James condemns those who use tongues for blessing and cursing ?Eblessing God, and cursing men made in the image of God. Among the images he uses to express this is the image of the tree and fruit. Fig trees cannot product olives, nor vines produce figs (3:12). In many passages, the vine and fig tree are associated with Israel, especially Israel during her Solomonic splendor (1 Ki 4; Mic 4:4; Zech 3:10); when the prophets talk about the withering of the vine and the fig tree, they are saying specifically that Israel has fallen short of the glories of Solomon (Is 34:4; Jer 5:17; 8:13). When the Assyrians promise Jerusalem “every man his vine and every man his fig tree,” they are saying that they can provide the peace, security, and plenty that Judah enjoyed long ago (Is 36:16): Sennacherib is the new SHLOMOH, the king who brings SHALOM.
With this background, it seems plausible that James has Israel’s double-tonguedness specifically in mind in James 3:12. The chapter begins with a warning about the stricter standard that is applied to teachers (v 1), a role that Israel played in relation to the Gentiles (cf. Rom 2:17-24). Perhaps James is even thinking of the “cursing” or “blaspheming” that comes to God because of Israel’s unfaithfulness (as in Rom 2).
One oddity: the image in 3:12 is not an image of a vine producing useless thorns or chaff, but vine that produces oil; dittos with the fig tree – it produces grapes. A grape-producing fig tree would be surprising, but how does this image connect to the blessing/cursing of v 10, which presumably it’s supposed to illustrate?
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