What Does James 2:15 Mean in the King James?
If a brother or sister be naked, and destitute of daily food,
The analysis reads the King James wording.
King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.
THE KEY
The word James uses for “destitute” is the same word he uses for “wanting nothing,” holding bodily need and wholeness in one vocabulary.
THE MEANING
A sibling’s need appears as exposure and hunger: what is missing is not vague, but clothing and the food needed for today. The verse holds the reader in that concrete moment before any response is spoken.
THE ROOT
λειπόμενοι
leipomenoi
GROWS FROM
λείπω
leipō
To leave or be absent; by extension, to lack or fall short.
“destitute” in this verse is leipomenoi. Here the word names a concrete shortfall: clothing and the food needed for today. James uses the same form in “wanting nothing” (James 1:4), holding material need and completeness in one vocabulary without turning hunger into a metaphor.
ALSO GROWS
leipei: Is lacking; is missing.
λείπει
In Luke 18:22, the same verb says “one thing thou lackest”; it marks a specific absence, as this verse does with food and clothing.
elleipō: To fall short; to be deficient.
ἐλλείπω
This compound carries the same root’s sense of lack, showing destitution as a concrete gap in what sustains a person.
THE PATTERN
A person’s visible material need is where love’s reality becomes concrete.
But thou shalt open thine hand wide unto him, and shalt surely lend him sufficient for his need, in that which he wanteth.But whoso hath this world’s good, and seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up his bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him?THE THREAD
But let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing.James 1:4 uses the same Greek form, λειπόμενοι (leipomenoi, “lacking”), translated “wanting” there; here it names a sibling’s shortage of food. The shared root holds bodily deprivation and the absence of lack in the same frame, keeping this hunger concrete.
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