Verse of the day · September 5
What does Wherefore point back to in James 1:19?
A man kept shouting Hear me at Augustine, who made hearers of them both.
Wherefore, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath:
James 1:19
James is writing to Christians in a bad stretch, and the trouble is not all outside them. They are under afflictions and temptations, and they are running into disputes among themselves. One error going round is that God is the occasion of men's sin. One sentence before this one, they are told where they came from. Of his own will he begat them with the word of truth, to be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures. Then comes the word Wherefore.
The connection comes straight off that birth. The word of truth, John Gill writes, is the means and instrument God makes use of in regeneration. God is the only source of good, he tempts no man, and by his mere sovereign goodness they had been made the firstfruits of his creatures — from which, Albert Barnes has it, they ought to be ready to hear his voice. Matthew Henry lets the wherefore reach back to more than one thing: the word of truth in the sentence before, the afflictions at the chapter's head, or the disputes among the churches. The duty he draws from each is the same: to hear.
Swift to hear is not swift to hear anything. Gill rules out idle and unprofitable talk, and filthy and corrupt communication. What remains is wholesome advice, good instruction, the gracious experiences of the saints, and above all the word of God. Men should fly to the hearing of it as doves to their windows, and receive it with a sort of greediness of mind. The Geneva Notes cover this verse with the one before, and set the fault opposite it: we would rather speak ourselves than hear God speaking.
Slow to speak attaches to what has just been heard: slow to speak against it, without thoroughly weighing and considering what was said. Gill keeps it for private conversation too, and allows a second reading — be content to be a hearer of the word, and not forward to be a preacher of it. JFB sharpen that to speaking authoritatively, as a master or teacher of others — a common Jewish fault, they say.
Those hasty in speech are generally of a peevish or angry disposition, Adam Clarke writes, and a man careful to consider what he says is not likely to be soon angry. The rabbinic sorting of tempers he copies out grades men by speed rather than by whether they get angry: the good are hard to incense and easy to appease, the wicked easily angered and hard to appease. If men would govern their tongues, Henry writes, they must govern their passions; if we would be slow to speak, we must be slow to wrath. Moses, whose spirit was provoked, then spoke unadvisedly with his lips.
Slow to wrath, Gill glosses in two words: in hearing. He means a sermon doing its work: reproofs given, sin exposed, vice corrected, the doctrines of grace preached. All of it is apt to fill natural men with wrath, and greatly to hinder the usefulness of the word. The instance Gill gives is Luke 4.
The reason follows in the next verse: for the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God. God needs not the passions of any man, Henry writes, and his cause is better served by mildness and meekness than by wrath and fury. Anger is the worst thing anyone can bring to a religious controversy, and however it may pretend to be raised by a concern for what is just and right, it is not to be trusted. Dr Manton, whom he quotes on assemblies, recalls a Manichee who contested with Augustine, crying Hear me! hear me! The father replied modestly: Neither let me hear thee, nor do thou hear me, but let us both hear the apostle.
Not all of the anger in view is aimed at a preacher. Under the trials at the chapter's head, the anger Henry sees is aimed at God. Our duty is to hear how God explains his providences, rather than to say, as David did in his haste, I am cut off, or as Jonah did in his passion, I do well to be angry. Instead of censuring God under our trials, he writes, we are to open our ears and hearts to hear him.
All three speeds are set to one moment: the moment a man is being told something he did not arrive at himself. He owed that moment everything. Of God's own will he had been begotten with the word of truth, and none of that had been his doing. What he brings to the next one is a tongue and a temper. Heated, he is in no condition to see the value of the truth, or to weigh the evidence for it. It is the word that made him.
Drawn from Matthew Henry, John Gill, the Jamieson-Fausset-Brown commentary, Adam Clarke, Albert Barnes and the Geneva Bible notes.
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