Perhaps there is an allusion to the words of Jesus against the Pharisees (Matt. 23:13-36). The Gospel of Luke is held by some to have an Ebionitic tendency because it preserves some plain words of Jesus to, and about, the rich (6:24; 18:24). But Jesus is not hostile toward the rich, for he had friends and followers from the wealthy classes, although he dealt very squarely and honestly with them. Some Jews held that all the rich were wicked, as some modern socialists and anarchists do. But certainly Jesus did not fawn upon the rich or curry favor with them by flattery or compromise. It is easy to denounce classes of men en masse. It requires perspicacity and courage to discriminate, to be just, and to seek to remedy real ills. The rich Jews had already oppressed the Christians and made the conditions of life hard.
The Christians were helpless for any immediate relief. They had little or no power in government and had to live in the social and economic atmosphere created by those hostile to them. It was not a democratic but an imperialistic age. In holding out the consolation that rectification of these grave evils will take place at the second coming of Christ, James does not mean to condone the present situation or to acquiesce in it. But what cannot be cured can be endured.
Christianity has had a long and hard fight in the effort to alleviate the sufferings of the poor. Ofttimes grasping men of money have used the very church itself as a means of oppression instead of an agent of blessing. It is a sad state when men and women with real social wrongs come to feel that Christianity is a negative factor in their struggle or a positive hindrance to success.
James turns upon these oppressors: "Come now, ye rich, weep and howl for your miseries that are coming upon you." This "come now" is like that in 4:13. "Weep and shriek," Moffatt has it. The word is an onomatopoetic word and is used only of violent grief, as in Isaiah 13:6; 4:31. It does not occur elsewhere in the New Testament. The apocalyptic writings have a good deal to say about the miseries that were coming upon them (cf. Joel 2:10 ff.; Zech. 14:6 ff.; Dan. 12:1). The Gospels connect them also with the Day of the Lord (Matt. 24-25; Mark 13:14-27; Luke 21:9-19). Part of the Gospel prophecies were fulfilled in the destruction of Jerusalem.