Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are motheaten.
Parallel translations
- WEB Your riches are corrupted and your garments are moth-eaten.
- BSB Your riches have rotted and moths have eaten your clothes.
- 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 6:19–20Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal:
- Job 13:28And he, as a rotten thing, consumeth, as a garment that is moth eaten.
- Luke 12:33Sell that ye have, and give alms; provide yourselves bags which wax not old, a treasure in the heavens that faileth not, where no thief approacheth, neither moth corrupteth.
- Isa 50:9Behold, the Lord GOD will help me; who is he that shall condemn me? lo, they all shall wax old as a garment; the moth shall eat them up.
- Isa 51:8For the moth shall eat them up like a garment, and the worm shall eat them like wool: but my righteousness shall be for ever, and my salvation from generation to generation.
- 1 Pet 1:4To an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you,
- Ps 39:11When thou with rebukes dost correct man for iniquity, thou makest his beauty to consume away like a moth: surely every man is vanity. Selah.
- Jer 17:11As the partridge sitteth on eggs, and hatcheth them not; so he that getteth riches, and not by right, shall leave them in the midst of his days, and at his end shall be a fool.
- Hos 5:12Therefore will I be unto Ephraim as a moth, and to the house of Judah as rottenness.
- Jas 2:2For if there come unto your assembly a man with a gold ring, in goodly apparel, and there come in also a poor man in vile raiment;
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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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