Yaakov 3:12

12 Surely an etz te’enah (fig tree) cannot yield olives, my Achim b’Moshiach, or a grape vine figs? Neither can salt water yield sweet water.

Yaakov 3:12 Meaning and Commentary

James 3:12

Can the fig tree, my brethren, bear olive berries?
&c.] Every tree bears fruit, according to its kind; a fig tree produces figs, and an olive tree olive berries; a fig tree does not produce olive berries, or an olive tree figs; and neither of them both:

either a vine, figs?
or fig trees, grapes; or either of them, figs and grapes:

so can no fountain both yield salt water and fresh.
The Alexandrian copy reads, "neither can the salt water yield sweet water"; that is, the sea cannot yield sweet or fresh water: the Syriac version renders it, "neither can salt water be made sweet": but naturalists say, it may be made sweet, by being strained through sand: the design of these similes is to observe how absurd a thing it is that a man should both bless and curse with his tongue.

Yaakov 3:12 In-Context

10 Out of the same PEH comes forth bracha and also kelalah. My Achim b’Moshiach, these things ought not to be.

11 Surely not out of the same makor (fountain) pours forth mayim both sweet and bitter?

12 Surely an etz te’enah (fig tree) cannot yield olives, my Achim b’Moshiach, or a grape vine figs? Neither can salt water yield sweet water.

13 Who has chochmah and binah among you? Let him show by his hitnahagut hatovah (good conduct) that the ma’asim of him are of the shiflut (lowliness) of chochmah.

14 But if bitter kina (jealousy) you have and anochiyut (selfishness) in your levavot, do not boast and speak sheker against HaEmes.