What Does James 5:7 Mean?
Be slow to heat therefore, brethren, until the arrival of the LORD. Look, the one who works the soil waits for the costly fruit of the earth, and is slow to heat over it until he takes in the early and late rain.
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
Be patient therefore, brethren, unto the coming of the Lord. Behold, the husbandman waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth, and hath long patience for it, until he receive the early and latter rain.THE KEY
The patience here is slow-to-heat waiting: the harvest ripens through a season and rain no human force can summon.
THE MEANING
Your waiting is not an empty gap. The farmer’s patience is slow to heat because the harvest depends on a season and rain that cannot be forced; this verse places your expectation in that same living interval as you look toward the Lord’s coming.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
A delay does not mean nothing is happening or that your waiting is useless.
THE ROOT
μακροθυμέω
makrothymeō
GROWS FROM
θυμός (thymos), extended by μακρός (makros)
θυμός means heat, passion, or anger; μακρός means long. Together they form the sense of being slow to flare.
“be slow to heat” in this verse is makrothymeō. James uses the same Greek verb first for the reader and then for the farmer. The English phrasing can hide that repetition: both kinds of waiting are slow to heat, while fruit and rain make the farmer’s patient expectation visible.
ALSO GROWS
makrothymeō: The verb used for the call to be patient and the farmer’s waiting.
μακροθυμέω
Its repetition ties the reader’s waiting directly to the farmer’s season of expectation.
makrothymia: The related noun for slow-to-heat endurance.
μακροθυμία
It names the same quality as a sustained disposition across a stretch of time.
thymos: The word for heat or fierce passion within the compound.
θυμός
It shows that patience here is not mere stillness; it is heat held back from flaring while the harvest ripens.
THE PATTERN
Fruit and promise ripen through a season whose arrival cannot be forced.
While making good, let us not give out, for in its own season we reap, if we do not go slack.And he becomes like a tree planted by the channels of the waters, that gives its fruit in its season; its leaf does not wither; whatever he does, he breaks through.THE THREAD
And so, having been slow to heat, he reached the promise.Hebrews uses the same Greek word family, μακροθυμέω (makrothymeō, “be slow to heat; be patient”). James sets that slow-to-heat waiting beside a farmer awaiting rain; Hebrews connects it with receiving what is promised.
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