<p>3:12<i> My brothers, can a fig tree yield olives or a vine figs? Neither can salt water yield fresh</i>-We have seen that the fountain yielding water represents our heart or tongue yielding our words. The trees bearing fruit therefore must be interpreted as being our hearts bearing the spiritual fruit of our words. Both fig and olive trees are well hacked Old Testament symbols of Israel- as if to imply to these Jews that only by having the real spirit of Israel in their hearts rather than just in their flesh could they bear spiritual fruit. The bearing of fruit by the fig tree is a consistent symbol of the repentance of Israel in the &quot;last days&quot; of AD70 and (hopefully and prayerfully) in the twentieth century. In his usual neat style James is implying that the national repentance of Israel would be imputed to them if the &quot;remnant&quot; of Jewish Christians bore fruit; but with their present attitude of mind this was impossible. This is the same idea as in 5:7: &quot;The husbandman (God? Christ?) waits for the precious fruit of the earth (the land- of Israel? i.e. from the Jewish believers especially?), and has long patience for it&quot;- a connection with 2 Pet. 3:15, where Peter says that the delay in the second coming to await the development of &quot;all holy conversation and Godliness&quot; (v.11) among Peter's Jewish readers shows &quot;the longsuffering of our Lord&quot; (Christ). It is possible to argue that the exact timing of the second coming is related to the repentance of Israel, and was deferred from AD70 due to lack of Jewish repentance. Thus we can appreciate why James, knowing this as he wrote before AD70, so earnestly begs the Jewish believers to develop true spiritual fruit that would result in the second coming, as opposed to petty bickering and infighting. Peter's plea is just as intense. The same plea, with even greater urgency, has to be made to natural and spiritual Israel in these days. In practice, let us again notice how all spiritual fruit is epitomized by the type of words we speak; the fruit of the olive is parallel with the water from the fountain.</p><p>There is a clear link with Mt. 7:15-20: &quot;Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing (looking like a lamb, appearing to have the gentle, spiritual characteristics of Christ)...you shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns? or figs of thistles?... a corrupt tree brings forth evil fruit. A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit (cp. &quot;so can no fountain... yield&quot;)... every tree that brings not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire (cp. James 3:6- the tongue will be destroyed in Gehenna fire). Wherefore by their fruits you shall know them&quot;. This almost conclusively shows that this group of Jewish believers within the ecclesia whom James is writing about were the Jewish &quot;false prophets&quot;- or those influenced by them- whom the Lord had warned would try to infiltrate the ecclesia. For those who were attune to these connections with other Scripture, it would have been obvious that these brethren were false prophets because their words so clearly gave them away. Note how James has slightly changed Christ's analogy-from grapes and figs growing on thorns and thistles to grapes growing on figs, and figs growing on olives.</p><p>Thorns and thistles is used to describe the fruit of the (same?) Jewish false prophets in the ecclesia in Heb. 6:5-8, and they would also recall the curse in Eden to any Jewish mind. This would associate these Jewish false teachers with the serpent who brought thorns and thistles into Eden- a simile repeated in 2 Cor. 11:3 and elsewhere. James is saying that the thorns and thistles had become figs and olives, i.e. they appeared far more acceptable than the false prophets of Christ's parable, but the fact their fruit was not consistent with what they appeared to be was still the litmus test which proved they were false. Again, there is a warning against thinking that semi-spirituality means acceptability with God. As the ecclesia seemed duped into thinking that because they used their tongue to bless God, all their words must be acceptable, so they thought that because these men didn't appear to be thorns and thistles but rather figs and olives, they must be acceptable even if there was some mismatch between the tree and the fruit.</p><p>There is a slight change of figure also with v.11: sweet and bitter water becomes &quot;salt water and fresh&quot;. The many links with the sermon on the mount suggest a connection with the group of passages that show that the salt in a believer (Mt. 5:13) represents his gracious, &quot;seasoned with salt&quot; way of speaking (Col. 4:6) which leads to peace within the ecclesia (Mk. 9:50). Both salt water and fresh represent positive spiritual ways of speaking; as their parallel figs and olive berries both equally represent spiritual fruit. The point is thus being made that a spring or tree cannot yield two types of products, and therefore encourages the connection with Mt. 7:15-20. Figs, olives and bitter water recalls Jer. 8:13,14: &quot;There shall be no grapes on the vine, nor figs on the fig tree...for the Lord our God has...given us water of gall ('poison'- Dt. 29:18) to drink, because we have sinned against the Lord&quot;. The lack of spiritual fruit on Israel is here associated with bitter or poisonous water. If James is referring to this passage, the tongue &quot;full of deadly poison&quot; (3:8) and the corrupt mind it reflected was the cause of the Jews' lack of fruit, and there is even the implication that God had given them the 'bitter water' of their tongues as a curse, as He did to Israel at Marah, in the sense that God confirms the spiritual or unspiritual attributes of a man- e.g. He hardened Pharaoh's already hard heart.</p>