16 Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.
17 Elias was a man subject to like passions as we are, and he prayed earnestly that it might not rain: and it rained not on the earth by the space of three years and six months.
18 And he prayed again, and the heaven gave rain, and the earth brought forth her fruit.
James 5:16-18
Although James’s Epistle comes to us in through the Greek language, James had an Hebraic background and was thinking in Hebrew as he wrote or dictated to a scribe. We can understand nuances in Scripture that we might otherwise miss if we realize both the background of a particular Scriptural writer as well as the background of those to whom he was writing, who in this case also had an Hebraic background. It is a mistake to attempt to totally understand what is essentially an “Eastern” book from merely a “Western” mindset and perspective. James tells us that the “effectual, fervent prayer of a righteous” accomplishes much.
Throughout much of ancient Jewish culture, men who were considered to be particularly pious because of their intimacy with God and their miraculous answers to prayer were called “righteous,” or in Hebrew, “t’zadiq.” Jesus’s earthly father, Joseph, is referred to as a “righteous” (“t’zadiq”). The prophetic dream warning Joseph to flee to Egypt with Mary and Jesus was not his first experience with dream communication from the Lord. James, the earthly brother of Jesus and the author of the Epistle of James, was also considered to be “t’zadiq.” It is said that many in Jerusalem who did not accept Jesus’s Messianic claims still considered James to be a holy man. What a testimony to have before an unbelieving world that they would recognize God’s Holiness and Power upon us even though they did not yet believe what we preached! It is also written in the historical record that many from Jerusalem believed that the city had been allowed by God to fall to the Romans “because the prayers of Yakov T’zadiq were no longer around to protect the city.” Through Church tradition, “Yakov T’zadiq” comes to us as “James the Just.”
Those who were considered “t’zadiq” were distinguished by prophetic dreams and miraculous answers to prayer, most notably prayers for rain. A couple of generations before Jesus was born there was a well-known “t’zadiq” named Oni. I ran into Oni a couple of decades ago in my studies and he fascinated me. Nicknamed “Oni the Rainmaker,” Oni was known by his peers to be a man of exceptional piety. When a group of elders approached him one day with an urgent request that he pray for rain, Oni drew a circle on the ground, sat down in the middle of it, and declared he would stay there in prayer until the rain began to fall. It wasn’t all that long until clouds formed, and light sprinkles turned into a downpour.
Of course James would have known the story of Oni and of other famous “t’zadiq,” including the prophet Elijah whom many saw as the forerunner of the “t’zadiq” tradition. Elijah experienced many miraculous answers to prayer, including both the stopping and the release of rain. Yet here is what we must see. James tells us that Elijah was a “man subject to like passions as we are.” Though regarded as a powerful prophet and “t’zadiq,” Elijah was a human being. He did not receive special answers to prayer because he somehow earned or merited them. He was able to pray with great effect because of his personal relationship and intimacy with Almighty God!
There is nothing we receive from God through our own merit. Every blessing of God comes to us by His Grace and is appropriated personally by us through faith. This is what James message is to us in this passage. Every believer can walk in an intimate fellowship and communion with God, although we are all still human and face temptations every day. Every single believer can exercise the Authority that Jesus made available to us through His death, burial, and resurrection. Every believer can experience miraculous supernatural answers to prayer. In other words, every born again believer in Jesus Christ is “t’zadiq.”
For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him. (I Corinthians 5:21 KJV)
