James 3:6

3:6 And the tongue is a fire! The tongue represents ¹  the world of wrongdoing among the parts of our bodies. It ²  pollutes the entire body and sets fire to the course of human existence – and is set on fire by hell. ³ 

James 5:17

5:17 Elijah was a human being ⁴  like us, and he prayed earnestly ⁵  that it would not rain and there was no rain on the land for three years and six months!

---

¹ tn Grk “makes itself,” “is made.”

² tn Because of the length and complexity of the Greek sentence, a new sentence was started here in the translation.

³ sn The word translated hell is “Gehenna” (γέεννα, geenna), a Greek transliteration of the Hebrew words ge hinnom (“Valley of Hinnom”). This was the valley along the south side of Jerusalem. In OT times it was used for human sacrifices to the pagan god Molech (cf. Jer 7:31; 19:5-6; 32:35), and it came to be used as a place where human excrement and rubbish were disposed of and burned. In the intertestamental period, it came to be used symbolically as the place of divine punishment (cf. 1 En. 27:2, 90:26; 4 Ezra 7:36).

⁴ tn Although it is certainly true that Elijah was a “man,” here ἄνθρωπος (anqrwpo") has been translated as “human being” because the emphasis in context is not on Elijah’s masculine gender, but on the common humanity he shared with the author and the readers.

⁵ tn Grk “he prayed with prayer” (using a Hebrew idiom to show intensity).