Actually, “the righteous” belongs to the cultic

and wisdom traditions. In the latter, the

equivalent term is “wise,” which became dominant as

the wisdom line began to color all the legal

aspects. The death of the righteous is a frequent

37 S. Laws, James, 205-206.

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motif in wisdom literature (Pro 1:10-12; Ps

37:14,32; Wis 2:18-20).

The unpaid laborers are in fact condemned and

murdered when their wages are withheld, because

they have no other means of life. Sirac 34:22 is

very clear, “The one who takes away his neighbor’s

livelihood is murdering him, and sheds blood who

defrauds the pay of the laborer.”38 The Greek text

has an interesting wordplay with the two words of

the same root at the end of the verse: ho aposterōn

misthòn misthíou. A more literal translation would be

“who defrauds the pay of the paid laborer”, if

“paid laborer” were an acceptable expression to

refer to a hired laborer.

The mention of the lack of opposition on the

part of the righteous means that the laborers, who

are weakened and without power, have “no strength

to resist.”39

Isaiah and James are a single voice

38 The translation is mine.39 E. Tamez, Scandalous Message, 30.

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God never changes, nor do God’s words and

objectives. That is why Isaiah and James speak with

the same voice, the voice of God. Both of them are

prophetic voices, each in his time, each in his own

style, each in his context, but both in the same

chord.

Isaiah accuses the readers of oppressing all

their workers (58:3d); James denounces the

oppression of the unpaid laborers (5:4).

The worship to God that is acceptable has to go

hand in hand with putting an end to injustice,

liberating the oppressed, breaking the “yoke” (Isa

58:6). In the same line, James says, “Faith without

works is dead” (2:17, 26).

Isaiah tells the people to share their bread

with the hungry, shelter the homeless, cover the

naked, help the neighbor (58:7); James defines real

faith as helping the needy, like orphans and widows

in distress (1:27b), the brother or sister who are

naked or hungry (2:15-16).

God’s blessings will flow –as indicated by

Isaiah– for those who remove “the yoke” of

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oppression, “the pointing of the finger” of

discrimination and partiality, “the speaking of

evil” against others (58:9cd); according to James,

blessing will come for those who “bridle the

tongue” (1:26; 3:2-12), do not “show partiality”

nor “judge with evil thoughts” (2:4), and do not

behave like the rich oppressors (5:1-6).

Hermeneutical approach

The withheld salary claims to heaven in James

The pots and pans claim for justice in Argentina

The “law of flexible labor” issued in Argentina

less than ten years ago has caused a situation that

is similar to what we have seen in James 5:1-6.

That law allows employers to lower the salaries,

extend the working hours, and in short, do whatever

they want with their employees. The abused workers

are told to take it or leave it, as there are lots

of unemployed people who are willing to take their

jobs. A usual trick is to hire “tryout” laborers

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for three months, only to dismiss them and get

others, without having to pay any social charges or

even living wages.

The evaluation of a socio-economic system,

according to the biblical perspective, should start

by the key question about the consequences of such

system for the life of the people, especially for

the weaker members of society40. If a system is

based on privileges for a few and exclusion for

many, something is wrong. If a system does not

promote the full humanity and the rights of all,

without distinctions, something is wrong. If a

system seeks economic profit regardless of anything

else, something is wrong. Too many things seem to

be wrong with the present system, and not only in

Argentina.

The globalized neo-liberal system is not the end

of history, as its adherents have called it. If it

goes on like this, it is the end of humankind.

It is imperative that the churches –not only

some, but all of them– recover their prophetic

voice. Like James, they have to denounce injustice,40 R. Krüger, “Antisociales, anticomunitarios y asesinos”, 74.

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oppression, and exclusion and call them by their

name: sin. As Severino Croatto says, “Inequity is

iniquity.”41

But more often than not, many churches have

taken the side of the powerful, instead of taking

the side of the powerless42. Some churches do not

hesitate in favoring management over labor, the

“rights” of the rich for profit over the rights of

the workers for living wages. Jesus would never

have done that. He was openly on the side of the

poor and the weakest people in the society of his

time. And churches should follow Jesus, not the

latest trend in global politics, nor the

ideological inclinations of their richest members.

In the midst of the lack of confidence that

people in Argentina and other parts of the world

are feeling, only churches have the moral authority

to raise their voice on behalf of the suffering

people. Churches are called to be the voice of God.

41 See in this book Croatto’s article “Inequity as Iniquity: Searchingfor the Roots of Hunger in Isaiah.”42 Duane Warden, “The Rich and the Poor in James: Implications forInstitutionalized Partiality”. Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 43/2(2000) 247-257.

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