James 1:8

A double minded man The context shews that the man so described (the Greek word is not found in any earlier writer and may have been coined by St James) is not the fraudulent man but the waverer, trying to serve two masters (Matthew 6:24), halting between two opinions (1 Kings 18:21). It answers to the "double heart" (Heb. "a heart and a heart") of Psalms 12:2. In Sir 1:28 we find the same thought, though not the same word, "Come not unto the Lord with a double heart," and again in Sir 2:12, where a woe is uttered against the "sinner that goeth two ways," in company with "the fearful and faint-hearted." Clement of Rome (i. 11) reproduces St James's word. The construction of the sentence is doubtful, and may be taken either as in the English text, or, with "he that doubteth" as the subject and "double-minded, unstable" as predicates.

unstable The Greek word is found in the LXX. of Isaiah 54:11, where the English version has "tossed with tempest." It is not found elsewhere in the New Testament, except as a various reading in ch. James 3:8, but the corresponding noun is often used both literally and figuratively (Luke 21:9; 1Co 14:33; 2 Corinthians 6:5; 2 Corinthians 12:20; James 3:16 and the LXX. of Proverbs 26:28). There is a slight change of imagery, and the picture brought before us is that of a man who does not walk straight onward, but in "all his ways" goes to and fro, now on this side, now on that, staggering, like a drunken man.