Devine Scripture

James 3:12

What does James 3:12 mean?

A plain-English look at James 3:12 in WEB alongside six other public-domain English translations, with cross-references and chapter context.

What James 3:12 means

James presses the lesson: a fig tree cannot yield olives, a vine cannot produce figs, and salt water cannot yield sweet. Each kind produces according to its nature and source. The point is not horticulture but integrity. Our speech exposes what we are becoming. If our tongues produce bitterness and strife, the issue is not merely vocabulary but the inner life. Conversely, a renewed heart will bear fitting words. The closing mention of salt water underscores impossibility: certain sources cannot produce sweetness. Therefore, true change requires a changed source—an inner transformation that alters what naturally flows from us.

Parallel translations

WEB

World English Bible · 2000

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

KJV

King James Version · 1611

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

ASV

American Standard Version · 1901

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

BBE

Bible in Basic English · 1949

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?

YLT

Young's Literal Translation · 1862

is a fig-tree able, my brethren, olives to make? or a vine figs? so no fountain salt and sweet water <FI>is able<Fi> to make.

DRA

Douay-Rheims (Challoner) · 1752

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

DBY

Darby Bible · 1890

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

Context

This verse completes James’s set of nature illustrations (verses 11–12), concluding the section on the tongue’s inconsistency. Having shown that mixed output is unnatural, James now turns to the root cause and remedy in verses 13–18: wisdom. The next verse will ask who is wise and will call for wisdom to be displayed in meek conduct, contrasting heavenly wisdom’s fruits with the confusion produced by jealousy and faction.

v.11Doth the fountain send forth from the same opening sweet water and bitter?

v.12This passage

v.13Who is wise and understanding among you? let him show by his good life his works in meekness of wisdom.

Cross references

Related passages from across Scripture, drawn from the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge.

  • Matthew 7:16

    By their fruits ye shall know them. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?

  • Jeremiah 2:21

    Yet I had planted thee a noble vine, wholly a right seed: how then art thou turned into the degenerate branches of a foreign vine unto me?

  • Luke 6:43

    For there is no good tree that bringeth forth corrupt fruit; nor again a corrupt tree that bringeth forth good fruit.

  • Romans 11:16

    And if the firstfruit is holy, so is the lump: and if the root is holy, so are the branches.

  • Isaiah 5:2

    and he digged it, and gathered out the stones thereof, and planted it with the choicest vine, and built a tower in the midst of it, and also hewed out a winepress therein: and he looked that it should bring forth grapes, and it brought forth wild grapes.

  • Matthew 12:33

    Either make the tree good, and its fruit good; or make the tree corrupt, and its fruit corrupt: for the tree is known by its fruit.

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