James 3:14
New International Version
But if you harbor bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast about it or deny the truth.

New Living Translation
But if you are bitterly jealous and there is selfish ambition in your heart, don’t cover up the truth with boasting and lying.

English Standard Version
But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast and be false to the truth.

Berean Standard Bible
But if you harbor bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast in it or deny the truth.

Berean Literal Bible
But if you have bitter jealousy and self-interest in your heart, do not boast of it and lie against the truth.

King James Bible
But if ye have bitter envying and strife in your hearts, glory not, and lie not against the truth.

New King James Version
But if you have bitter envy and self-seeking in your hearts, do not boast and lie against the truth.

New American Standard Bible
But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your heart, do not be arrogant and so lie against the truth.

NASB 1995
But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your heart, do not be arrogant and so lie against the truth.

NASB 1977
But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your heart, do not be arrogant and so lie against the truth.

Legacy Standard Bible
But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your heart, do not be arrogant and so lie against the truth.

Amplified Bible
But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not be arrogant, and [as a result] be in defiance of the truth.

Christian Standard Bible
But if you have bitter envy and selfish ambition in your heart, don’t boast and deny the truth.

Holman Christian Standard Bible
But if you have bitter envy and selfish ambition in your heart, don’t brag and deny the truth.

American Standard Version
But if ye have bitter jealousy and faction in your heart, glory not and lie not against the truth.

Aramaic Bible in Plain English
But if you have bitter envy or contention in your hearts, do not be puffed up against the truth and lie.

Contemporary English Version
But if your heart is full of bitter jealousy and selfishness, don't brag or lie to cover up the truth.

Douay-Rheims Bible
But if you have bitter zeal, and there be contentions in your hearts; glory not, and be not liars against the truth.

English Revised Version
But if ye have bitter jealousy and faction in your heart, glory not and lie not against the truth.

GOD'S WORD® Translation
But if you are bitterly jealous and filled with self-centered ambition, don't brag. Don't say that you are wise when it isn't true.

Good News Translation
But if in your heart you are jealous, bitter, and selfish, don't sin against the truth by boasting of your wisdom.

International Standard Version
But if you have bitter jealousy and rivalry in your hearts, stop boasting and slandering the truth.

Literal Standard Version
yet, if you have bitter zeal, and rivalry in your heart, do not glory, nor lie against the truth;

Majority Standard Bible
But if you harbor bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast in it or deny the truth.

New American Bible
But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast and be false to the truth.

NET Bible
But if you have bitter jealousy and selfishness in your hearts, do not boast and tell lies against the truth.

New Revised Standard Version
But if you have bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not be boastful and false to the truth.

New Heart English Bible
But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your heart, do not boast and do not lie against the truth.

Webster's Bible Translation
But if ye have bitter envying and strife in your hearts, glory not, and lie not against the truth.

Weymouth New Testament
But if in your hearts you have bitter feelings of envy and rivalry, do not speak boastfully and falsely, in defiance of the truth.

World English Bible
But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your heart, don’t boast and don’t lie against the truth.

Young's Literal Translation
and if bitter zeal ye have, and rivalry in your heart, glory not, nor lie against the truth;

Additional Translations ...
Audio Bible



Context
The Wisdom from Above
13Who is wise and understanding among you? Let him show it by his good conduct, by deeds done in the humility that comes from wisdom. 14But if you harbor bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast in it or deny the truth. 15Such wisdom does not come from above, but is earthly, unspiritual, demonic.…

Cross References
Romans 2:8
But for those who are self-seeking and who reject the truth and follow wickedness, there will be wrath and anger.

2 Corinthians 12:20
For I am afraid that when I come, I may not find you as I wish, and you may not find me as you wish. I fear that there may be quarreling, jealousy, rage, rivalry, slander, gossip, arrogance, and disorder.

Galatians 5:20
idolatry and sorcery; hatred, discord, jealousy, and rage; rivalries, divisions, factions,

1 Timothy 2:4
who wants everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.

James 1:18
He chose to give us birth through the word of truth, that we would be a kind of firstfruits of His creation.

James 3:16
For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there will be disorder and every evil practice.

James 5:19
My brothers, if one of you should wander from the truth and someone should bring him back,


Treasury of Scripture

But if you have bitter envying and strife in your hearts, glory not, and lie not against the truth.

if.

James 3:16
For where envying and strife is, there is confusion and every evil work.

James 4:1-5
From whence come wars and fightings among you? come they not hence, even of your lusts that war in your members? …

Genesis 30:1,2
And when Rachel saw that she bare Jacob no children, Rachel envied her sister; and said unto Jacob, Give me children, or else I die…

glory.

Romans 2:17,23
Behold, thou art called a Jew, and restest in the law, and makest thy boast of God, …

1 Corinthians 4:7,8
For who maketh thee to differ from another? and what hast thou that thou didst not receive? now if thou didst receive it, why dost thou glory, as if thou hadst not received it? …

1 Corinthians 5:2,6
And ye are puffed up, and have not rather mourned, that he that hath done this deed might be taken away from among you…

and lie.

2 Kings 10:16,31
And he said, Come with me, and see my zeal for the LORD. So they made him ride in his chariot…

John 16:2
They shall put you out of the synagogues: yea, the time cometh, that whosoever killeth you will think that he doeth God service.

Acts 26:9
I verily thought with myself, that I ought to do many things contrary to the name of Jesus of Nazareth.

Jump to Previous
Ambition Arrogant Better Bitter Boast Boastfully Defiance Deny Desire Emulation Envy Envying Falsely Feelings Glory Harbor Heart Hearts Jealousy Lie Others Pride Rivalry Selfish Speak Strife Talking True. Truth Zeal
Jump to Next
Ambition Arrogant Better Bitter Boast Boastfully Defiance Deny Desire Emulation Envy Envying Falsely Feelings Glory Harbor Heart Hearts Jealousy Lie Others Pride Rivalry Selfish Speak Strife Talking True. Truth Zeal
James 3
1. We are not rashly or arrogantly to reprove others;
5. but rather to bridle the tongue, a little member,
9. but a powerful instrument of much good, and great harm.
13. The truly wise are mild and peaceable, without envy and strife.














(14) But if ye have bitter envying and strife in your hearts.--Rather, it should be, bitter zeal and party-spirit. "Above all no zeal" was the worldly caution of an astute French prelate. But that against which the Apostle inveighed had caused Jerusalem to run with blood, and afterwards helped in her last hour to add horror upon shame. The Zealots were really assassins, pledged to any iniquity; such were the forty men "who bound themselves under a curse, saying they would neither eat nor drink till they had killed Paul" (Acts 23:12; see Note there). Some of these desperadoes unluckily escaped the swords of the Romans, and fled to the fastnesses of Mount Lebanon. They were probably the nucleus of a still more infamous society, known in the middle ages as that of the Old Man of the Mountain; in fact, our word "assassin" comes from "Hassan," their first sheik. Happily for humanity they were at length exterminated by the Turks.

Glory not.--Boast not yourselves as partakers of this accursed zeal; behold already what ruin it is bringing on us as a nation and a Church. And it were well to take care even in these milder days of religious factions, that the strife of creeds be wholly different in kind from the old zealot feuds, and not merely in degree. Able only to rend and overthrow, party-spirit will, if it be gloried and exulted in, lay down the walls of Zion "even to the ground." But "if any man defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy" (1Corinthians 3:17), and the words must be translated much more sternly, "If any man destroy . . ."

Lie not against the truth.--This is not tautology, nor a Hebraism, but of far deeper import. "What is truth?" said jesting Pilate (John 18:38), and, as Bacon remarks in his Essay on Truth, he would not stay for an answer. Probably he put a question familiar to himself, learned in a certain school of knowledge whose wise conclusion was that mankind could not tell; and the inquirer turned away, unwitting that before him stood the incarnate Truth itself. The world of unbelief repeats the careless utterance of the Roman Governor, and holds with him in its new Agnosticism; and to its self-assurance and pride of life He, Who can only be learned in the doing of His will (John 7:17), is alike unknowable and unknown. But the words of the Apostle have a mournful significance for the ignorant of God; and a terrible one for the Christian who knows and sins against the Light. Falsehood is not the hurt of some abstract virtue, or bare rule of right and wrong, but a direct blow at the living Truth (John 14:6), Who suffered and still "endures such contradiction of sinners against Himself" (Hebrews 12:3). As the fault of Judas was double--personal treachery against his Friend and Master, and a wider attack on Christ, the Truth manifest in the flesh--so in a like two-fold manner we smite at once God and our brother when we speak or act a lie. All faintest shades of falsehood tend to the dark one of a fresh betrayal of the Son of Man if they be conceived against others, while if they be wrought only to shield ourselves, we are. as Montaigne observed, "brave before God, and cowards before men," who are as the dust of His feet. . . .

Verse 14. - Bitter envying, Ζῆλος in itself may be either good or bad, and therefore πικρόν is added to characterize it. Bishop Lightfoot (on Galatians 5:20) points out that "as it is the tendency of Christian teaching to exalt the gentler qualities and to depress their opposites, ζῆλος falls in the scale of Christian ethics (see Clem. Romans, §§ 4-6), while ταπεινότης, for instance, rises." It may, perhaps, be an incidental mark of early date that St. James finds it necessary to characterize ζῆλος as πικρόν. Where St. Paul joins it with ἐριθείαι and ἔρις there is no qualifying adjective (Romans 13:13; 1 Corinthians 3:3; 2 Corinthians 12:20; Galatians 5:20). (On the distinction between ζῆλος and φθόνος, both of which are used by St. James, see Archbishop Trench on 'Synonyms,' § 26.). Strife (ἐριθείαν); better, party spirit, or faction (cf. Romans 2:8; 2 Corinthians 12:20; Galatians 5:20; Philippians 1:17; Philippians 2:3). The A.V. "strife" comes from a wrong derivation, as if ἐριθεία were connected with ἔρις, whereas it really comes from ἔριθος, a hired laborer, and so signifies

(1) working for hire;

(2) the canvassing of hired partisans; and

(3) factiousness in general (see Lightfoot on Galatians 5:20). Glory not; i.e. glory not of your wisdom, a boast to which your whole conduct thus gives the lie.

Parallel Commentaries ...


Greek
But
δὲ (de)
Conjunction
Strong's 1161: A primary particle; but, and, etc.

if
εἰ (ei)
Conjunction
Strong's 1487: If. A primary particle of conditionality; if, whether, that, etc.

you {harbor}
ἔχετε (echete)
Verb - Present Indicative Active - 2nd Person Plural
Strong's 2192: To have, hold, possess. Including an alternate form scheo skheh'-o; a primary verb; to hold.

in
ἐν (en)
Preposition
Strong's 1722: In, on, among. A primary preposition denoting position, and instrumentality, i.e. A relation of rest; 'in, ' at, on, by, etc.

your
ὑμῶν (hymōn)
Personal / Possessive Pronoun - Genitive 2nd Person Plural
Strong's 4771: You. The person pronoun of the second person singular; thou.

hearts
καρδίᾳ (kardia)
Noun - Dative Feminine Singular
Strong's 2588: Prolonged from a primary kar; the heart, i.e. the thoughts or feelings; also the middle.

bitter
πικρὸν (pikron)
Adjective - Accusative Masculine Singular
Strong's 4089: Bitter, acrid, malignant. Perhaps from pegnumi; sharp, i.e. Acrid.

jealousy
ζῆλον (zēlon)
Noun - Accusative Masculine Singular
Strong's 2205: From zeo; properly, heat, i.e. 'zeal' (figuratively, of God), or an enemy, malice).

and
καὶ (kai)
Conjunction
Strong's 2532: And, even, also, namely.

selfish ambition,
ἐριθείαν (eritheian)
Noun - Accusative Feminine Singular
Strong's 2052: Perhaps as the same as erethizo; properly, intrigue, i.e. faction.

{do} not
μὴ (mē)
Adverb
Strong's 3361: Not, lest. A primary particle of qualified negation; not, lest; also (whereas ou expects an affirmative one) whether.

boast [in it]
κατακαυχᾶσθε (katakauchasthe)
Verb - Present Imperative Middle or Passive - 2nd Person Plural
Strong's 2620: To boast against, exult over. From kata and kauchaomai; to exult against.

or
καὶ (kai)
Conjunction
Strong's 2532: And, even, also, namely.

deny
ψεύδεσθε (pseudesthe)
Verb - Present Imperative Middle - 2nd Person Plural
Strong's 5574: To deceive, lie, speak falsely. Middle voice of an apparently primary verb; to utter an untruth or attempt to deceive by falsehood.

the
τῆς (tēs)
Article - Genitive Feminine Singular
Strong's 3588: The, the definite article. Including the feminine he, and the neuter to in all their inflections; the definite article; the.

truth.
ἀληθείας (alētheias)
Noun - Genitive Feminine Singular
Strong's 225: From alethes; truth.


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NT Letters: James 3:14 But if you have bitter jealousy (Ja Jas. Jam)
James 3:13
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