James 3 - Introduction

THE COURSE OF NATURE

Dean Plumptre’s Note on James 3:6.—These words have no parallel in any Greek author. Literally, we might render, the “wheel of nature, or, of birth,” as in chap. James 1:23 we have “the face of nature,” for the “natural face,” that with which we are born. The best interpretation is that which sees in the phrase a figure for “the whole of life from birth,” the wheel which then begins to roll on its course, and continues rolling until death. The comparison of life to a race, or course of some kind, has been familiar to the poetry of all ages; and in a Latin poet, Silius ltalicus (vi. 120), we have a phrase almost identical with St. James’s:

“So, by the law of God, through chance and change,
The wheel of life rolls down the steep descent.”

As an alternative explanation, it is possible that there may be a reference to the potter’s wheel (Jeremiah 18:3; Sir. 38:29, where the word “wheel” is used). On this view the tongue would be represented as the flame that by its untempered heat mars the vessel in the hands of the potter. The frequent parallelisms between St. James and the Wisdom of the Son of Sirach are, as far as they go, in favour of this view. A third view, that the words have the same kind of meaning as orbis terrarum, and mean, as in the English Version, the whole order or course of nature, i.e. of human history in the world at large, has, it is believed, less to recommend it.