9. God, even the Father (rév Ocdv xal matépa). The proper reading is tov Kipsov, the Lord, and the kai, and, is simply con-
Cu, IIL] THE GENERAL EPISTLE OF JAMES. 751
nective. Read, therefore, as Rev., the Lord and Father. This combination of terms for God is uncommon. See ch. i. 27.
Which. Not who, which would designate personally certain men; whereas James designates them generically.
11. Doth a fountain, ete. The interrogative particle, wr, which begins the sentence, expects a negative answer. Foun- tain has the article, “the fountain,” generic. See Introduction, on James’ local allusions. The Land of Promise was pictured to the Hebrew as a land of springs (Deut. viii. 7; xi. 11). “Palestine,” says Dean Stanley, “was the only country where an Eastern could have been familiar with the language of the Psalmist: ‘He sendeth the springs into the valleys which run among the mountains.’ Those springs, too, however short- lived, are remarkable for their copiousness and beauty. Not only not in the East, but hardly in the West, can any fountains and sources of streams be seen, so clear, so full-grown even at their birth, as those which fall into the Jordan and its lakes throughont its whole course from north to south” (“ Sinai and Palestine”). The Hebrew word for a fountain or spring is dyin, meaning an eye. ‘The spring,” says the same author, “is the bright, open source, the eye of the landscape.”
Send forth (8pve.). An expressive word, found nowhere else in the New Testament, and denoting a full, copious dis- charge. Primarily it means to be full to bursting ; and is used, therefore, of budding plants, teeming soil, ete., as in the charm- ing picture of the sacred grove at the opening of the “Oedi- pus Coloneus” of Sophocles: ‘full (Bpdwyv) of bay, olive, and vine.” Hence, to burst forth or gush. Though generally in- transitive, it is used transitively here.
Place (o7js). Rather, opening or hole in the earth or rock. Rev., opening. Compare caves, Heb. xi. 38. The word is pleasantly suggestive in connection with the image of the eye of the landscape. See above.
7152 WORD STUDIES IN THE NEW TESTAMENT. [Cu. III.
Sweet water and bitter. The readers of the epistle would recall the bitter waters of Marah (Exod. xv. 23), and the un- wholesome spring at Jericho (2 Kings ii. 19-21).
12. So can no fountain both yield salt water and fresh. The best texts omit so can no fountain, and the and between salt and fresh. Thus the text reads, odte dhuKxov yYAUKD TroLoat bdwp. Render, as Rev., neither can salt water yreld sweet. An- other of James’ local allusions, sadé waters. The Great Salt Sea was but sixteen miles from Jerusalem. Its shores were lined with salt-pits, to be filled when the spring freshets should raise the waters of the lake. A salt marsh also terminated the valley through which the Jordan flows from the Lake of Tiberias to the Dead Sea, and the adjoining plain was covered with salt streams and brackish springs. Warm springs impregnated with sulphur abound in the voleanic valley of the Jordan. ‘Anduxor, salt, occurs only here in the New Testament.
13. Wise and endued with knowledge (codés Kal émic- mnpov). A rendering needlessly verbose, yet substantially cor- rect. Probably no very nice distinction was intended by the writer. It is somewhat difficult to fix the precise sense of codés, since there is no uniformity in its usage in the New Testament. In classical Greek it primarily means skelled in a handicraft or art. Thence it runs into the sense of clever, in matters of com- mon life, worldly wise. Then, in the hands of the philosophers, it aequires the sense of learned in the sciences; and, ironically, abstruse, subtle, obscure, like the English cunning, which origi- nally meant knowing or skilful, and is often used in that sense in the English Bible (see Gen. xxv. 27; 1 Sam. xvi. 16).