Do you want to be shown…?: starting at this verse James proceeds to give two illustrations from the Old Testament to demonstrate that faith without action is useless.

He addresses his imaginary opponent as you shallow man, literally “you empty[-headed] person.” Here the term “empty” suggests deficiency in understanding, meaning “senseless” or “foolish.” It is a word of contempt and may be translated as “you stupid person!” Here the word man is to be taken as inclusive. This is reflected in renderings like “You fool!” (Good News Translation; so also Revised English Bible) and “you senseless person” (New Revised Standard Version).

Do you want to be shown is literally “Do you want to know?” meaning “Do you want proof?” (Goodspeed, Barclay, New American Bible). The content of what James’ opponent needs to be shown is that faith apart from works is barren. The same thought has already appeared several times. Faith without action is defined as of “no profit” in verse 14, “dead” in verse 17, and here as barren, which is literally “no work,” and therefore “ineffective,” “inactive,” or “unproductive.” We may observe a play on words here: “Faith without works is no work.” This statement sums up the main point of the entire section. Another way to render this question is “Do you want me to show you that it is useless to claim to believe in Jesus Christ, but not do good deeds?” However, since this is an entirely hypothetical situation, it may also be expressed as a strong statement: “Surely you don’t want me to have to show you that … if you do not do kind deeds.”

An alternative translation model for this verse may be:
• You stupid person! Surely you don’t want me to have to show you that it is of no use for you to claim to believe in Christ, if you do not do kind deeds.

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 .