Add parallel Print Page Options

ye ask, and ye receive not, because evilly ye ask, that in your pleasures ye may spend [it].

Adulterers and adulteresses! have ye not known that friendship of the world is enmity with God? whoever, then, may counsel to be a friend of the world, an enemy of God he is set.

Do ye think that emptily the Writing saith, `To envy earnestly desireth the spirit that did dwell in us,'

Read full chapter

When you ask, you do not receive,(A) because you ask with wrong motives,(B) that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.

You adulterous(C) people,[a] don’t you know that friendship with the world(D) means enmity against God?(E) Therefore, anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God.(F) Or do you think Scripture says without reason that he jealously longs for the spirit he has caused to dwell in us[b]?(G)

Read full chapter

Footnotes

  1. James 4:4 An allusion to covenant unfaithfulness; see Hosea 3:1.
  2. James 4:5 Or that the spirit he caused to dwell in us envies intensely; or that the Spirit he caused to dwell in us longs jealously