The tongue exercises this strange power of running away with us like a runaway horse with the bit in his mouth. The scorn of men for men is seen in John 7:49, in the Pharisees’ sneer at the mob: “This multitude that knoweth not the law are accursed.” It is most likely, however, personal abuse that James here refers to. Men who are made in God’s image are abused by the very tongue that blesses God. We curse other children of our common Father, God. James does not mean, even by implication, to approve cursing at all. It is the wicked man whose “mouth is full of cursing” (Psalm 10:7). If we do not love our brother, we do not love God (1 John 4:20). And yet “out of the same mouth cometh forth blessing and cursing.” We make our tongue a sort of combination of Mount Ebal and Mount Gerizim. “My brethren, these things ought not so to be”—a mild statement all the more effective from its very temperateness.
The point is easy to illustrate. “Doth the fountain send forth from the same opening sweet water and bitter?” James was familiar with the brackish waters of parts of Palestine. The water of the Dead Sea is really bitter, though fed by the snows of Hermon and the sweet springs of the Jordan valley. The waters of Marah were bitter (Ex. 15:23), and one may recall “the water of bitterness that causeth the curse” (Num. 5:18, 23). See also Revelation 8:11 for the waters that were made bitter. Pliny (N. H. ii. 103) tells a fable of a fountain of the sun that “was sweet and cold at noon and bitter and hot at midnight” (Mayor). It is possible to sweeten water, as we see in the great filtering plants in our modern cities. And sweet water can become bitter. But water is not sweet and bitter at the same time from the same fountain. You have sweet water on Hermon and salt water in the Dead Sea (also called the Salt Sea), but not both in the same place.
The Vine and the Fig Tree (3:12)
James has not only a new image here but also a new point of view (Hort). He has, in verses 9-11, shown the inconsistency of two kinds of speech from the same tongue. Now he goes deeper to the heart behind the utterance. The comparison is here made between the heart and its utterance (tongue). The grape and the fig are the commonest fruits in Palestine. “Each tree is known by its own fruit” (Luke 6:44). Yes, and Jesus had just said (6:43): “For there is no good tree that bringeth forth corrupt fruit; nor again a corrupt tree that bringeth forth good fruit.” It is not uncommon to find the point made somewhat as James has it. So Epictetus (Diss. ii. 20) says: “How can a vine grow, not vinewise, but olivewise, or an olive, on the other hand, not olivewise, but vinewise?”[80] And Jesus says: “Either make the tree good, and its fruit good; or make the tree corrupt, and its fruit corrupt” (Matt. 12:33). Once more hear Jesus: “Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?” (Matt. 7:16). It is the appeal to life.
It has been charged that James exaggerates the evil of the tongue, but one who knows life as it is must agree with James. Sirach says, “Curse the whisperer and the double-tongued, for such have destroyed many that were at peace” (28:13). Plummer quotes also a clause from the Syriac that is not in the Greek: “Also the third tongue, let it be cursed; for it has laid low many corpses.” Sirach (28:14 f.) continues: “A third [or backbiting] tongue hath unsettled many, and driven them from nation to nation; and strong cities hath pulled down, and overthrown houses of great men. A backbiting tongue hath cast out capable women, and deprived them of their labors.” The “third tongue” injures three classes (Plummer): the person who utters the slander, the one who listens, and the one of whom the slander is told. It is a triple sin and only sin. “Neither can salt water yield sweet,” James adds, and his conclusion falls with the force of a trip hammer. The crisp wisdom of James about the tongue makes one wonder afresh if his mother had not taught him some of these aphorisms as a child.
IX
The True Wise Man
The connection between the paragraph about wisdom (3:13-18) and the preceding discussion of the perils of the tongue is very close. James is still thinking of the men who supposed that they had true faith but who did not practice it; “men who supposed that they had a deeper wisdom and a larger knowledge than their brethren, and who were continually asserting their claim to be teachers” (Dale). But Hort considers the passage on the tongue a “long digression,” a view hardly tenable. These ambitious teachers had overlooked the havoc wrought by tongue (and pen).
James has given a needed warning about that phase of the subject and now turns to the subject matter itself. The ambitious teacher will do all the more harm if he is not merely a bungler of real wisdom but a disseminator of false wisdom. Already the air was full of all sorts of fads and fancies that appealed to the unthinking and the unwary. The Essenes, the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the Epicureans, the Stoics, the Mithraists, the Gnostics, the Judaizers, the cult of emperor worship, with more or less distinctness were clamoring for a hearing. There were professional sophists who traveled over the country with patent solutions of all problems. Some appealed to the nervous or the neurotic, like Christian Science today; others to the ignorant, like Russellism or Mormonism. Paul will later discuss both speech and wisdom “as good things liable to grievous abuse” (Hort), in 1 Corinthians 1:5, 17; 2; and 3.
The Call for the Wise Man (3:13a)
“Who is wise and understanding among you?” The question does not mean that nobody is wise and understanding, but it calls a halt on the rush of volunteers who have apparently a superfluity of wisdom. An overplus of conceit is intolerable for normal persons. Job (12:2) has our sympathy when he retorts to his officious advisers: “No doubt but ye are the people, and wisdom shall die with you.” Once more Job (28:12) asks: “But where shall wisdom be found? and where is the place of understanding?” Here, as very often in the Old Testament, we have wisdom and understanding used together. God gave Solomon wisdom and understanding (1 Kings 4:29). “Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom; ... get understanding” (Prov. 4:7). In Psalm 107:43 we have the question: “Who is wise?” James is thoroughly acquainted with the wisdom literature of the Jews, both canonical and uncanonical, and is at home in the handling of this theme. His words are not many, but they carry much of depth and power.