James 4:15

Pasting Word Clippings

Translators added “you ought to” in an effort to force a smoothing of what they thought was implicity positive into English. There is no explicit verb of obligation (e.g. δεῖ “it is necessary,” ὀφείλω “I owe/ought”) in the Greek. The force of “ought to” in some English translations (e.g. “Instead you ought to say…”) is a translator’s interpretive addition to convey that the author is prescribing correct speech.

• ἀντὶ τοῦ λέγειν ὑμᾶς literally = “instead of the speaking” or “against the speaking”.

The use of an articular infinitive is also an obvious cue. Here, ἀντὶ τοῦ λέγειν ὑμᾶς = “against the act of speaking (that you do)” — the absolute infinitive refers to your usual saying or plan of speech.

Because it is articular, it encompasses the thing to be avoided: the infinitive acts almost like a nominalization of the speech, marking it as the object of the injunction.