01.22. Chapter 2. The Barren Fig-Tree

Chapter 2.
The Barren Fig-Tree Or, the Withdrawal of Israel’s Privilege in Favour of the Gentiles Foreshadowed.

JESUS spake this parable: A certain man had a fig-tree planted in his vineyard; and he came seeking fruit on it, and found not any. And he said unto the vinedresser, Behold, these three years I come seeking fruit on this fig-tree, and I find it not: cut it down; why doth it also[1] make the land useless?[2] And he answering saith unto him, Lord, let it alone this year also, till I shall dig about it, and dung it, and if it bear fruit next year,[3] well; but if not, thou shalt cut it down.—Luk 13:6-9.

[1] The omission of this word in the A. V. is a grave fault, as it is essential to the meaning. The R. V. corrects the error.

[2] καταργεῖ The rendering ’cumbereth’ in A. V. retained in R. V. is objectionable as too vague, not to mention that the verb cumber is used in another place of the same Gospel for a wholly different Greek word (Luk 10:40). The same word should certainly not be used in both places. The idea intended by καταργεῖ seems to be that the land is rendered ἀργός = ὰεργός.

[3] In the T. R. εἰς τὸ μέλλον comes after εἰ δὲ μήγε. The rendering ’henceforth’ in the R. V., replacing the ’after that’ of the A. V., is too general, ἔτος is understood after μέλλον. So Bengel, Meyer, and Hofmann. Also Dr. Field, who, criticising the R. V., remarks: "Here ἔτος occurs in the preceding verse, but even without that the idiom is well established. Plutarch frequently uses it of magistrates designate" (’Otium Norvicense,’ Part III). The correct rendering of the phrase was given early in last century by the Cambridge scholar, Jeremiah Markland, to whom reference is made by Dr. Field, and also by Bos in ’Ellipses Græcæ’ under the word ἔτος.

If it be assumed that the conception and. delivery of this parabolic speech sprang out of the incidents previously narrated, its judicial character is self-evident. In that case the obvious purpose of the parable is to enforce the warning: "Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish;" to intimate, that is to say, that the judgment of the Jewish nation was impending. But even if, as is most likely, the connection between the parable and what goes before is subjective only, in the mind of the writer, rather than in the actual course of events, the sombre and threatening nature of the utterance is still very apparent. The unfruitful tree, which we may safely assume to be Israel, is about to be cut down. It is on its last trial, the issue of which, judging from the past, is far from hopeful. There is, indeed, mercy in the petition that it may have a last trial—another year of grace. This circumstance, however, throws no shadow of doubt on the judicial character of the parable; or, if it does, then we must conclude that it is a mistake to speak of a separate class of parables of judgment. For none of our Lord’s parabolic sayings are so purely judicial as to show no trace of the grace that dwelt in Him. The grace is visible enough here in the intercession of the vinedresser. Nevertheless, judgment preponderates. The very intercession is ominous. The vinedresser shows His mercifulness by deprecating immediate cutting down, but the careful specification of conditions, and the limitation of the period within which experiments are to be made, intimate that peril is imminent. The object of judgment, already hinted at, is Israel—that would be so obvious to the hearers that it was quite unnecessary to explain it; and what is threatened is exclusion from the kingdom of God, forfeiture of privilege as the elect people. As in most parables belonging to the present group, the threatening against Israel is accompanied by hints at the replacing of the chosen people by other recipients of Divine favour. The most obvious hint is contained in the words: Why also rendereth it the land useless? The owner regards the occupation of the land by an unproductive tree as a serious evil, and one reason of his desire to cut down the tree is that another fertile tree may be planted in its room. It thus appears that in one aspect a parable of judgment, the present parable,—and a similar remark may be made with reference to all belonging to the same group,—is in another aspect a parable of grace. A parable of judgment as towards Israel, it is a parable of grace as towards the Gentiles, intimating God’s purpose to put them in the place of an unfruitful elect people. In this fact, doubtless, lay the attraction of this parable for the third Evangelist, who has alone recorded it. The doom of Israel by itself was an unpleasant subject of contemplation to a Christian mind; and had there been nothing but that to be found in the parable, Luke might have kept it out of his gospel. But his quick Pauline eye detected much more in it than that. He found there, to his comfort, a hint that Israel’s doom was to be the opportunity of the Gentiles; that the sunset of Israel’s day of grace was to be the sunrise of a day of grace for the outside nations. The parable before us is one of those parts of our Lord’s teaching in which is latent Pauline universalism. This element is its specialty, and only when we keep it steadily in view can we do full justice to all the features of the representation, or enter sympathetically into the spirit of either the speaker or the narrator. We understand the story of the unfruitful fig-tree only when we see in it an anticipation of Paul’s apologetic for his Gentile Gospel, as apparently liable to the objection of setting aside the election of Israel, in the ninth, tenth, and eleventh chapters of his Epistle to the Romans. So at least we read the story, and we hope to justify the reading by the exposition following. The lesson of the parable then being, on our view, not merely the doom of Israel, but that doom as accompanied by the in-bringing of the Gentiles, let us see how the details fit into the hypothesis. The first point claiming attention is the subject of the parabolic narration—a fig-tree in a vineyard. That requires explanation. A fig-tree is not the thing we look for in a vineyard. The peculiarity has not escaped the notice of commentators, and they have tried to account for it. Some point out that a fig-tree does not conflict with the prohibition in Deu 22:9—Thou shalt not sow thy vineyard with divers seeds, lest the fruit of thy seed which thou hast sown, and the fruit of thy vineyard, be defiled, inasmuch as trees are not referred to in the passage.[1] Others conversant with the present practice in the East tell us that a fig-tree in a vineyard is by no means an uncommon phenomenon.[2] One who writes with authority on all that relates to the Natural History of the Bible, states that the corners and irregular pieces of ground in a vineyard are generally occupied by a fig-tree.[3] Such observations prove that a fig-tree in a vineyard is not contrary either to law or to usage; but they do not explain why our Lord selected a fig-tree instead of a vine, as we should have expected, to be the vehicle of instruction. However legal or usual the presence of a fig-tree in a vineyard may be, it is not, as in the case of a vine, a matter of course, and Christ must have had a reason for introducing it, and the reason can only be found in the didactic significance of the emblem. What, then, was the reason? On our view of the drift of the parable it is not difficult to answer the question. The fig-tree is chosen to represent Israel as a tacit yet effective protest against the notion of her possessing a prescriptive right to occupy in perpetuity the place she held in God’s favour. The supposition is directed against the pride and self-importance of an elect race, prone to think that Israel and God’s kingdom were synonymous, or as intimately and essentially related to each other as are vineyard and vine. To have used the vine as an emblem of Israel might have seemed to concede this claim, but by selecting the fig-tree as an emblem Christ said to his countrymen in effect, "Ye have no natural or necessary place in the sphere within which God’s grace manifests itself, like a vine in a vineyard, without which the vineyard can hardly be conceived: Ye are but a fig-tree in the vineyard, legitimately, suitably enough there, yet there by accident, or by free choice of the owner, and there only so long as ye serve the purpose for which he put you there." Much the same thing indeed could be said even of a vine. For while vines are necessary to the idea of a vineyard, this of that particular vine is not, and the introduction of any individual plant is a matter of choice, and its continuance depends on its fruit-bearing qualities; for no owner of a vineyard recognises a prescriptive right in a vine to remain in its place even when it has proved unfruitful. But what may be said even of a vine may be said à fortiori of a fig-tree, and to select a fig-tree as the emblem of Israel was a way of. provoking reflections of this kind in a people not by any means inclined thereto. The Jewish people would not of their own accord think of themselves as a fig-tree in a vineyard. They would rather think of themselves as God’s vine, which He brought from Egypt and planted in the goodly land of promise; and they would flatter themselves that as God had taken so much pains to elect them, and as they had been so long in possession, they would continue in the vineyard for ever. It was because the Jews cherished such thoughts that necessity was laid on Paul to reconcile his Gentile Gospel, not only with ethical interests and with the claims of the Mosaic law, but with the election of Israel. They had the same thoughts in our Lord’s time, and it was to provide an antidote to such self-deception and self-flattery that He called Israel a fig-tree in a vineyard; so by a single word accomplishing the same end which Paul sought to serve by an elaborate process of argument, designed to show that in election God is free, that therefore it confers no prescriptive rights, that what God freely began He may freely end, so far as human claims are concerned; and that Israel, so far from having any prescriptive right, had justly forfeited her privilege as the elect people by her utter failure to realise the Divine purpose in her election.[4]

[1] So Meyer.

[2] Vide Stanley, ’Sinai and Palestine,’ p. 421.

[3] Tristram, ’The Natural History of the Bible,’ p. 352. Godet remarks that the soil of a vineyard is very good for fruit-trees, as if the point of the parable were to teach that God had done all for Israel that He could (so Arnot). This is not the moral lesson of the parable, and the observation concerning the goodness of the soil, besides being irrelevant to the didactic scope, leaves the selection of a fig-tree as emblem unexplained. The land was good for any fruit-tree; why then name this one in particular?

[4] Such is the scope of Rom. ix., x. Chap. xi. qualifies the severity of the previous argument by showing that the cancelling of Israel’s election is not absolute or final.

All this is hinted by one short parable, and even by the single word fig-tree;[1] all this, and yet more, for the comparison of Israel to a fig-tree suggests forcibly the thought that God’s vineyard is a much more comprehensive category than the chosen race. Doubtless it was intended to suggest this thought, and when we keep this fact in view we can have no difficulty in answering the question: If Israel be the fig-tree, what is the vineyard? The question has puzzled commentators and received various and even curious answers. Some say the vineyard in this instance must mean the world.[2] One expositor, unable to accept this view, and at a loss to suggest any other, on the assumption that the fig-tree denotes Israel, in despair makes the tree represent individual Israelites, the vineyard being Israel collectively.[3] The truth is, that the vineyard is the kingdom of God, the sphere within which God manifests Himself in grace; always in idea and Divine purpose distinguishable from and wider than the Jewish people, and now on the eve of becoming a much more comprehensive thing in reality through the calling of the Gentiles,[4] after which it would become apparent to all that the place of Israel. in the kingdom was as that of a fig-tree in the corner of a vineyard, small at the best, and by no means secure.

[1] Bengel had a glimpse of this, as appears from his suggestive remark: σμκν, arborem cui per se nil loci est in vineâ.

[2] So Euthymius Zig. Trench, Oostersee, Arnot [3] Stier in ’Die Reden Jesu.’

[4] So Hofmann and Goebel. The vineyard, says Hofmann, is "die Anstalt des Heils." By no means secure, for the fig-tree has been unfruitful: that is the outstanding fact in its history. "Behold, these three years I come seeking fruit on this tree, and find not any." The three years signify the time sufficient for ascertaining the tree’s fruit-bearing qualities, after the lapse of which one may infer incurable barrenness.[1] Possibly, as has been suggested, the number of years has been fixed with reference to the precept in the law directing that the fruit of young trees should for three years not be eaten, but be reckoned uncircumcised.[2] There is little reason to believe that Jesus meant to refer to the years of His own personal ministry, though this view, in favour with many, certainly helps to remove the appearance of harshness in limiting the trial to so short a period, as in that case the meaning would be, that during a time of special means of grace Israel should have been exceptionally fruitful. Similar service is rendered by the suggestion that the three years represent the three epochs of the judges, the kings, and the high priests; each year in the parable signifying a period of many centuries in the history. Certainly the time of trial does seem short, and in so far conveys an unfavourable impression as to God’s patience towards Israel, not justified by the actual facts; for Jehovah had borne long with the unfruitfulness of His chosen people. But the time is made short because the purpose is not to emphasise the Divine patience, but to give prominence to the thought that fruit is the thing looked for, the reason of the fig-tree’s presence in the vineyard. It belonged to the didactic drift of the parable to emphasise this point, for it tended to justify the threatened excision of Israel. Hence is explained the limitation of the period of trial to the barely sufficient number of years. The same bias comes out in the use of the present ἔρχομαι, in speaking of the owner’s quest for fruit "I am coming," he says: he is continually on the outlook for fruit, and on its becoming apparent to him that a particular tree is not likely to be fruit-bearing, he has but one thought concerning it, viz. to cut it down or remove it, and plant another in its place. The point meant to be insisted on obviously is not the patience of God, but His impatience with a spiritually unfruitful people, even though it were an elect people. Christ would teach His countrymen, presuming on their privilege, that election was only a means to an end, and that if the end were not attained it would be sternly cancelled.

[1] So Godet.

[2] Lev 19:23. So Hofmann. The restriction of the intercession of the vinedresser for a prolongation of the experiment to a single year indicates Christ’s own sympathy with this Divine rigour. He is the vinedresser, and His ministry of grace and truth is the means whereby it is faintly hoped Israel may yet, at the eleventh hour, be made spiritually fruitful. But, full of grace though He be, He neither expects nor desires an indefinite extension of Israel’s day of grace. He knows that though God is long-suffering, yet His patience, as exhibited in the history of His dealings with men, is exhaustible; and that in Israel’s case it is now all but worn out. And He sympathises with the Divine impatience with chronic and incurable sterility. For though He preaches with enthusiasm a gospel of grace, He does so with the aim of producing in the recipients of the good tidings holiness, and in the conviction that belief in the gospel is the most efficient cause of holiness. A kingdom of God must be a kingdom of righteousness, and if Jesus presented it to view as a kingdom of grace, it was because He believed that was the most direct way of reaching the ideal. It was made a kingdom of grace to begin with, that it might become a kingdom of righteousness to end with. In this respect there is absolute agreement between Christ and Paul. The Herald of the kingdom, not less energetically than the apostle of the Gentiles, repudiates the idea that men might sin with impunity because grace abounded. The intercession put into the mouth of the vinedresser is a solemn act of repudiation, similar in import to Paul’s protest in the sixth chapter of his Epistle to the Romans. "Let it alone this year also, till I shall dig about it, and dung it; and if it bear fruit next year, well; and if not, thou shalt cut it down." What words could more clearly or forcibly declare that grace is meant to lead to holy living, and that when it fails to do that it will be and ought to be exchanged for judicial rigour? The words of the vinedresser naturally make no reference to what may follow the cutting down of the unfruitful tree. And yet from the respect which he shows for the owner’s urgent demand for fruit, as well as from that demand itself, it is easy to infer what is to be expected. The place of the barren tree will be filled by another tree in the hope of its proving fruitful. The owner of the vineyard must have fruit, and if he cannot get it from one quarter, he will provide that it be forthcoming from another. The thought suggested by the stress laid throughout on fertility is distinctly expressed by the words put into the mouth of the proprietor, "Why maketh it the land useless?" That the tree occupied unprofitably soil which might otherwise be productive is held to be sufficient condemnation. Some interpreters, ancient and modern, put a pregnant sense on the verb καταργεῖ, so as to make it cover not only the idea of profitless occupation, but that of injuring the land by intercepting the sun’s rays, and sucking out of it its nutritive juices.[1] This heaping of accusations on the devoted tree arises out of a latent feeling that the owner’s tone appears unduly severe, and stands in need of vindication. A strong case must be made out against the tree, that the owner may be cleared from the charge of unreasonableness. Therefore three sins are imputed to it, over and above that of unfruitfulness—it occupies space, it shuts out the sun, it impoverishes the soil. But this looks very like a repetition of the sin of Job’s theorising friends, that of playing the part of special pleaders for God. The interpreters, missing the point of the parable, have been decidedly too hard upon the poor fig-tree. For, after all, it is a young tree, and cannot do very great harm by its leaves casting shade, or by its roots sucking moisture out of the land. No doubt the nation of Israel, which it represented, was an old tree, and did serious harm by its hypocritical profession of piety, causing the name of God to be blasphemed among the Gentiles, as Paul solemnly declared. But the parable is not so constructed as to bring out these facts, and we are not entitled to foist them into it. The fig-tree of the parable is a young tree of comparatively small dimensions and short roots. It has just lived long enough to show that it is not likely to be fruitful, and therefore uselessly occupies a place in the vineyard. And the point of the parable is, that that alone is sufficient to justify removal. To accumulate charges against the tree is simply to teach by implication that the one reason of profitless occupancy is not enough, and to obscure the moral lesson, which is that the supreme motive of Providence in its dealings with men is a regard to fruitfulness. The attempt to make out a strong case only issues in making out a weak case. The true interest of the interpreter, therefore, is to concentrate attention on the one point, and to set forth as the lesson of the parable, that as soon as it has been definitely ascertained that a tree planted in the Divine vineyard is barren, and therefore idly occupies the ground, it ought to be removed and another planted in its room.[2] That is just what an unfruitful tree does to land. The land is as good as non-existent which is occupied by a barren tree. In the history of nations a long time is allowed for the ascertainment of the fact; but it holds good, nevertheless, that such is the principle on which nations are dealt with by Providence, and, in particular, that such is the principle on which the people of Israel were dealt with.

[1] So Gregory the Great, and, almost as a matter of course, after him Trench; also Bengel, who thus pithily sums up the case against the tree:—"Non modo nil prodest, sed etiam laticem avertit, quem e terra sucturae erant vites, et soles interpellat, et spatium occupat." To the same effect Maldonatus.

[2] The Vulgate renders κμταργεῖ by occupat. Trench pronounces the rendering inadequate; in our view it hits the meaning intended exactly. The fact that κμταργεῖν is a favourite Pauline word might tempt us to put a Pauline sense on a word which occurs here only outside of Paul’s Epistles, or to suppose that Luke, the Pauline evangelist, must have understood it in a Pauline sense. But even if we were to yield to this impulse, it would not conduct to a sense widely different from that assigned to the word in our exposition. A prevalent Pauline sense of the term is "to make void." The means proposed by the vinedresser for the cure of barrenness are characteristic. They are means of grace; such means as from the gospel records we know to have been employed by Christ to win His countrymen to repentance and true piety. "I shall dig about it, and dung it." These processes began with the ministry of John the Baptist, and were carried on faithfully and lovingly by Jesus till the hour when He uttered the pathetic lament over Jerusalem, because she had defeated all His efforts to save her.[1] The doctrine of the Kingdom was the chief ingredient in the fertilising matter laid at the roots of the barren tree. That doctrine way supremely well fitted to regenerate Israel, and cause her to bring forth fruit to God, in place of mere foliage and wood. Yet it signally failed to do so; the Jewish people, as a whole, treated the good tidings with contempt, and became worse rather than better. And it is a melancholy reflection, that this is apt to be the case with a people after it has attained a certain stage of spiritual decay. The goodness of God leadeth it not to repentance; it rather despises the riches of His goodness and forbearance and long-suffering. This fact in the spiritual world has its analogue in the physical world. It is a well-known fact, that both in the animal and in the vegetable kingdom fertility is frequently better promoted by starving than by fattening.[2] A barren tree, gone to leaf and wood, is rendered fertile, not by dunging, but by cutting the roots. Severe treatment restores to fruit-bearing more readily than generous gardening. Poor populations are more prolific than well-to-do classes. It is a remarkable law this, according to which impoverishment is the condition of abundant reproduction, and nature is compelled to make an effort at self-preservation, by having its continued existence threatened. The law, ever active alike in the physical and in the spiritual spheres, was exemplified in Israel. The manuring process utterly failed, and there was nothing left but to try the cutting process. This process was tried when Israel was cut off, and the Gentiles were put in her place. Then means of grace gave place to measures of severity, to which Paul applied the expressive name of ἀποτομία.[3] According to the apostle, these measures were means of grace under a different guise. They were only a new way towards the old end—that of making Israel in truth a people of God. Such is the drift of the last part of the great argument by which Paul seeks to reconcile his gospel with the election of Israel. God, he says, hath not totally or finally cast off His people. He has only adopted a new method of accomplishing the purpose of the election.[4] It is a comforting doctrine, whether we have regard to the case of Israel or to the dark, judicial side of God’s dealings with men generally. It is a doctrine not taught in our parable. The cutting down spoken of there is final and irretrievable. For if a tree be felled with the axe it cannot grow again. The fact reminds us of the relativity and partiality of many individual Scripture statements, and of the need for combining mutually complementary texts in order to a just, full, and balanced view of Bible teaching on matters of fundamental moment.

[1] Qui vinitor eximia imago est ejus qui ἰδὼν τὴν πόλιν ἐπέκλαυσεν ἐπ αὐτήν. Unger.

[2] Vide Doubleday’s ’Law of Population.’

[3] Rom 11:22.

[4] Vide remarks on this topic in connection with the parable of the Great Supper, at p. 338.