envy: bitter ill will at another person's good, wanting them stripped of it rather than wanting it for yourself
Envy in this word is not simply wishing you had what someone else has. It is the sour resentment that another person is doing well, and the wish to see that good undone. Its whole aim is to deprive, not to acquire. This is what sets it apart from ordinary longing: it looks at another's success or gifts or standing and wants them torn down.
Every one of its nine appearances in the New Testament is a fault, never anything admirable. It turns up again and again in lists of the behaviors that destroy a community, from Paul's letters to the Pastoral letters to Peter. Two nearby words are often confused with it. Zeal or jealousy (ζῆλος) wants to have what the other has, and can even be a good thing, including zeal for God; envy only wants the other not to have it, and is always wrong. Strong desire (ἐπιθυμία) fixes on the thing craved and can be innocent; envy fixes instead on the person who has it, with hostility.
At its darkest the word carries real weight. The Gospel writers use it to name why the leaders handed Jesus over: not for any crime, but because they resented his standing and wanted him gone (Mark 15:10; Matthew 27:18). He was, in effect, envied to death. The same word also stands at the center of one of the hardest sentences in the New Testament, James 4:5, where scholars still disagree over who is doing the longing and what unnamed Scripture is being quoted.
In James 4:5 ("the spirit he made to dwell in us longs with envy"), does the word describe God's own jealous longing, sinful human envy, or the divine Spirit's opposition to envy, and what unnamed Scripture is James quoting since no Old Testament text matches?
- majorityGod is the implied subject: he yearns jealously for the spirit he made to dwell in us. This fits the charge of spiritual adultery in the previous verse and the Old Testament theme of God's covenant jealousy. It is the reading behind most modern English translations, though the difficulty is that this word is otherwise always a vice and never used of God.; Douglas Moo, The Letter of James, Pillar NTC (Eerdmans, 2000), 188-190; Peter Davids, The Epistle of James, NIGTC (Eerdmans, 1982), 162-164; Martin Dibelius, James, Hermeneia (Fortress, 1975), 220-224
- minorityThe subject is the human spirit, and the word keeps its ordinary negative sense: the spirit God set in us longs enviously. This preserves the normal meaning of the word and matches James's condemnation of human envy elsewhere in the letter; its weakness is that the verb elsewhere always means to yearn or long for.; Scot McKnight, The Letter of James, NICNT (Eerdmans, 2011), 336-341; Sophie Laws, A Commentary on the Epistle of James, BNTC (Harper's, 1980); Dan G. McCartney, James, BECNT (Baker, 2009), 210-217
- minorityThe preposition is read as "against": the divine Spirit God placed in believers opposes the envy James has been condemning, and the quoted "Scripture" comes from a lost Jewish book (Eldad and Modad) also cited by the Shepherd of Hermas.; Ralph P. Martin, James, WBC 48 (Word, 1988), 148-150; Richard Bauckham, "The Spirit of God in Us Loathes Envy: James 4:5," in The Holy Spirit and Christian Origins (Eerdmans, 2004), 270-281; Dale C. Allison Jr., A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle of James, ICC (T&T Clark, 2013), 605-632