James 5:4

Look, the wages you withheld from the workmen who mowed your fields are crying out against you. The cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of Hosts.

Berean Standard Bible

Follow its threads on the canvas →

Study note

Setting — James addresses wealthy members of the dispersed Jewish community, indicting them for exploiting agricultural laborers. The verse sits between a warning about corroded hoards (5:3) and a charge of living in luxury on the eve of judgment (5:5).

The words — μισθός (misthos), "wage," is the concrete noun that anchors the charge: not a vague injustice but a specific sum owed and withheld. ἰδοὺ (idou), "behold," is the prophetic interjection that halts the reader and forces direct attention.

The thread — The Mosaic law commands same-day payment to hired hands (Leviticus 19:13; Deuteronomy 24:14), and the prophets indict those who build wealth on unremunerated labor (Jeremiah 22:13).

Why it lands — The verse names a specific, checkable act: did you pay the worker, and did you pay them on time? It removes the abstraction of "economic injustice" and replaces it with a single transaction a reader can audit in their own ledger.

Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.

The Greek words

King James Version

Behold, the hire of the labourers who have reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth: and the cries of them which have reaped are entered into the ears of the Lord of sabaoth.

Cross-references

Leviticus 19:13 You must not defraud your neighbor or rob him. You must not withhold until morning the wages due a hired hand.
Jeremiah 22:13 “Woe to him who builds his palace by unrighteousness, and his upper rooms without justice, who makes his countrymen serve without pay, and fails to pay their wages,
Deuteronomy 24:14 Do not oppress a hired hand who is poor and needy, whether he is a brother or a foreigner residing in one of your towns.
Romans 9:29 It is just as Isaiah foretold: “Unless the Lord of Hosts had left us descendants, we would have become like Sodom, we would have resembled Gomorrah.”
Malachi 3:5 “Then I will draw near to you for judgment. And I will be a swift witness against sorcerers and adulterers and perjurers, against oppressors of the widowed and fatherless, and against those who defraud laborers of their wages and deny justice to the foreigner but do not fear Me,” says the LORD of Hosts.
Job 24:10 Without clothing, they wander about naked. They carry the sheaves, but still go hungry.
Exodus 22:27 because his cloak is the only covering he has for his body. What else will he sleep in? And if he cries out to Me, I will hear, for I am compassionate.
Genesis 4:10 “What have you done?” replied the LORD. “The voice of your brother’s blood cries out to Me from the ground.
Exodus 3:9 And now the cry of the Israelites has reached Me, and I have seen how severely the Egyptians are oppressing them.
Job 34:28 They caused the cry of the poor to come before Him, and He heard the outcry of the afflicted.