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Advent · Third Sunday in Advent · Year A

James 5:7-11

Be Patient Until the Lord’s Coming

December 14, 2025

The Harvesters, Pieter Bruegel the Elder
The Harvesters, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, 1565Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
From the same series as Hunters in the Snow. The wheat is cut in a channel through the field, one man is asleep under a tree with his trousers open, and the eye is let out across the whole valley.Be patient, therefore, beloved, until the coming of the Lord. The farmer waits for the precious crop from the earth, being patient with it until it receives the early and the late rains. You also must be patient.Pieter Bruegel the ElderThe great painter of Netherlandish peasant life (c. 1525-1569), who put proverbs, seasons and crowds on canvas with an eye that is affectionate and entirely unsentimental.Metropolitan Museum of Art, New YorkThe largest art museum in the Americas, founded in 1870 by a group of New Yorkers who wanted one and had no collection to start from.Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
LSB Three-Year Lectionary
GospelMatt. 11:2-15Mt 11:2-15
EpistleJas. 5:7-11Jas 5:7-11
Old TestamentIsa. 35:1-10Is 35:1-10
PsalterPs. 146Ps 146

Overview & Insights

“See how the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth, being patient about it, until it receives the early and the late rains.” (James 5:7)

The exhortation follows the letter’s harshest paragraph, an indictment of landowners who withheld wages (5:1-6), so the patience commanded in v. 7 is asked of the defrauded rather than of the comfortable. Two words are kept distinct: makrothymia, the long-suffering of vv. 7-8 and 10, and hypomone, the endurance credited to Job in v. 11. The farmer’s image assumes the agricultural year of Palestine, the early rains of autumn that permit sowing and the late rains of spring that fill the grain (compare Deuteronomy 11:14; Joel 2:23), a wait no effort can shorten. The Job invoked in v. 11 is not the Job of the dialogues, who is anything but patient, but the Job of the frame narrative. The closing description of God as compassionate and merciful is the formula of Exodus 34:6, offered here as the ground of patience rather than of pardon.

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Commentary

Commentary on James 5:7-10Commentary on Jas 5:7-10 workingpreacher.org

Reads James' call to patient endurance through the example of Job and the question of why the innocent suffer.

Epistle: James 5:7-11 (Advent 3: Series A)Epistle: Jas 5:7-11 (Advent 3: Series A) 1517.org

1517's Series A epistle article walks through James 5:7-11's call to patient waiting for the Lord's coming, including the LSB-length verse 11.

James 5:7-10 CommentaryJas 5:7-10 Commentary cepreaching.org

Doug Bratt's CEP commentary treats patience in James 5:7-10 as a countercultural virtue rooted in trust in God's timing.

James 5 Commentary: The Life of a Living FaithJas 5 Commentary: The Life of a Living Faith enduringword.com

Guzik's verse-by-verse notes cover the farmer's patience and the examples of the prophets and Job in James 5:7-11.

James 5 - Barnes' Notes on the Whole BibleJas 5 - Barnes' Notes on the Whole Bible studylight.org

Barnes' Notes explains the farmer analogy and the prophets/Job as examples of patient endurance in 5:7-11.

Background & Word Study

James 5:7 Greek InterlinearJas 5:7 Greek Interlinear biblehub.com

Word-by-word Greek parsing of James 5:7 (makrothymesate, the farmer awaiting the early and late rains) with Strong's numbers.

The Church Fathers

James 5:7Jas 5:7 catenabible.com

Patristic comments (Augustine, Bede, and others) on the farmer's patience in James 5:7 within Catena's running commentary.

Sermons & Reflections

Patience Under the Mercy of Christ 1517.org

Wade Johnston's reflection on James 5:7-11 calls patience 'the beggar's virtue,' rooted in the Lord's compassion and mercy of verse 11.

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