Be Patient
7 Be patient, then, brothers and sisters, until the Lord’s coming. See how the farmer waits for the land to yield its valuable crop, patiently waiting for the autumn and spring rains. 8 You too, be patient and stand firm, because the Lord’s coming is near. 9 Don’t grumble against one another, brothers and sisters, or you will be judged. The Judge is standing at the door!
10 Brothers and sisters, as an example of patience in the face of suffering, take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord. 11 As you know, we count as blessed those who have persevered. You have heard of Job’s perseverance and have seen what the Lord finally brought about. The Lord is full of compassion and mercy.
12 Above all, my brothers and sisters, do not swear—not by heaven or by earth or by anything else. All you need to say is a simple “Yes” or “No.” Otherwise you will be condemned.
When Robert Ingersoll, the famous atheist, was lecturing, he once took out his watch and declared, “I will give God five minutes to strike me dead for the things I have said.” The minutes ticked off as he held the watch and waited. In about four-and-a-half minutes, some women began fainting, but nothing happened. When the five minutes were up, Ingersoll put the watch into his pocket. When that incident reached the ears of a certain preacher, Joseph Parker, he asked, “And did the gentleman think he could exhaust the patience of the Eternal God in five minutes?”
The small farmer plants his carefully saved seed and hopes for a harvest, living on short rations and suffering hunger during the last weeks. The whole livelihood, indeed the life itself, of the family depends on a good harvest: the loss of the farm, semistarvation, or death could result from a bad year. So the farmer waits for an expected future event (ἐκδέχεται); no one but he could know how precious the grain really is
He must exercise patience no matter how hungry he is (μακροθυμῶν), for he waits with a view toward the coming harvest (ἐπʼ αὐτῷ). This patience must last “until he receives the early and late rain
But grumbling against those who are close to us is particularly likely to occur when we are under pressure or facing difficult circumstances. We vent the pressure from a stressful work environment or from ill health on our close friends and family. So it would be quite natural if James’s readers, under the pressure of poverty and persecution (cf. 5:1–6), would turn their frustrations on one another. Moreover, the exhortation to be patient with the circumstances of suffering that the readers face could easily evoke the need for patience with fellow community members as well. Paul links patience with the need to “bear with one another in love” (Eph. 4:2) and with a refusal to “pay back wrong for wrong” in 1 Thess. 5:14–15.
Judging wrongly, or the failure to control the critical tongue, was a great problem for James’s audience (cf. 2:12–13; 3:1; 4:11–12; 5:12). Humility (cf. 4:6, 10) and joy before God should characterize their relations in order to produce a solidarity in suffering injustice until the Lord himself delivered them. Believers should not speak to each other as if the causes of suffering arose from within their own fellowship
Endurance (hypomonē) in this context is to be understood in the same way as in 1:2–5, 9, 12, 19; 4:6, 8, 10, where James sets it against the background of God’s sovereign control of events and the need to wait for him to act in his own time and way. It is a rugged determination not to renounce one’s faith and not to fall out of the race. Moreover it is an activity demanding strenuous courage and firm fortitude, once we are persuaded that our lives are in God’s hands even though outward circumstances seem to overwhelm.