James 3:12

Murdock Translation

Or can the fig-tree, my brethren, bear olives? or the vine, figs? So also salt waters cannot be made sweet.

Parallel Translations

Christian Standard Bible®
Can a fig tree produce olives, my brothers and sisters, or a grapevine produce figs? Neither can a saltwater spring yield fresh water.

King James Version (1611)
Can ye figtree, my brethren, beare oliue berries? either a vine, figs? so can no fountaine both yeeld salt water & fresh.

King James Version
Can the fig tree, my brethren, bear olive berries? either a vine, figs? so can no fountain both yield salt water and fresh.

English Standard Version
Can a fig tree, my brothers, bear olives, or a grapevine produce figs? Neither can a salt pond yield fresh water.

New American Standard Bible
Can a fig tree, my brothers and sisters, bear olives, or a vine bear figs? Nor can salt water produce fresh.

New Century Version
My brothers and sisters, can a fig tree make olives, or can a grapevine make figs? No! And a well full of salty water cannot give good water.

New American Standard Bible (1995)
Can a fig tree, my brethren, produce olives, or a vine produce figs? Nor can salt water produce fresh.

Berean Standard Bible
My brothers, can a fig tree grow olives, or a grapevine bear figs? Neither can a salt spring produce fresh water.

Contemporary English Version
Can a fig tree produce olives or a grapevine produce figs? Does fresh water come from a well full of salt water?

Complete Jewish Bible
Can a fig tree yield olives, my brothers? or a grapevine, figs? Neither does salt water produce fresh.

Darby Translation
Can, my brethren, a fig produce olives, or a vine figs? Neither [can] salt [water] make sweet water.

Easy-to-Read Version
My brothers and sisters, can a fig tree make olives? Or can a grapevine make figs? No, and a well full of salty water cannot give good water.

Geneva Bible (1587)
Can ye figge tree, my brethren, bring forth oliues, either a vine figges? so can no fountaine make both salt water and sweete.

George Lamsa Translation
Can the fig tree, my brethren, bear olives? Or the vine, figs? likewise also salt water cannot be made sweet.

Good News Translation
A fig tree, my friends, cannot bear olives; a grapevine cannot bear figs, nor can a salty spring produce sweet water.

Lexham English Bible
A fig tree is not able, my brothers, to produce olives, or a grapevine figs. Neither can a saltwater spring produce fresh water.

Literal Translation
My brothers, a fig tree is not able to produce olives, or a vine figs. So neither can a fountain produce both salt and sweet water.

Amplified Bible
Can a fig tree, my brothers, produce olives, or a grapevine produce figs? Nor can salt water produce fresh.

American Standard Version
can a fig tree, my brethren, yield olives, or a vine figs? neither can salt water yield sweet.

Bible in Basic English
Is a fig-tree able to give us olives, my brothers, or do we get figs from a vine, or sweet water from the salt sea?

Hebrew Names Version
Can a fig tree, my brothers, yield olives, or a vine figs? Thus no spring yields both salt water and fresh water.

International Standard Version
My brothers, a fig tree cannot produce olives, nor a grapevine figs, can it? Neither can a salt spring produce fresh water.

Etheridge Translation
12 Or can the fig-tree, my brethren, make olives, or the vines figs? thus also [fn] salt waters cannot be made sweet.

Bishop's Bible (1568)
Can the fygge tree, my brethren, beare oliue beries? either a vine beare figges? So can no fountayne geue both salt water and freshe also.

English Revised Version
Can a fig tree, my brethren, yield olives, or a vine figs? neither can salt water yield sweet.

World English Bible
Can a fig tree, my brothers, yield olives, or a vine figs? Thus no spring yields both salt water and fresh water.

Wesley's New Testament (1755)
Can a fig tree, my brethren, bear olive berries, or a vine figs? So can no fountain yield salt water and fresh.

Weymouth's New Testament
Can a fig-tree, my brethren, yield olives, or a vine yield figs? No; and neither can salt water yield sweet.

Wycliffe Bible (1395)
My britheren, whether a fige tre may make grapis, ethir a vyne figus? So nethir salt watir mai make swete watir.

Update Bible Version
Can a fig tree, my brothers, yield olives, or a vine figs? Neither [can] salt water yield sweet.

Webster's Bible Translation
Can the fig-tree, my brethren, bear olive-berries? or a vine, figs? so no fountain [can] yield both salt water and fresh.

New English Translation
Can a fig tree produce olives, my brothers and sisters, or a vine produce figs? Neither can a salt water spring produce fresh water.

New King James Version
Can a fig tree, my brethren, bear olives, or a grapevine bear figs? Thus no spring yields both salt water and fresh. [fn]

New Living Translation
Does a fig tree produce olives, or a grapevine produce figs? No, and you can't draw fresh water from a salty spring.

New Life Bible
Can a fig tree give olives or can a grape-vine give figs? A well does not give both good water and bad water.

New Revised Standard
Can a fig tree, my brothers and sisters, yield olives, or a grapevine figs? No more can salt water yield fresh.

J.B. Rotherham Emphasized Bible
Is it possible, my brethren, for, a fig-tree, to produce, olives, or, a vine, figs? Neither can, salt, water yield, sweet.

Douay-Rheims Bible
Can the fig tree, my brethren, bear grapes? Or the vine, figs? So neither can the salt water yield sweet.

Revised Standard Version
Can a fig tree, my brethren, yield olives, or a grapevine figs? No more can salt water yield fresh.

Tyndale New Testament (1525)
Can the fygge tree my Brethren beare olive beries: other a vyne beare fygges?

Young's Literal Translation
is a fig-tree able, my brethren, olives to make? or a vine figs? so no fountain salt and sweet water [is able] to make.

Miles Coverdale Bible (1535)
Can the fygge tree, my Brethren, beare oliue beries: ether a vyne beare fygges?

Mace New Testament (1729)
can a fig-tree, my brethren, produce olives, or a vine figs? no more can the sea yield water that is fresh.

THE MESSAGE
When You Open Your Mouth Don't be in any rush to become a teacher, my friends. Teaching is highly responsible work. Teachers are held to the strictest standards. And none of us is perfectly qualified. We get it wrong nearly every time we open our mouths. If you could find someone whose speech was perfectly true, you'd have a perfect person, in perfect control of life. A bit in the mouth of a horse controls the whole horse. A small rudder on a huge ship in the hands of a skilled captain sets a course in the face of the strongest winds. A word out of your mouth may seem of no account, but it can accomplish nearly anything—or destroy it! It only takes a spark, remember, to set off a forest fire. A careless or wrongly placed word out of your mouth can do that. By our speech we can ruin the world, turn harmony to chaos, throw mud on a reputation, send the whole world up in smoke and go up in smoke with it, smoke right from the pit of hell. This is scary: You can tame a tiger, but you can't tame a tongue—it's never been done. The tongue runs wild, a wanton killer. With our tongues we bless God our Father; with the same tongues we curse the very men and women he made in his image. Curses and blessings out of the same mouth! My friends, this can't go on. A spring doesn't gush fresh water one day and brackish the next, does it? Apple trees don't bear strawberries, do they? Raspberry bushes don't bear apples, do they? You're not going to dip into a polluted mud hole and get a cup of clear, cool water, are you?

Simplified Cowboy Version
Can you get a filly from a cow or a heifer from a mare? Salt water doesn't become fresh by putting it in a clean cup.

Contextual Overview

¹ Let there not be many teachers among you, my brethren; but know ye, that we are obnoxious to, a severer judgment. ² For we all offend in many things. Whoever offendeth not in discourse, is a perfect man, who can also keep his whole body in subjection. ³ Behold, we put bridles into the mouth of horses, that they may obey us; and we turn about their whole body. ⁴ Huge ships also, when strong winds drive them, are turned about by a small timber, to what place the pleasure of the pilot looketh. ⁵ So likewise the tongue is a small member, and it exalteth itself. Also a little fire inflameth large forests. ⁶ Now the tongue is a fire, and the world of sin is like a forest. And this tongue, which is one among our members, marreth our whole body; and it inflameth the series of our generations that roll on like a wheel; and it is itself on fire. ⁷ For all natures of beasts and birds and reptiles, of the sea or land, are subjugated by the nature of man. ⁸ But the tongue hath no one been able to tame: it is an evil thing, not coercible, and full of deadly poison. ⁹ For with it, we bless the Lord and Father; and with it we curse men, who were made in the image of God: ¹⁰ and from the same mouth, proceed curses and blessings. My brethren, these things ought not to be so.

Bible Verse Review
  from Treasury of Scripure Knowledge

the fig tree: Isaiah 5:2-4, Jeremiah 2:21, Matthew 7:16-20, Matthew 12:33, Luke 6:43, Luke 6:44, Romans 11:16-18

so: Exodus 15:23-25, 2 Kings 2:19-22, Ezekiel 47:8-11

Reciprocal: Genesis 1:11 - fruit Revelation 3:10 - to try

Cross-References

Luke 10:29
And he, being disposed to justify himself, said: And who is my neighbor?

Romans 10:3
For they know not the righteousness of God, but seek to establish their own righteousness: and therefore they have not submitted themselves to the righteousness of God.

Gill's Notes on the Bible

Can the fig tree, my brethren, bear olive berries?.... 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.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

Can the fig-tree, my brethren, bear olive-berries? - Such a thing is impossible in nature, and equally absurd in morals. A fig-tree bears only figs; and so the tongue ought to give utterance only to one class of sentiments and emotions. These illustrations are very striking, and show the absurdity of that which the apostle reproves. At the same time, they accomplish the main purpose which he had in view, to repress the desire of becoming public teachers without suitable qualifications. They show the power of the tongue; they show what a dangerous power it is for a man to wield who has not the proper qualifications; they show that no one should put himself in the position where he may wield this power without such a degree of tried prudence, wisdom, discretion, and piety, that there shall be a moral certainty that he will use it aright.

Clarke's Notes on the Bible

Verse 12. So can no fountain both yield salt water and fresh. — For the reading of the common text, which is οὑτως ουδεμια πηγη ἁλυκον και γλυκυ ποιησαι ὑδωρ, so no fountain can produce salt water and sweet, there are various other readings in the MSS. and versions. The word ουτως, so, which makes this a continuation of the comparison in James 3:11, is wanting in ABC, one other, with the Armenian and ancient Syriac; the later Syriac has it in the margin with an asterisk. ABC, five others, with the Coptic, Vulgate, one copy of the Itala, and Cyril, have ουτε ἁλυκον γλυκυ ποιησαι ὑδωρ, neither can salt water produce sweet. In the Syriac and the Arabic of Erpen, it is, So, likewise, sweet water cannot become bitter; and bitter water cannot become sweet. The true reading appears to be, Neither can salt water produce sweet, or, Neither can the sea produce fresh water; and this is a new comparison, and not an inference from that in James 3:11. This reading Griesbach has admitted into the text; and of it Professor White, in his Crisews, says, Lectio indubie genuina, "a reading undoubtedly genuine." There are therefore, four distinct comparisons here:

1. A fountain cannot produce sweet water and bitter.

2. A fig tree cannot produce olive berries.

3. A vine cannot produce figs.

4. Salt water cannot be made sweet. That is, according to the ordinary operations of nature, these things are impossible. Chemical analysis is out of the question.