“Come now, ye that say” is the impatient challenge of James to those who leave God out of account in their plans for the future. The tone of impatience is due to the conviction that one should be so conscious of his own weakness as not to boast about the future. “To-day or tomorrow we will go into this city, and spend a year there, and trade, and get gain.” And then we shall move on to the next town and work that with our wares, for all the world like a modern “fire sale” or secondhand clothing store with its bankruptcy or fire features. The picture is drawn from life. The use of “this city” is merely typical, as if James were pointing it out on the map (Mayor), and is more vivid than “such and such a city.” In James 1:11 we read that the rich man shall “fade away in his goings,” an allusion to the travels of the rich merchants. We see the rapid movements of the Jewish Christians illustrated by the travels of Aquila and Priscilla, who came from Rome to Corinth (Acts 18:1 f.), then to Ephesus (18:18), to Rome again (Rom. 16:3), and back to Ephesus (2 Tim. 4:19). The phrase “spend a year there” is literally “do a year there,” and the idiom occurs also in Acts 15:33; 20:3 (cf. Prov. 13:23). The wide dispersion of the Jews all over the Roman Empire gave them business connections that made it easy to get new business and to hold the old trade. The very word here for “trade” means to travel into a region to get business, just like a modern commercial traveler. Our word “emporium” is just this word. The Jews made the very Temple itself “a house of merchandise.” So then trading implied traveling for business (Matt. 22:5). In 2 Peter 2:3 a somber light is thrown by this same word: “And in covetousness shall they with feigned words make merchandise of you.” “And get gain.” This is the climax of the whole, the aim of the journeys and the trading. “The frequent conjunctions separate the different items of the plan, which are rehearsed thus one by one with manifest satisfaction. The speakers gloat over the different steps of the programme which they have arranged for themselves” (Plummer). There is no harm in planning to make money or in travel for that purpose. The harm lies in the complete ignoring of God in all their plans.