16 For where envy is, and the desire to get the better of others, there is no order, but every sort of evil-doing.
Because you are still in the flesh: for when there is envy and division among you, are you not still walking after the way of the flesh, even as natural men?
But if you have bitter envy in your heart and the desire to get the better of others, have no pride in this, talking falsely against what is true.
Not being of the Evil One like Cain, who put his brother to death. And why did he put him to death? Because his works were evil and his brother's works were good.
So it was named Babel, because there the Lord took away the sense of all languages and from there the Lord sent them away over all the face of the earth.
Worthy.Bible » Commentaries » Matthew Henry Commentary » Commentary on James 3
Commentary on James 3 Matthew Henry Commentary
Chapter 3
The apostle here reproves ambition, and an arrogant magisterial tongue; and shows the duty and advantage of bridling it because of its power to do mischief. Those who profess religion ought especially to govern their tongues (v. 1-12). True wisdom makes men meek, and avoiders of strife and envy: and hereby it may easily be distinguished from a wisdom that is earthly and hypocritical (v. 13-18).
Jam 3:1-12
The foregoing chapter shows how unprofitable and dead faith is without works. It is plainly intimated by what this chapter first goes upon that such a faith is, however, apt to make men conceited and magisterial in their tempers and their talk. Those who set up faith in the manner the former chapter condemns are most apt to run into those sins of the tongue which this chapter condemns. And indeed the best need to be cautioned against a dictating, censorious, mischievous use of their tongues. We are therefore taught,
Jam 3:13-18
As the sins before condemned arise from an affectation of being thought more wise than others, and being endued with more knowledge than they, so the apostle in these verses shows the difference between men's pretending to be wise and their being really so, and between the wisdom which is from beneath (from earth or hell) and that which is from above.