39-31. The Cursing of the Barren Fig-Tree

31. The Cursing of the Barren Fig-Tree Mat 21:17-22; Mark 11:12-14; Mark 11:20-24 This miracle was wrought upon the Monday of the week of Passion. On the Sunday of Palms our blessed Lord had made his triumphal entry into Jerusalem, and in the evening,—since even now his hour, though close at hand, was not altogether come,—He retired from the snares and perils of the city to the safer Bethany, to the house, probably, of those sisters whom He had so lately made rich with a restored brother, and there passed the night. On the Monday morning, as He was returning from Bethany to his ministry in the city very early, indeed before sunrise, the word against the fig-tree was spoken. That same evening He with his disciples went back to Bethany to lodge there, but probably at so late an hour that the darkness prevented these from marking the effects which had followed upon that word. It was not till the morning of Tuesday that “they saw the fig-tree dried up from the roots.” Such is the exact order of the circumstances, in the telling of which St. Mark shows himself a more accurate observer of times than the first Evangelist;—not, indeed, that this gives him any superiority: our advantage is that we have both records:—St. Matthew’s, who was concerned for the inner idea, and hastened on to that, omitting circumstances which came between, that he might present the whole event as one, at a single glance, in a single picture, without the historical perspective,—of which he at no time takes any especial note, his gifts and his aim being different;—and also St. Mark’s, who was concerned likewise for the picturesque setting forth of the truth in its external details, as it was linked with times and with places, as it gradually unfolded itself before the eyes of men. But while such differences as these are easily set at one, and they who magnify them into difficulties are the true Pharisees of history, straining at gnats and swallowing camels, there are other and undoubted difficulties in this narrative, such as we are bound to meet, and not to attempt to evade. Take the facts as recorded by St. Matthew: “Now in the morning, as He returned into the city, He hungered. And when He saw a fig-tree in the way, He came to it, and found nothing thereon but leaves only, and said to it, Let no fruit grow on thee henceforward for ever. And presently the fig-tree withered away.” We first ask ourselves here, how should our Lord, knowing, as by his divine power He must, that there were no figs upon that tree, have yet gone to seek them there, made to his disciples as though He had expected to find them? Was this consistent with the perfectness of sincerity and truth? Slight as would have been the deceit, yet, if it was such, it would trouble the clearness of our image of Him, whom we conceive as the absolute Lord of truth. It is again perplexing, that He should have treated the tree as a moral agent, punishing it as though unfruitfulness had been any guilt upon its part. This, in itself perplexing, becomes infinitely more so through a notice of St. Mark’s; which indeed the order of the natural year would, without this notice, have suggested, that “the time of figs was not yet:” so that at the time when they could not seasonably be expected, He sought, and was displeased at failing to find, them. For, whatever the undermeaning might have been in treating the tree as a moral agent, and granting such treatment to have been entirely justified, yet all seems again lost and obscured, if it thus lay not in the power of the tree to be otherwise than it was, namely, without fruit. For the symbol must needs be carried through; if by a figure we attribute guilt to the tree for not having fruit, we must be consistent, and show that it might have had such, and that there was no just and sufficient reason why then it should have had none.

Upon the first point, that the Lord approached the tree, appearing to expect fruit upon it, and yet knowing that He should find none, deceiving thereby those who were with Him, who no doubt believed that what He professed to look for, He expected to find, it is sufficient to observe that a similar charge might be made against all figurative teaching, whether by word or by deed: for in all such there is a worshipping of truth in the spirit and not in the letter; often a forsaking of it in the letter, for the better honouring and establishing of it in the spirit. A parable is told as true, and though the facts are feigned, yet is true, because of the deeper truth which sustains the outward fabric of the story; it is true, because it is the shrine of truth, and because the truth which it enshrines looks through and through it. Even so a symbolic action is done as real, as meaning something; and yet, although not meaning the thing which it professes to mean, is no deception, since it means something infinitely higher and deeper, of which the lower action is a type, and in which that lower is lost and swallowed up; transfigured and transformed by the higher, whereof it is made the vehicle. What was it, for instance, here, if Christ did not mean really to look for fruit on that tree, being aware that it had none? yet He did mean to show how it would fare with a man or with a nation, when God came looking from it for the fruits of righteousness, and found nothing but the abundant leaves of a boastful yet empty profession.^[1] As regards the second objection, that He should have put forth his anger on a tree, the real objection lying at the root of this in many minds oftentimes is, that He should have put forth his anger at all; that God should ever show Himself as a punishing God; that there should be any such thing as “the wrath of the Lamb,” as the having to give account of advantages, as a day of doom. But seeing that such things are, how needful that men should not forget it: yet they might have forgot it, as far as the teaching of the miracles went, but for this one—all the others being miracles of help and of healing. And even the severity of this, with what mercy was it tempered! Christ did not, like Moses and Elijah, make the assertion of God’s holiness and his hatred of evil at the cost of many lives, but only at the cost of a single unfeeling tree. His miracles of mercy were unnumbered, and on men; his miracle of judgment was but one, and on a tree.^[2] But then, say some, it was unjust to deal thus with a tree at all, which, being incapable of good or of evil, was as little a fit object of blame as of praise, of punishment as reward. But this very objection does, in truth, imply that it was not unjust, that the tree was “a thing, which might therefore lawfully be used merely as a means for ends lying beyond itself. Man is the prince of. creation, and all things else are to serve him, and then rightly fulfil their subordinate uses when they do serve him,—in their life or in their death,—yielding unto him fruit, or warning him in a figure what shall be the curse and penalty of unfruitfulness. Christ did not attribute moral responsibilities to the tree, when He smote it because of its unfruitfulness, but He did attribute to it a fitness for representing moral qualities.^[3] All our language concerning trees, a good tree, a bad tree, a tree which ought to bear, is the same continual transfer to them of moral qualities, and a witness for the natural fitness of the Lord’s language,—the language indeed of an act, rather than of words. By his word, however (Luk 13:6-9),^[4] He had already in some sort prepared his disciples for understanding and interpreting his act; and the not unfrequent use of this very symbol in the O. T., as at Hos 9:10; Joe 1:7, must have likewise assisted them here.

But, conceding all this, it may still be objected, Do not those words of St. Mark, “for the time of figs was not yet” acquit the tree even of this figurative guilt? Does not the fact thus mentioned defeat the symbol, and put it, so to speak, in contradistinction with itself? does it not perplex us in Him, of whom we claim above all things that highest reason should guide his every action, that He should have looked for figs, when they could not have been found;—that He should have been as though indignant, when He did not find them? The simplest, and as it appears to me, the entirely satisfying, explanation of this difficulty is the following. At that early period of the year, March or April, neither leaves nor fruit were naturally to be looked for on a fig-tree (the passages often quoted to the contrary not making out, as I think, their point^[5], nor in ordinary circumstances would any one have sought them there. But that tree, by putting forth leaves, made pretension to be something more than others, to have fruit upon it, seeing that in the fig-tree the fruit appears before the leaves.^[6] It, so to speak, vaunted itself to be in advance of all the other trees, challenged the passer-by that he should come and refresh himself from it. Yet when the Lord accepted its challenge, and drew near, it proved to be but as the others, without fruit as they; for indeed, as the Evangelist observes, the time of figs had not yet arrived,—its fault, if one may use the word, lying in its pretension, in its making a show to run before the rest, when it did not so indeed. It was condemned, not so much for having no fruit, as that, not having fruit, it clothed itself abundantly with leaves, with the foliage which, according to the natural order of the tree’s development, gave pledge and promise that fruit should be found on it, if sought. And this will then exactly answer to the sin of Israel, which under this tree was symbolized,—that sin being, not so much that they were without fruit, as that they boasted of so much. Their true fruit, as of any people before the Incarnation, would have been to own that they had no fruit, that without Christ, without the incarnate Son of God, they could do nothing; to have presented themselves before God bare and naked and empty altogether. But this was exactly what Israel refused to do. Other nations might have nothing to boast of, but they by their own showing had much.^[7] And yet on closer inspection, the substance of righteousness was as much wanting on their part as anywhere among the nations (Rom. ii.). And how should it have been otherwise ? “for the time of figs was not yet;”—the time for the bare stock and stem of humanity to array itself in bud and blossom, with leaf and fruit, had not come, till its engrafting on the nobler stock of the true Man. All which anticipated this, which seemed to say that it could be anything, or do anything, otherwise than in Him and by Him, was deceptive and premature. The other trees had nothing, but they did not pretend to have anything; this tree had nothing, but it gave out that it had much. So was it severally with Gentile and with Jew. The Gentiles were empty of all fruits of righteousness, but they owned it; the Jews were empty, but they vaunted that they were full. The Gentiles were sinners, but they hypocrites and pretenders to boot, and by so much farther from the kingdom of God, and more nigh unto a curse.^[8] Their guilt was not that they had not the perfect fruits of faith, for the time of such was not yet; but that, not having, they so boastfully gave out that they had: their condemnation was, not that they were not healed, but that, being unhealed, they counted themselves whole. The law would have done its work, the very work for which God ordained it, if it had stripped them of these boastful leaves, or rather had hindered them from ever putting them forth.

Here then, according to this explanation, there is no difficulty either in the Lord’s going to the tree at that unseasonable time,—He would not have gone, but for those deceitful leaves which announced that fruit was there,—nor in the (symbolic) punishment of the unfruitful tree at a season of the year when, according to the natural order, it could not have had any. It was punished not for being without fruit, but for proclaiming by the voice of those leaves that it had such; not for being barren, but for being false. And this was the guilt of Israel, a guilt so much deeper than the guilt of the nations. The attentive study of the Epistle to the Romans supplies the key to the right understanding of this miracle; such passages especially as 2:3, 17-27; 10:3, 4, 21; 11:7, 10. Nor should that remarkable parallel, “And all the trees of the field shall know that I the Lord have dried up the green tree, and made the dry tree to flourish” (Eze 17:24), be left out of account.^[9] And then the sentence, “No man eat fruit of thee hereafter for ever,” will be just the reversal of the promise that in them all nations of the earth should be blessed—the symbolic counterstroke to the ratification of the Levitical priesthood through the putting forth, by Aaron’s rod, of bud and blossom and fruit in a night (Num 17:8). Henceforth the Jewish synagogue is stricken with a perpetual barrenness;^[10] it once was everything, but now it is nothing, to the world; it stands apart, like “a thing forbid;” what little it has, it communicates to none; the curse has come upon it, that no man henceforward shall eat fruit of it for ever.^[11] And yet this “for ever” has its merciful limitation, when we come to transfer the curse from the tree to that of which the tree was as a living parable; a limitation which the word itself favours and allows; which lies hidden in it, to be revealed in due time. None shall eat fruit of that tree to the end of the present aeon, not until these “times of the Gentiles” are fulfilled. A day indeed will come when Israel, which now says, “I am a dry tree,” shall consent to that word of its true Lord, which of old it denied. “From Me is thy fruit found” (Hos 14:8), and shall be arrayed with the richest foliage and fruit of all the trees of the field. The Lord, in his great discourse upon the last things (Matthew 24), implies this, when He gives this commencing conversion of the Jews under the image of the re-clothing of the bare and “withered fig-tree with leaf and bud, as the sign of the breaking in of the new aeon, which He does, saying, “Now learn a parable of the fig-tree. When his branch is yet tender, and putteth forth leaves, ye know that summer is nigh: so likewise ye, when ye shall see all these things, know that it is near, even at the doors” (ver. 32, 33).

It would appear from St. Matthew that some beginnings of the threatened withering began to show themselves, almost as soon as the word of the Lord was spoken; a shuddering fear may have run through all the leaves of the tree, which was thus stricken at its heart. But it was not till the next morning, as the disciples returned, that they took note of the utter perishing of the tree, which had followed upon that word spoken, so that it was “dried up from the roots,” and they then called their Lord’s attention to the same: “Master, behold, the fig-tree which Thou cursedst is withered away” He will not let the occasion go by without its further lesson. What He had done, they might do the same and more. Faith in God would place them in relation with the same power which He wielded, so that they might do mightier things even than this at which they marvelled so much.

Footnotes

[1] Augustine (Quaest. Evang. ii. 51): Non enim omne quod fingimus mendacium est: sed quando id fingimus, quod nihil significat, tunc est mendacium. Cum autem fictio nostra refertur ad aliquam significationem, non est mendacium, sed aliqua figura veritatis. Alioquin omnia quae a sapientibus et sanctis viris, vel etiam ab ipso Domino figurate dicta sunt, mendacia deputabuntur, quia secundum usitatum intellectum non subsistit veritas talibus dictis.... Sicut autem dicta, ita etiam facta finguntur sine mendacio ad aliquam rem significandam; unde est etiam illud Domini quod in fici arbore quaesivit fructum eo tempore, quo ilia poma nondum essent. Non enim dubium est illam inquisitionem non fuisse veram; quivis enim hominum sciret, si non divinitate, vel tempore, poma illam arborem non habere. Fictio igitur quae ad aliquam veritatem refertur, figura est; quae non refertur, mendacium est. Cf. Serm. lxxxix. 4-6: Quaerit intelligentem, non facit errantem.

[2] Hilary (Comm. in Matt, in loc.): In eo quidem bonitatis Dominicae argumentum reperiemus. Nam ubi offerre voluit procuratae a se salutis exemplum, virtutis suae potestatem in humanis corporibus exercuit: spem futurorum et animae salutem curis praesentium segritudinum commendans:... nunc vero, ubi in contumaces formam severitatis constituebat, futuri speciem damno arboris indicavit, ut infidelitatis periculum, sine detrimento eorum in quorum redemptionem venerat, doceretur. Thus, too, Grotius: Clementissimus Dominus, quum innumeris miraculis sua in nos aeterna beneficia figurasset, severitatem judicii, quod infrugiferos homines manet, uno duntaxat signo, idque non in homine, sed in non sensurâ, arbore, adumbravit; ut certi essemus bonorum operum sterilitatem gratiae foecundantis ademptione puniri. Theophylact brings out in the same way the ϕιλανθρωπία of this miracle: ξηραίνει oὖν τὸ δένδρον‚ ἵνα σωϕρονίσῃ ἀνθρώπους

[3] Witsius (Meletem. Leiden, p. 414) expresses this excellently well: At quid tandem commisit infelix arbor, ob quam rem tarn inopinato mulctaretur exitio? Si verborum proprietatem sectemur, omnino nihil. Creaturae enim rationis expertes, uti virtutis ac vitii, ita et praemii ac poenae, proprie et stricte loquentes, incapaces sunt. Potest tamen in creaturis istis aliquid existere, quod, analogicâ, et symbolicâ quâdam ratione, et vitio et poenae respondeat. Defectus fructuum in arbore cseteroquin generosa, succulentâ, bene plantatâ, frondosâ, multa pollicente, symbolice respondet vitio animi degenerantis, luxuriosi, ingrati, simulati, superbi, verâ, tamen virtute destituti; subitanea arboris ex imprecatione Christi arefactio, quâ tollitur quidquid in arbore videbatur esse boni, analogiam quandam habet cum justissimâ Christi vindictâ, qua, in eos animadvertit, qui benignitate sua, abutuntur. Quemadmodum igitur peccata ista hominum vere merentur poenam, ita κατ᾿ ἀναλογίαν dici potest, arborem, ita uti descripsimus comparatam, mereri exitium.

[4] It is very noticeable that the only times that the fig-tree appears prominently in the N. T., it appears as the symbol of evil; here and at Luk 13:6. Isidore of Pelusium (in Cramer, Catena, in loc.) refers to the old tradition, that it was the tree of temptation in Paradise. For traditions of impurity connected with it, see Tertullian, De Pudicit. 6. Buffon calls it arbre indecent; for explanation of which see a learned note in Sepp, Leben Jesu, vol. iii. p. 225, seq. Bernard (In Cant. Serm. lx. 3): Maledicit ficulneae pro eo quod non invenit in eâ fructum. Bene ficus, quae bonâ licet Patriarcharum radice prodierit, numquam tamen in altum proficere, numquam se humo attollere voluit, numquam respondere radici proceritate ramorum, generositate florum, foecunditate fructuum. Male prorsus tibi cum tua radice convenit, arbor pusilla, tortuosa, nodosa. Radix enim sancta. Quid ea dignum tuis apparet in ramis? The Greek proverbial expressions, σύκινος ἀνήρ, a poor strengthless man, συκίνη ἐπικουρία, unhelpful help, supply further parallels.

[5] Moreover all explanations which go to prove that, according to the natural order of things, there might have been in Palestine, even at this early time of the year, figs on that tree, either winter figs which had survived till spring, or the early figs of spring themselves,—all these, ingenious as they often are, yet seem to me beside the point. For, whether they prove this point or not, they shatter upon that οὐ γὰρ ἦν καιρὸς σύκων of St. Mark; from which it is plain that no such calculation of probabilities brought the Lord thither, but those abnormal leaves, which He had a right to count would have been accompanied with abnormal fruit. In four or five ingenious ways it has been sought to make these words not to mean that which they bear upon their front that they do mean, and so to disencumber the passage of difficulties with which it seems laden. The worst is that which places a note of interrogation after ούκων, and makes the sacred historian to burst out in an exclamation of wonder at the barrenness of the fig-tree,—” For was it not the time of figs?” But this sort of passionate narration—supplying the reader with his feelings ready-made, his wonder, his abhorrence, his admiration—is that the uniform absence of which is one of the very most striking features of the Gospel story. Scarcely better, though certainly more ingenious, is Daniel Heinsius’ suggestion, which has found favour with Knatchbull, Gataker, and others. His help is in a different pointing and accenting of the passage, as thus, οὗ γὰρ ἦν‚ καιρὸς σύκων, “For where He was, it was the season of Jigs”—in the mild climate of Judaea, where, as we know, the fruits of the earth ripened nearly a month earlier than in Galilee. But MSS. and ancient Versions give not the least support; and to express ibi loci by οὗ γὰρ ἦν is as awkward and forced as well can be. Deyling (Obss. Sac. vol. iii. p. 277) is better. He makes οὐ = οὔπω), and καιρός = tempus colligendi fructus, the time for the gathering the figs. The harvest had not yet swept away the crop; therefore the Lord could reasonably have looked for fruit upon the tree; and the “words will be an explanation, not of the words “He found nothing but leaves,” immediately going before, but of his earlier-mentioned going to the tree, expecting to find fruit thereon. This explanation has Kuinoel, Wetstein, and others upon its side. The remoteness of the words to which this clause will refer is not a fatal objection, for similar instances might be adduced from St. Mark, as 16:3, 4, and 12:12, where the words, “for they knew that He had spoken against them,” are an explanation of the fact that they sought to lay hold on Him, not of their fearing the people. But καιρὸς τῶν καρπῶν (Mat 21:34; cf. Luk 20:10), on which the upholders of this scheme greatly rely, means the time of the ripe fruits, not the time of the ingathered. That, however, which has found more favour than any of these, and which Hammond, D’Outrein, and many more have embraced, would make καιρός = καιρὸς εὔϕορος, and would understand St. Mark to be saying, It was an unfavourable season for figs. A very old, although almost unnoticed, reading, ὁ γὰρ καιρὸς οὐκ ἦν σύκων, would be still more favourable to this explanation. But we want some example of καιρός alone being used as = καιρὸς εὔϕορος, for Mat 13:30, Luk 20:10, which are sometimes adduced, do not satisfy. Conscious of this, Olshausen and a writer in the Theol. Stud, und Krit. 1843, p. 131, seq., have slightly modified this view. These do not make καιρός exactly “season,” since the season for the chief crop, whether good or bad, had not yet arrived, and therefore there would be no room for expressing a judgment about it; but they take it in the sense of weather, temperature; καιρός= tempus opportunum. If there had been favourable weather, at once moist and warm, there would have been figs on the tree; not indeed the general crop, but the ficus praecox (see Pliny, H. N. xv. 19), the early spring fig, which was counted an especial delicacy (“the figs that are first ripe,” Jer 24:2), and of which Isaiah speaks (xxviii. 4) as “the hasty fruit before the summer, which when he that looketh upon it seeth, while it is yet in his hand he eateth it up” (cf. Hos 9:10); or if not these, the late winter fig, which Shaw mentions (Winer, Realwörterbuch, s. v. Feigenbaum) as first ripening after the tree has lost its leaves, and hanging on the tree, in a mild season, into the spring. For this use of καιρός as favourable weather a passage much to the point has been cited from the Hecuba of Euripides—
Οὔκουν δεινὸν‚ εἰ γῆ μὲν κακὴ‚
Τυχοῦσα καιροῦ θεόθεν‚ εὖ στάχυν ϕέρει‚
Χρηστὴ δ᾿‚ ἁμαρτοῦσ᾿ ὧν χρεὼν αὐτὴν τυχεῖν‚
Κακὸν δίδωσι καρπόν.
Upon this Matthise says: Quum καιρός ornnia complectatur, quae alicui rei opportuna et consentanea sunt, hoc loco proprie significat omnia ea, quae agris, ut fructus ferant, accommodata sunt, ut pluviam, coeli commodam temperiem, quo sensu accepisse Euripidem ex adjecto θεόθεν patet. Yet allowing, all this, there is a long step between it and proving καιρὸς σύκων to be = tempus opportunum ficis. The great advantage of the exposition given in the text is, that it requires, no violence to be done to the words, but takes them in that sense in which every one, but for difficulties which seem to follow, would take them. See Sir T. Browne, Obss. upon Plants mentioned in Scripture, —Works, vol. iv. pp. 162-167.) [6] Pliny (H. N. xvi. 49): Ei demum serius folium nascitur quam pomum.

[7] It is not a little remarkable that it was with the fig-leaves that in Paradise Adam attempted to deny his nakedness, and to present himself as. other than a sinner before God (Gen 3:7).

[8] Witsius (Meletem. Leiden, p. 415): Folia sunt jactatio legis, templi, cultus, caerimoniarum, pietatis denique et sanctimoniae, quarum se specie valde efferebant. Fructus sunt resipiscentia, fides, sanctitas, quibus carebant.

[9] It is possible, and some have thought, that our Lord has another allusion to what here He had done in those words of his, “If they do these things in a green tree, what shall be done in the dry?” (Luk 23:31); if God so dealt with Him, “a green tree,” full of sap, full of life, if He thus bruised and put Him to grief, how should He deal with Israel after the flesh, “the dry” tree, withered and dried up under the power of that curse which had been spoken against it?

[10] Witsius (Meletem. Leiden, p. 415): Parabolica ficus maledictio “significavit, futurum esse ut populus Israeliticus, justâ Dei indigo natione, omni vigore et succo spiritualis foecunditatis privetur, et quia fructus bonorum operum proferre isthoc tempore noluit, dein nec possit. Ac yeluti maledictionis sententiam ficus arefactio protinus excepit, sic et Judaeorum natio, mox post spretum proterve Messiam, exaruit.

[11] Augustine brings out often and very strikingly the figurative character of this miracle;—though, with most other expositors, he misses what seems to me the chief stress of this tree’s (symbolic) guilt, and that which drew on it the curse, namely, its running before its time, and by its leaves proclaiming it had fruit, when its true part and that which the season would have justified, would have been to present itself with neither. He, in the following quotations, otherwise so admirable, makes its real barrenness, contrasted with its pomp of leaves, to be the stress of its fault, putting out of sight the untimeliness of those leaves and of that pretence of fruit, which is the most important element in the whole. Thus Serm. lxxvii. 5: Etiam ipsa quae a Domino facta sunt, aliquid significantia erant, quasi verba, si dici potest, visibilia et aliquid significantia. Quod maxime apparet in eo quod praeter tempus poma quaesivit in arbore, et quia non invenit, arbori maledicens aridam fecit. Hoc factum nisi figuratum accipiatur, stultum invenitur; primo quaesisse poma in ilia, arbore, quando tempus non erat ut essent in ullâ arbore: deinde si pomorum. jam tempus esset, non habere poma quae culpa arboris esset ? Sed quia significabat, quaerere se non solum folia, sed et fructum, id est, non solum verba, sed et facta hominum, arefaciendo ubi sola folia invenit, significavit eorum poenam, qui loqui bona possunt, facere bona nolunt. Cf. Serm. xcviii. 3: Christus nesciebat, quod rusticus sciebat? quod noverat arboris cultor, non noverat arboris creator? Cum ergo esuriens poma quaesivit in arbore, significavit se aliquid esurire, et aliquid aliud quaerere; et arborem illam sine fructu foliis plenam reperit, et maledixit; et aruit. Quid arbor fecerat fructum non afferendo? Quae culpa arboris infecunditas? Sed sunt qui fructum voluntate dare non possunt. Illorum est culpa sterilitas, quorum fecunditas est voluntas. Cf. Con. Faust, xxii. 25.