<p>5:1<i>&nbsp;Come now, you rich, weep and howl for the miseries that are coming upon you</i>- <i>&nbsp;</i>The reference to rich men weeping again suggests a link with the beatitudes: &quot;Woe unto you that are rich... that laugh now, for you shall mourn and weep... when all men shall speak well of you, for so did their fathers to the false prophets&quot; (Lk. 6:24-26). The mourning and weeping was what they were advised to do as a mark of their repentance in 4:9- perhaps this was therefore to be as a result of their no longer being rich, i.e. sharing their wealth with their desperately poor brethren. The beatitudes were saying that the rich would mourn and weep at the judgment; James is advising them to do so now, i.e. to judge or condemn themselves by their self-examination in this life, so that they would not experience the weeping and gnashing of teeth then (cp. 1 Cor. 11:31). The weeping and howling were to be when &quot;your miseries...shall come upon you&quot;- i.e. in AD70.</p><p>Thus the 'coming' of Christ then was also like the judgment seat at the second coming; the misery of the AD70 judgments and subsequent Jewish persecution was similar to that to be seen at the second coming. There should also be a parallel with the true contrition which we ought to have after repentant self-examination.</p><p>There is an allusion here to Zeph. 1:11,12: &quot;Howl, you inhabitants of Maktesh (i.e. the market area near the temple- see N.I.V.)... I will search Jerusalem with candles, and punish the men that are settled on their lees: that say in their heart, The Lord will not do good, neither will He do evil. Therefore your goods shall become a booty&quot;. The Jews Zephaniah addressed were facing the coming day of the Lord at the hand of Babylon; the materialism and subsequent money-making from the temple worshippers that they were guilty of, was being repeated in a more subtle form by their counterparts in the Jewish ecclesia in the days before AD70. Zephaniah warned &quot;The great day of the Lord is near, and hastes greatly&quot; (Zeph. 1:14), hoping to motivate them to repent. Similarly James: &quot;The coming of the Lord draws near&quot; (5:8). Ripping off the temple worshippers was paralleled by the financial abuses of the flock by the elders, to be mentioned in v.4. The idea of howling in Israel as a result of the impending day of the Lord due to their sins is common in the Old Testament prophets: Is. 13:6; Jer. 25:34; 47:2; Ez. 21:12; Joel 1:5,8,11,13; Mic. 1:8; Zech. 11:3. Many of these refer to the priests or the prophet howling. Thus James is saying that as well as howling in repentance, these ecclesial elders as counterparts of the priests and prophets under the Mosaic system should be howling out warning to the flock concerning the coming day of judgment.</p><p>&quot;Miseries&quot; can also imply spiritual lowness; the rareness of the Greek word and the other allusions to Rom. 7 in James suggest that we are intended to see a connection with Rom. 7:24: &quot;O wretched (same word as &quot;miseries&quot;) man that I am&quot;- an exclamation concerning the intense evil of his natural mind that was called forth by Paul's self examination, maybe implying that if they judged (condemned) themselves now in their self examination, they would avoid the misery and self-realization they were to have in the coming holocaust.</p>