James 1:21
Wherefore casting away all uncleanness, and abundance of naughtiness, with meekness receive the ingrafted word, which is able to save your souls.
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- Vulgate (Clementine)
- Propter quod abjicientes omnem immunditiam, et abundantiam malitiæ, in mansuetudine suscipite insitum verbum, quod potest salvare animas vestras.
- Greek New Testament (SBLGNT)
- διὸ ἀποθέμενοι πᾶσαν ῥυπαρίαν καὶ περισσείαν κακίας ἐν πραΰτητι δέξασθε τὸν ἔμφυτον λόγον τὸν δυνάμενον σῶσαι τὰς ψυχὰς ὑμῶν.
Haydock's commentary
All uncleanness.8 The Greek shews that hereby is meant a sordid, filthy uncleanness, infecting and defiling the soul.
The engrafted9 word. The word and doctrine of Christ, by the labours of his preachers, and chiefly by his divine grace engrafted and fixed in your souls. (Witham)
8 Immunditiam, ruparian, from rupos, sordes, spurcitia.
9 Insitum verbum, emphuton logon.
From Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary, 1859, in the transcription made by Todd Easton and kept online by John Paul Wohlschied at johnblood.gitlab.io/haydock.
The Fathers on this verse
St Irenaeus Against Heresies: Book V, Chapter X. By a comparison drawn
1. This truth, therefore, [he declares], in order that we may not reject the engrafting of the Spirit while pampering the flesh. “But thou, being a wild olive-tree,” he says, “hast been grafted into the good olive-tree, and been made a partaker of the fatness of the olive-tree.” As, therefore, when the wild olive has been engrafted, if it remain in its former condition, viz., a wild olive, it is “cut off, and cast into the fire;” but if it takes kindly to the graft, and is changed into the good olive-tree, it becomes a fruit-bearing olive, planted, as it were, in a king’s park ( paradiso ): so likewise men, if they do truly progress by faith towards better things, and receive the Spirit of God, and bring forth the fruit thereof, shall be spiritual, as being planted in the paradise of God. …
St Athanasius Against the Arians. (Orationes contra Arianos IV.), Texts explained; Fifthly, Acts ii. 36. The Regula Fidei must be observed; made applies to our Lord's manhood; and to His manifestation; and to His office relative to us; and is relative to the Jews. Parallel instance in Gen. xxvii. 29, 37. The context contradicts the Arian interpretation
14. For the Son of God indeed, being Himself the Word, is Lord of all; but we once were subject from the first to the slavery of corruption and the curse of the Law, then by degrees fashioning for ourselves things that were not, we served, as says the blessed Apostle, ‘them which by nature are no Gods,’ and, ignorant of the true God, we preferred things that were not to the truth; but afterwards, as the ancient people when oppressed in Egypt groaned, so, when we too had the Law ‘engrafted’ in us, and according to the unutterable sighings of the Spirit made our intercession, ‘O Lord our God, take possession of us,’ then, as ‘He became for a house of refuge’ and a ‘God and defence,’ so also He became our Lord. Nor did He then begin to be, but we began to have Him for our Lord. …