James 5:2

2 Your riches are rotten, and your garments are motheaten.

James 5:2 Meaning and Commentary

James 5:2

Your riches are corrupted
Either through disuse of them; and so the phrase is expressive of their tenaciousness, withholding that from themselves and others which is meet, and which is keeping riches for the owners thereof, to their hurt; or these are corrupted, and are corruptible things, fading and perishing, and will stand in no stead in the day of wrath, and therefore it is great weakness to put any trust and confidence in them:

and your garments are moth eaten;
being neither wore by themselves, nor put upon the backs of others, as they should, but laid up in wardrobes, or in chests and coffers, and so became the repast of moths, and now good for nothing.

James 5:2 In-Context

1 Come now, Oh ye rich, weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you.

2 Your riches are rotten, and your garments are motheaten.

3 Your gold and silver is corrupted with rust; and the rust of them shall be a witness against you and shall completely eat your flesh, as fire. Ye have heaped treasure together for the last days.

4 Behold, the hire of the labourers who have reaped your fields (which you have kept back by fraud) cries out; and the cries of those who have reaped have entered into the ears of the Lord of the hosts.

5 Ye have lived in pleasure on the earth and been wanton; ye have refreshed your hearts, as in the day of slaughter of sacrifices.