James 4:13-17
New American Bible (Revised Edition)
13 Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we shall go into such and such a town, spend a year there doing business, and make a profit”— 14 you have no idea what your life will be like tomorrow.[a] You are a puff of smoke that appears briefly and then disappears.(A) 15 Instead you should say, “If the Lord wills it,[b] we shall live to do this or that.” 16 But now you are boasting in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. 17 (B)So for one who knows the right thing to do and does not do it, it is a sin.[c]
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- 4:14 Some important Greek manuscripts here have, “You who have no idea what tomorrow will bring. Why, what is your life?”
- 4:15 If the Lord wills it: often in piety referred to as the “conditio Jacobaea,” the condition James says we should employ to qualify all our plans.
- 4:17 It is a sin: those who live arrogantly, forgetting the contingency of life and our dependence on God (Jas 4:13–16), are guilty of sin.
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