What Does James 5:2 Mean?
Your riches have rotted, and your garments have been eaten through by moths.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are motheaten.THE KEY
The verse turns possessions into a process: wealth is rotting, and clothing is literally being eaten away.
THE MEANING
Your stored wealth is already decaying, and your garments already bear the evidence of being consumed. What looks amassed and protected is marked by dissolution from within.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that accumulated wealth can become permanent protection dissolves here: both its stores and its visible signs remain vulnerable to decay.
THE ROOT
σητόβρωτα
sētobrōta
GROWS FROM
βρω-
brō-
To eat or consume.
“eaten through by moths” in this verse is sētobrōta. The Greek word combines the moth with what is eaten: the garment is pictured as being consumed, not merely aged. English preserves the moth but obscures the consuming action built into the word.
ALSO GROWS
bibrōskō: To eat, devour.
βιβρώσκω
This verb makes explicit the action contained in the image of the moth-eaten garment.
brōsis: Eating, consumption; also used for corrosion.
βρῶσις
Matthew uses this related word alongside “moth” for what corrupts earthly treasure, bringing the same consuming process into view.
σέσηπεν
sesēpen
GROWS FROM
σήπ-
sēp-
To rot or decay.
The verb describes wealth as already rotted through, not merely at risk of future loss. Set beside garments being eaten, it shows decay working through both stored riches and what they clothe.
ALSO GROWS
sēpō: To rot, decay, or cause to putrefy.
σήπω
This is the verb behind the verse’s description of wealth as decayed.
sēpsis: Putrefaction or decay.
σήψις
This related noun names the process already expressed in the verse’s description of the riches.
THE PATTERN
What is stored or displayed as lasting security remains exposed to decay and consumption.
And he wears thin like rot, like a garment the moth eats.Do not store up for yourselves treasures upon the ground, where moth and rust gnaw them out of sight, and where thieves dig through and steal.Sell what you have, and give compassion. Make for yourselves purses that do not wear out, a treasure in the heavens that does not run out, where no thief draws near and no moth destroys.THE THREAD
Do not store up for yourselves treasures upon the ground, where moth and rust gnaw them out of sight, and where thieves dig through and steal.James compresses Matthew’s paired image of moth and consumption into one word for garments eaten by moths. The shared βρω- root brings the hidden action into focus: possessions are already exposed to being consumed.
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