Does a spring send out from the same opening fresh and bitter water?
Parallel Translations
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Does a spring send out from the same opening fresh and bitter water?
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Doth a fountayne sende forth at one place swete water and bytter also?
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Doeth a fountaine send forth at one place sweete water and bitter?
Cross-references
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Explain this verse (15 sources)
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John Calvin 1540 · Public Domain 11 Doth a fountain. He adduces these comparisons in…
11 Doth a fountain. He adduces these comparisons in order to shew that a cursing tongue is something monstrous, contrary to all nature, and subverts the order everywhere established by God. For God hath so arranged things which are contrary, that inanimate things ought to deter us from a chaotic mixture, sure as is found in a double tongue.
John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain 11 Doth a fountain send forth at the same…
11 Doth a fountain send forth at the same place sweet water and bitter?
Ver. 11. Doth a fountain send forth] The fountain, or rather the botch, of sensual and sinful pleasures doth. Sin is a bitter sweet, γλυκυπικρον, the poison of asps, which first tickleth, and then killeth. All creature comforts are dulcis acerbitas, saith one. Amarissima volulptas, saith another, (Tertul.)
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" Principium dulce est, at finis amoris amarus;
Laeta venire Venus, tristis abire solet."
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain Ordinarily and naturally; if any such be, it is…
Ordinarily and naturally; if any such be, it is looked upon as uncouth and prodigious.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain Doth a fountain send forth at the same place,....…
Doth a fountain send forth at the same place,.... "Or hole"; for at divers places, and at different times, as Pliny (m) observes, it may send forth
sweet water and bitter: and it is reported (n), there is a lake with the Trogloditae, a people in Ethiopia, which becomes thrice a day bitter, and then as often sweet; but then it does not yield sweet water and bitter at the same time: this simile is used to show how unnatural it is that blessing and cursing should proceed out of the same mouth.
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(m) Nat. Hist. l. 2. c. 103. (n) Isodor. Hispal. Originum, l. 13. c. 13. p. 115.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain Verse 11. Doth a fountain send forth - sweet…
Verse 11. Doth a fountain send forth - sweet water and bitter?] In many things nature is a sure guide to man; but no such inconsistency is found in the natural world as this blessing and cursing in man. No fountain, at the same opening, sends forth sweet water and bitter; no fig tree can bear olive berries; no vine can bear figs; nor can the sea produce salt water and fresh from the same place. These are all contradictions, and indeed impossibilities, in nature. And it is depraved man alone that can act the monstrous part already referred to.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain Jas 3:11-12. Doth a fountain send forth at the…
Jas 3:11-12. Doth a fountain send forth at the same opening, alternately, and at different times, sweet water and bitter — As if he had said, No such inconsistency is found in the natural world, and nothing of the kind ought to be known in the moral world. Estius observes, “that the apostle’s design was to confirm his doctrine by four similitudes; the first taken from fountains, the second and third from fruit-trees, and the fourth from the sea, which being in its nature salt, does not produce fresh water.” He therefore approves of the reading of the Alexandrian MS., which is, So neither can salt water produce sweet. The Syriac version reads, Salt waters cannot be made sweet; and the Vulgate, So neither can salt water make fresh water. In like manner, we ought to maintain a consistency in our words or discourses; and if we profess religion and devotion, we should speak at all times as persons who are endeavouring to employ our tongues to the noble purposes for which the use of speech was granted to man.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain Doth a fountain send forth at the same place…
Doth a fountain send forth at the same place - Margin, “hole.” The Greek word means “opening, fissure,” such as there is in the earth, or in rocks from which a fountain gushes.
Sweet water and bitter - Fresh water and salt, Jam 3:12. Such things do not occur in the works of nature, and they should not be found in man.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain fountain--an image of the heart: as the aperture (so…
fountain--an image of the heart: as the aperture (so the Greek for "place" is literally) of the fountain is an image of man's mouth. The image here is appropriate to the scene of the Epistle, Palestine, wherein salt and bitter springs are found. Though "sweet" springs are sometimes found near, yet "sweet and bitter" (water) do not flow "at the same place" (aperture). Grace can make the same mouth that "sent forth the bitter" once, send forth the sweet for the time to come: as the wood (typical of Christ's cross) changed Marah's bitter water into sweet.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain 11. The moral impossibility of such opposite manifestations of…
11. The moral impossibility of such opposite manifestations of character is illustrated by the products of nature. It is, in moral character, the opposition between incompatible qualities. If a man display one set of qualities he cannot possess the other, so as to be a wicked man and a holy man, an heir of heaven and a child of hell at the same time.
Place—Fissure from which the water jets forth.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain 11. Doth a fountain] The Greek gives the article,…
11. Doth a fountain] The Greek gives the article, the fountain, as more emphatically generalising the question.
send forth at the same place …] Both verb and noun in the Greek are more vivid. Our word spurt or gush, if it could be used transitively, would answer to the former; our mouth, or “source”, or “orifice”, to the latter. The comparison was a natural one in a country like Palestine, where springs more or less salt or sulphureous are not uncommon. Most of those on the eastern slope of the hill-country of Judah and Benjamin are indeed brackish. Comp. the sweetening of the spring which supplied the college of the Sons of the Prophets in 2 Kings, 2Ki_2:19, and the symbolic healing of the waters in Eze_47:9.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain (11) Doth a (or, the) fountain send forth (literally,…
(11) Doth a (or, the) fountain send forth (literally, spurt) at the same place (or, hole, see margin) sweet water and bitter (i.e., fresh water and salt)?—A vivid picture, probably, of the mineral springs abounding in the Jordan valley, near the Dead Sea; with which might be contrasted the clear and sparkling rivulets of the north, fed by the snows of Lebanon. Nature had no confusion in her plans; and thus to pour out curse and blessing from the same lips were unnatural indeed. Or, again—
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain Vers. 11, 12. Illustrations showing the absurdity of the…
Vers. 11, 12. Illustrations showing the absurdity of the conduct reprobated. From one principle opposite things cannot be produced. Nothing can bring forth that which is not corresponding to its nature.
(1) The same fountain cannot give both sweet and bitter water.
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(2) A fig tree cannot yield olives, nor a vine figs.
(3) Salt water cannot yield sweet.
How, then, can the tongue yield both blessing and cursing? It will be seen that the thought in (2) is different from that into Mat_7:16, to which it bears a superficial resemblance. There the thought is that a good tree cannot yield bad fruit. Here it is that a tree must yield that which corresponds to its nature; a fig tree must yield figs and not olives, etc. So can no fountain both yield salt water and fresh. The Received Text, which the A.V follows, is wrong here. Read, ou) ajlukon gluku poihsai udwr (A, B, C, and a, except that it reads oujde), and translate, neither can salt water yield sweet; Vulgate, sic neque salsa dulcem potest facere aquam ; Syriac, "Thus also salt waters cannot be made sweet." The construction, it will be seen, is suddenly changed in the middle of the verse, and St. James ends as if the previous clause had been oute dunatai sukh ejlaiav, k.t.l. (cf. Winer, p. 619, Grimm"s "Lexicon of N. T. Greek," p. 324).
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
B. W. Johnson 1891 · Public Domain 11. Doth a fountain. In nature such incongruity is…
11. Doth a fountain. In nature such incongruity is not shown. A fountain does not give out two kinds of waters.
B. W. Johnson's The People's New Testament with Notes (1889–1891) — public domain. Electronic text from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL) ThML edition.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 Connecting Statement:
Connecting Statement:
After James stresses that the words of believers should not both bless and curse, he gives examples from nature to teach his readers that people who honor God by worshiping him should also live in right ways.
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Does a spring pour out from its opening both sweet and bitter water?
James uses a rhetorical question to remind believers about what happens in nature. This can be expressed as a sentence. AT: "You know that a spring does not pour out both sweet water and bitter water." (See: Rhetorical Question)
Does a fig tree, my brothers, make olives?
James uses another rhetorical question to remind the believers about what happens in nature. AT: "Brothers, you know that a fig tree cannot grow olives." (See: Rhetorical Question)
my brothers
"my fellow believers"
Or a grapevine, figs?
The word "make" is understood from the previous phrase. James uses another rhetorical question to remind the believers about what happens in nature. AT: "Or does a grapevine make figs?" or "And a grapevine cannot grow figs." (See: Ellipsis)
translationWords
fountain
fig
olive
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 3:11 Some springs, especially in the upper sources of…
3:11 Some springs, especially in the upper sources of the Jordan River, did produce fresh water and bitter water; such brackish springs could not support a town. Similarly, if a person’s speech mixes foul with sweet, it will not build up the community.
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.