James 3:11

Doth a fountain The Greek gives the article, the fountain, as more emphatically generalising the question.

send forth at the same place Both verb and noun in the Greek are more vivid. Our word spurt or gush, if it could be used transitively, would answer to the former; our mouth, or "source", or "orifice", to the latter. The comparison was a natural one in a country like Palestine, where springs more or less salt or sulphureous are not uncommon. Most of those on the eastern slope of the hill-country of Judah and Benjamin are indeed brackish. Comp. the sweetening of the spring which supplied the college of the Sons of the Prophets in 2 Kings, 2 Kings 2:19, and the symbolic healing of the waters in Ezekiel 47:9.