Can the fig tree, my brethren, bear grapes? Or the vine, figs? So neither can the salt water yield sweet.
μη δυναται αδελφοι μου συκη ελαιας ποιησαι η αμπελος συκα ουτως ουδεμια πηγη αλυκον και γλυκυ ποιησαι υδωρ
6 Church Fathers comment on this verse
Are you praying? Do not curse your enemy, for there is a great distance between prayer and cursing. If you do not forgive the one who has offended you, you yourself will not receive forgiveness. You will draw a curse upon yourself when you pray that your debts be forgiven as you forgive your debtors (Mt 6:12).
Being ambitious and boasting in worldly wisdom, they preached with hostility and jealousy toward the right teachers. They engaged in demagoguery, envied them, and mixed the human with the Divine, so as to deceive men by the novelty of their words. From this came the heresies. He forbids such teachings, since they came not from the wisdom of God but from demonic wisdom. He said this after praising good teaching, wisdom from meekness of words and good works.
Most fools incline their heart to evil words, excusing themselves in sin, as though an olive tree could bear fruits of mercy and their life could bear the heat of love.
By the likeness of a soulless spring and insensible trees, Saint James, according to Saint Mitrophanes, requires that the unbridled and reviling tongue be corrected.
It is said that two kinds of water, sweet and bitter, never flow from the same spring. They are incompatible with one another, and therefore cannot be joined in a natural way.
Likewise, a fig tree cannot bear olives, and a vine does not bear figs. Each tree bears its own fruits.
Then, as though drawing a conclusion from what was said, he says that no spring can send forth salt and sweet water from one opening.
The spring is the heart of man, from which spoken speech flows forth. The cleft from which it wells up is the mouth, which pours forth the spoken word that the heart produces. This is the meaning of the saying.
If no sensible spring sends forth sweet and bitter water from one opening, and if neither fig tree bears olives nor vine figs, then this is clear.
One heart of man, this noetic spring of speech, and the same mouth, which is the opening of the heart, cannot naturally utter opposite words: blessing and cursing, praise and condemnation.
Such things are uttered only when the heart is changed by choice toward evil. After being meek and peaceful, blessing and praising the brethren, it becomes wild and rebellious through anger contrary to nature.
Then it already gives birth to, and pours forth, curses and condemnations against the brethren.
God of all spoke of such men through the prophet Hosea: "Their hearts are divided; now they shall perish" (Hos 10:2).
Such things ought not to be in you Christians, he says. Otherwise you will prove worse than soulless and insensible creatures.
For they preserve the natural laws of nature and accept nothing contrary to nature. But you, rational men, through your inattention, bring forth fruits contrary to nature.
By free choice you change the sweetest spring of the heart into the bitterest, growing angry and making reproaches and insults against your brothers.
By this you show yourselves to be something else. More than this, by this action you become divided and no longer reveal what you ought to be by nature.
Therefore the great Paul compared such men to tombs and to the poison of asps, saying: "Their throat is an open tomb; with their tongues they have deceived.
"The poison of asps is under their lips; their mouth is full of cursing and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood; destruction and misery are in their ways, and the way of peace they have not known.
"There is no fear of God before their eyes" (Rom 3:13-18).
By examples from visible nature, the apostle makes clear the unnaturalness of such action by the tongue.
In nature, according to its natural laws, opposite actions do not arise from one source. Each cause can produce only what is of one kind and corresponds to its nature.
Thus sweet and bitter water cannot flow together from one opening of a spring. There must be either sweet water alone or bitter water alone.
Likewise, olive fruits cannot grow on a fig tree, nor figs on a grapevine (cf. Mt 7:16).
Nor can one spring pour forth salt and sweet water. More precisely, a salty spring cannot give forth sweet water. Otherwise this saying would be a purposeless repetition of verse 10.
Thus it is contrary to nature to glorify God and to curse God's image, man, with one and the same tongue. Glorification and cursing are like sweet and bitter water from one spring.
Therefore, the one who curses a man created according to the image of God cannot glorify God with the same tongue.
Consequently, if he both curses and glorifies, then this glorification can only be external, apparent, pharisaic, and in every case untrue and powerless.
"The apostle wishes to touch his hearers. If we are commanded to bless all, for revilers will not inherit the Kingdom of God (1 Cor 6:10), how is it not shameful to use one and the same instrument for evil and good?
"No prudent man will mix mud and myrrh with the same instrument" (Theophylact).
Wishing to move Christians toward the good use of the tongue, the apostle points to it as a lofty gift. It is appointed for the great work of rational praise of God.
God has sealed in us a certain likeness of Himself, and this likeness must be attained through the proper use of this divine gift. But if cursing also proceeds from the mouth, this is a clear departure from the true order of things.
This ought not to be, just as sweet and bitter water do not flow from one spring. Nor do different trees bear fruits contrary to their kind and likeness (cf. Mt 7:16).
"No prudent man will mix mud and myrrh with the same instrument," says blessed Theophylact.
Passages read together with this verse.
Greek text, 15 words with lemma, transliteration and Strong’s number. Tap to expand.
THEOSIS