James 5:2

2 Your riches be rotten, and your clothes be eaten of moths.

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 Do now, ye rich men, weep ye, yelling in your wretchednesses that shall come to you.

2 Your riches be rotten, and your clothes be eaten of moths.

3 Your gold and silver hath rusted, and the rust of them shall be to you into witnessing, and shall eat your fleshes, as fire. Ye have treasured to you wrath in the last days.

4 Lo! the hire of your workmen, that reaped your fields, which is defrauded of you [which is frauded of you], crieth; and the cry of them hath entered into the ears of the Lord of hosts.

5 Ye have eaten on the earth, and in your lecheries ye have nourished your hearts. In the day of slaying