Come now: James shifts to a conversational style by calling for the attention of his readers. This expression is used only here and in 5.1 in the New Testament. It is a form of address, an attention getter, for which a number of equivalent expressions may be used; for example, “Now listen to me” (Good News Translation), “Listen carefully” (Japanese New Interconfessional Translation), “But wait” (Translator’s New Testament), “Stop and think a minute!” (Barclay), “Just a moment, now” (Phillips), “You should know better than…” (Contemporary English Version). The people addressed are you who say …, an imaginary group of business people who say what is said in the quotation.

Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and get gain: what we have here are the typical plans of ordinary business people. Their business plans include setting the time of departure, selecting a location, determining the length of stay, projecting the profit, and so on. Notice that all four verbs are in the future tense: “will go,” “will spend,” “will trade,” and “will get gain.” This shows that their plans are firm and full of confidence and expectations. Notice also the progression Today … tomorrow … a year. In cultures where it is not natural to talk about particular times such as Today, tomorrow, or a year, we may translate, for example, “Very soon [or, In a little while] we will go to the town, where we will stay for a long time [or, for many moons].” The expression such and such a town is an idiomatic way of referring to a certain location without naming the place specifically. In this way the story can be applied to any city and any situation. Thus the idiom may be rendered as “this and that town” (Barclay, New International Version). Other translations restructure this as “we’ll go to the city” (Contemporary English Version), or “we will travel to a certain city” (Good News Translation); such a restructuring will be more natural in many languages. In cultures where large towns do not exist, but only villages of various sizes, we may express town as “a large village,” “a place with many houses,” or even “a large village with a strong wall [or, fence] around it.” The verb trade means “do business” (Translator’s New Testament) or “go into business” (Good News Translation). The expression get gain may be rendered more naturally as “make money” (Translator’s New Testament, New International Version) or “make a profit” (New American Bible). James is obviously not rebuking his readers for making detailed and wise business decisions in advance. The problem is that they make plans without the Great Planner; they leave God out of their planning.

Quoted with permission from Loh, I-Jin and Hatton, Howard A. A Handbook on The Letter from James. (UBS Handbook Series). New York: UBS, 1997. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .