to ask (in genitive case) · verb — present middle infinitive
not
μὴmē
G3361
(adverb) not · particle — negative
Strong's Exhaustive Concordance (James Strong, 1890/1894), public domain; digitized by Open Scriptures (CC BY-SA). KJV word tagging: eBible.org (public domain). Original-language text, parsing and brief lexicon: STEPBible.org data from Tyndale House, Cambridge (CC BY 4.0).
Cross-references
John 16:24 Hitherto have ye asked nothing in my name: ask, and ye shall receive, that your joy may be full.
Matthew 7:7-8 Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you:
James 1:5 If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him.
Luke 11:9-13 And I say unto you, Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.
John 4:10 Jesus answered and said unto her, If thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is that saith to thee, Give me to drink; thou wouldest have as…
1 Timothy 6:9-10 But they that will be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men in destruction and per…
Proverbs 1:19 So are the ways of every one that is greedy of gain; which taketh away the life of the owners thereof.
James 5:1-5 Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you.
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on James 4:1-10
The former chapter speaks of envying one another, as the great spring of strifes and contentions; this chapter speaks of a lust after worldly things, and a setting too great a value upon worldly pleasures and friendships, as that which carried their divisions to a shameful height.
I. The apostle here reproves the Jewish Christians for their wars, and for their lusts as the cause of them: Whence come wars and fightings among you? Come they not hence, even of your lusts that war in your members, Jam 4:1. The Jews were a very seditious people, and had therefore frequent wars with the Romans; and they were a very quarrelsome divided people, often fighting among themselves; and many of those corr…
Ye lust--A different Greek word from that in Jam 4:1. "Ye desire"; literally, "ye set your mind (or heart) on" an object.
have not--The lust of desire does not ensure the actual possession. Hence "ye kill" (not as Margin, without any old authority, "envy") to ensure possession. Not probably in the case of professing Christians of that day in a literal sense, but "kill and envy" (as the Greek for "desire to have" should be translated), that is, harass and oppress through envy [DRUSIUS]. Compare Zac 11:5, "slay"; through envy, hate, and desire to get out of your way, and so are "murderers" in God's eyes [ESTIUS]. If literal murder [ALFORD] were meant, I do not think it would occur so early i…
Ye lust, and have not - Ye are ever covetous, and ever poor.
Ye kill, and, desire to have - Ye are constantly engaged in insurrections and predatory wars, and never gain any advantage.
Ye have not, because ye ask not - Ye get no especial blessing from God as your fathers did, because ye do not pray. Worldly good is your god; ye leave no stone unturned in order to get it; and as ye ask nothing from God but to consume it upon your evil desires and propensities, your prayers are not heard.
John Gill
The Church Fathers
You quarrel and fight, and you do not have because you do not ask. You quarrel, he says, and fight for temporal glory, and you are not able to obtain this, precisely because you do not care to ask the Lord, so that he himself might bestow upon you whatever is beneficial. For if you were to ask him with pious intention, he would grant you both the earthly necessities for temporal use and the heavenly goods for eternal enjoyment.
You desire and do not have; you kill and covet, and cannot obtain; you fight and wage war, "You desire and do not have," etc. According to position and elevation, it proceeds from the position, being removed due to the absurdity. The absurdity, due to the pleasures, is expected to be the underlying cause of what is contemplated in the position. For both desire ends in the perfection of pleasures, and murder, rivalry, and similarly strife and war are not good: therefore, neither do those things follow whose cause they affect. It should be noted at this point that he speaks of murder and war not in a bodily sense: for it would be serious even to think about robbers; much less, therefore, about those who were somewhat faithful and approached the Lord. But as it seems to me, those are said to kill who, through these reckless attempts, destroy their own soul, which is why war is also against piety for them. And just as in the course of the text he calls adulterers and adulteresses, not because they are entirely such, but because they corrupt divine and rightly established precepts by turning to other illegitimate things: for no one would tolerate a whoremonger as a teacher, even if he were more entangled in filth than a pig: so he speaks of murder and wars not in a bodily sense, but concerning the soul,
The Church Fathers: public-domain translations (Ante-Nicene and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers), verse-indexed by SermonIndex (CC BY 4.0).
Dictionary: Easton's (1897) and Smith's (1863), public domain. Topics: Nave's Topical Bible (1896) and Torrey's Topical Textbook (1897), public domain. Both as parsed by NEUU (CC BY 4.0).
on James 4:2
Ye lust, and have not,.... The apostle proceeds to show the unsuccessfulness of many in their desires and pursuits after worldly things; some might be like the sluggard, whose soul desireth all good things, and yet he has nothing, Proverbs 13:4 because he does not make use of any means, even of such as are proper and necessary, and ought to be used:
ye kill, and desire to have, and cannot obtain; some, instead of kill, which seems not so agreeable, read envy; and then the sense is, they envy at the good and happiness of others, and covet after another's property, but cannot enjoy it; all such envy and covetousness are fruitless, as well as sinful:
ye fight and war, yet ye have not; go to l…
James 4:1-3
1 From whence come wars and fightings among you? come they not hence, even of your lusts that war in your members?
1 Unde bella et pugnae inter vos? nonne hinc, ex voluptatibus vestris, quae militant in membris vestris.
2 Ye lust, and have not: ye kill, and desire to have, and cannot obtain: ye fight and war, yet ye have not, because ye ask not.
2 Concupiscitis et non habetis; invidetis et aemulamini, et non potestis obtinere; pugnatis et belligeramini, non habetis, propterea quod non petitis;
3 Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts.
3 Petitis, et non accipitis, quia male petitis, ut in voluptates vestras insumatis.
1 From w…
you scheme and kill: Killing was the extreme, but logical, outcome of their rapacious attitude. Some of James’s readers might have followed the Jewish Zealot movement and engaged in murder to benefit their cause. Hostile attitudes and violent methods do not provide satisfaction—you can’t get what you want by them.
