It is not an inspiring picture that James here draws, and one would like to believe that he has a wider outlook than the Christian community when he names his bill of particulars. “Ye lust, and have not: ye kill, and covet, and cannot obtain: ye fight and war.” Here Westcott and Hort make a full stop in their text, and this is probably correct. The presence of “kill” before “covet” gives a great deal of trouble to the commentators, who find it an anticlimax. Mayor urges the substitution of “envy” for “kill,” but there is no manuscript authority for it, and the difficulty is not really mended. Hort has the most probable solution by this punctuation: “Ye covet, and have not: ye commit murder. And ye envy, and cannot attain: ye fight and war.” At any rate, the humiliating fact remains that lust, covetousness, envy, fighting, and murder are here charged against some of the readers of the epistle. It looks as if some of them held to the view that they were entitled to all that they could grasp, that Providence was on the side of the heaviest battalions, that might constituted right. “Lust” is here used in the most general sense, like “covet.” The failure to find satisfaction leads to jealousy, fighting, war, and even murder. Covetousness leads to fights with individuals and nations. Lust in the narrow sense and murder are common partners. The fight is on in every man’s life against all that is low and mean. He can keep a pure life only by living the victorious life. There is also the common oppression of the poor by the greedy and grasping in all the ages. “No man shall take the mill or the upper millstone to pledge: for he taketh a man’s life to pledge” (Deut. 24:6). So Sirach (34:21 f.) says: “He that taketh away his neighbour’s living slayeth him; and he that defraudeth the labourer of his hire is a blood-shedder.” The opposite of all this pitiful business is seen in the nobility of love as portrayed in 1 Corinthians 13. Asking Amiss (4:2b-3) The latter part of verse 2 is a puzzle to the commentators: “Ye have not, because ye ask not.” Oesterley (following Carr) thinks that we have a string of poetical quotations (_stromateis_), “not very skilfully strung together.” Mayor takes it as a mere repetition of “ye lust, and have not” and says that it is not a further step. But surely James does not mean to say that the one reason why the impulses to lust, covetousness, envy, fighting, and murder are not gratified is that men do not pray so as to carry their point with God and man! That would make prayer a travesty and God a puppet of man’s evil desires.