James 5 - IVP New Testament Commentaries

Linguistic and Lexical Context

Though the hermeneutical value of etymology has been exaggerated in many biblical studies, we can still begin with the linguistic and lexical data as the starting point for contextualizing James's term plousios. Friedrich Hauck and Wilhelm Kasch describe the basic sense of the term as "fullness of goods" (Hauck and Kasch 1968:319). Arndt and Gingrich list two senses of plousios: a literal sense ("rich man") and a figurative sense ("rich in something") (1957:679). Both of these senses can be carried in the related words plouteo ("be rich, become rich"), ploutizo ("make rich") and ploutos ("wealth, riches"). The adverb plousios ("richly, abundantly") completes the list of related terms of similar lexical form. Other terms of different lexical form include

agathos good thing, possession, treasure

euporeo, euporeomai have plenty, be well off

euporia means, prosperity

mamonas wealth, property

timiotes abundance of costly things

chrema property, wealth, money

All of these terms, both similar and dissimilar to plousios, should be included as relevant terms in a search for passages about wealth in the canonical context. For now, no definitely Christian or non-Christian meaning appears for plousios.