Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are moth-eaten.
Parallel translations
- WEB Your riches are corrupted and your garments are moth-eaten.
- KJV Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are motheaten.
- BSB Your riches have rotted and moths have eaten your clothes.
- 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 6:19–20“Don’t lay up treasures for yourselves on the earth, where moth and rust consume, and where thieves break through and steal;
- Job 13:28though I am decaying like a rotten thing, like a garment that is moth-eaten.
- Luke 12:33Sell that which you have, and give gifts to the needy. Make for yourselves purses which don’t grow old, a treasure in the heavens that doesn’t fail, where no thief approaches, neither moth destroys.
- Isa 50:9Behold, the Lord Yahweh will help me! Who is he who will condemn me? Behold, they will all grow old like a garment. The moths will eat them up.
- Isa 51:8For the moth will eat them up like a garment, and the worm will eat them like wool; but my righteousness will be forever, and my salvation to all generations.”
- 1 Pet 1:4to an incorruptible and undefiled inheritance that doesn’t fade away, reserved in Heaven for you,
- Ps 39:11When you rebuke and correct man for iniquity, You consume his wealth like a moth. Surely every man is but a breath.” Selah.
- Jer 17:11As the partridge that sits on eggs which she has not laid, so is he who gets riches, and not by right; in the middle of his days they shall leave him, and at his end he shall be a fool.
- Hos 5:12Therefore I am to Ephraim like a moth, and to the house of Judah like rottenness.
- Jas 2:2For if a man with a gold ring, in fine clothing, comes into your synagogue, and a poor man in filthy clothing also comes in;
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Original language
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