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Jam 3:12. Μὴ δύναται, is it possible?) He now prepares a transition from the mouth to the heart. He had said with regard to the former, There is no need [it is not becoming]; he says respecting the latter, it is impossible.-οὕτως οὐδὲ ἁλυκὸν γλυκὺ ποιησαι ὕδωρ, so neither can a salt spring produce sweet water) viz. δύναται (to be supplied). Thus the most weighty authorities, Colbert. 7; Cov. 4; Gen.; Æth.; Copt.; Lat., and the Syr[41], The Alexand. reads οὔτε ἁλυκόν. Baumgarten has a long dissertation in favour of the more generally received reading: Exam., p. xxxii. You will see my reply in App. Crit., Ed. ii., on this passage.[42] The apostle had said in Jam 3:11, that it is not befitting that two contraries should proceed from one source; he now says, that nothing can proceed from any source whatever, unless it be of the same kind. Salt (water), in the nominative case, has the force of a substantive, as just before, sweet and bitter. In Hesychius ἁλυκὴ, ἡ θάλασσα, the sea. In James, ἁλυκὸν has a wider meaning, a lake or spring of salt, pouring forth water.-οὕτως, thus, is used before the word salt, now in particular, because this resemblance, already represented in the 11th verse, puts on here a more strict propriety,[43] and in this place contains the Apodosis itself, which is about to be added immediately, in plain (unfigurative) words.
[41] yr. the Peschito Syriac Version: second cent.: publ. and corrected by Cureton, from MS. of fifth cent.
[42] ABC corrected and later Syr. omit οὕτως, which Rec. Text prefixes without very old authority. ABC Vulg. Memph. Syr. read οὔτε ἁλυκὸν γλυκύ. But Rec. Text without any old authority except later Syr., reads οὐδεμία πηγὴ ἁλυκὸν καὶ γλυκύ.-E.
[43] i.e. It is more strictly in accordance with the simile that ἁλυκὸν should be supposed to send forth γλυκύ, sweet water, than that a πηγὴ, as in ver. 11, should send it forth.-E.