Your riches have rotted and moths have eaten your clothes.
Parallel translations
- WEB Your riches are corrupted and your garments are moth-eaten.
- KJV Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are motheaten.
- NKJV Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are moth-eaten.
- NASB Your riches have rotted and your garments have become moth-eaten.
- NLT Your wealth is rotting away, and your fine clothes are moth-eaten rags.
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995, 2020 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. lockman.org
Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
Quick answer
Hoarded riches and fine garments rot and decay. Earthly treasure is perishing and cannot ultimately secure anyone.
Overview
James pictures the wealth of the unjust as already corrupted and moth-eaten, exposing the folly of trusting in it. The imagery underscores that hoarded possessions are temporary and powerless to save in the day of judgment. It echoes Jesus' warning against laying up treasure on earth where moth and rust destroy, and his call to store up treasure in heaven (Matthew 6:19-20).
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 10
- Matt 6:19–20Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal.
- Job 13:28So man wastes away like something rotten, like a moth-eaten garment.
- Luke 12:33Sell your possessions and give to the poor. Provide yourselves with purses that will not wear out, an inexhaustible treasure in heaven, where no thief approaches and no moth destroys.
- Isa 50:9Surely the Lord GOD helps Me. Who is there to condemn Me? See, they will all wear out like a garment; the moths will devour them.
- Isa 51:8For the moth will devour them like a garment, and the worm will eat them like wool. But My righteousness will last forever, My salvation through all generations.”
- 1 Pet 1:4and into an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, reserved in heaven for you,
- Ps 39:11You discipline and correct a man for his iniquity, consuming like a moth what he holds dear; surely each man is but a vapor. Selah
- Jer 17:11Like a partridge hatching eggs it did not lay is the man who makes a fortune unjustly. In the middle of his days his riches will desert him, and in the end he will be the fool.”
- Hos 5:12So I am like a moth to Ephraim, and like decay to the house of Judah.
- Jas 2:2Suppose a man comes into your meeting wearing a gold ring and fine clothes, and a poor man in shabby clothes also comes in.
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The wisdom from above and the royal law of love are the life of those who belong to 'our glorious Lord Jesus Christ' — faith in him made visible in works.
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Original language
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