Is any one of you suffering? He should pray. Is anyone cheerful? He should sing praises.
13 Is any among you afflicted? he means that there is no time in which God does not invite us to himself. For afflictions ought to stimulate us to pray; prosperity supplies us with an occasion to praise God. But such is the perverseness of men, that they cannot rejoice without forgetting God, and that when afflicted they are disheartened and driven to despair.
Swearing is forbidden not only when provoked by enemies but in all ordinary conversation; it is a grievous sin too common among the Jews and, shamefully, even among some who claim the name of Christ.
AI summary
Commenting on James 5:12-20
Is any among you afflicted?.... As the people of God generally are; they are commonly a poor, and an afflicted people; at least there are many among them that are so, and many are their afflictions: those whom Christ loves, as he did Lazarus, are not free from sicknesses and diseases; and these are rather signs of love than arguments against it; and when this...