The Fig Tree and its fruit the
figFIG may refer to:*Common fig, a large, deciduous shrub native to southwest Asia and the eastern Mediterranean region.*Ficus, a genus of about 850 species of woody trees, shrubs in the family Moraceae.-Acronym:* Fédération Internationale de Gymnastique...
is mentioned several times in the
New TestamentThe New Testament is the name given to the second major division of the Christian Bible, the first such division being the much longer Old Testament, both terms being associated with Supersessionism...
, and in the
Old TestamentIn Christianity, the Old Testament is the collection of books that form the first of the two-part Christian Biblical canon. These works correspond to the Hebrew Bible , with some variations and additions. In the Eastern Orthodox Church the comparable texts are known as the Septuagint, from the...
as well; but as more than just the common Mediterranean fruit tree, the
Common FigThe Common fig is a large, deciduous shrub or small tree native to southwest Asia and the eastern Mediterranean region . It grows to a height of tall, with smooth grey bark. The leaves are long and across, and deeply lobed with three or five lobes. The fruit is long, with a green skin,...
, it is also a symbol or
typeTypology in Christian theology and Biblical exegesis is a doctrine or theory concerning the relationship between the Old and New Testaments. Events in the Old Testament are seen as pre-figuring events or aspects of Christ in the New Testament, and, in the fullest version of the theory, that is...
, subject to various interpretations.
Hebrew Bible (Old Testament)
The first named plant of the Bible other than the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Adam and Eve used its leaves to sew garments when they realized they were naked. It was one of the food produced by the promised land
In it was listed as a great accomplishment: During Solomon's lifetime Judah and Israel, from Dan to Beersheba, lived in safety, each man under his own vine and fig tree.
This wonderful situation was later turned around during the reign of Hezekiah as testify: Hezekiah trusted the LORD, the God of Israel, there was no one like him among all the kings of Judah either before or after him. He held fast to the LORD and did not cease to follow him; he kept the commands the LORD had given Moses, and the LORD was with him; he was successful in whatever he undertook. He rebelled against the King of Assyria and did not serve him.
The Assyrian commander addressed the people and said, "Do not listen to Hezekiah, this is what the King of Assyria says: Make peace with me and come out to me. Then each one of you will eat from his won vine and fig tree and drink water from his own cistern, until I come and take you to a land like your own...." Of course the LORD was fond of Hezekiah and his people and the Assyrian invasion was not successful this time.
likens tending a fig tree to looking after one's master.
Of course there was a fig tree in the garden of the Song of Solomon. In the year of love the tree formed its fruit early.
The Fig Tree and figs are featured in the
Book of JeremiahThe Book of Jeremiah, or Jeremiah , is part of the Hebrew Bible, Judaism's Tanakh, and later became a part of Christianity's Old Testament...
.
Another species of
ficus, the Egyptian Sycamore Fig is occasionally mentioned as well, for example (and in the New Testament).
Parable of the budding fig tree
The
Parable of the budding fig tree is found in , , as part of the
Olivet discourseThe Olivet discourse is a biblical passage found in the Synoptic Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke. It is known as the "Little Apocalypse" because it includes Jesus' descriptions of future events, the use of end times language, and Jesus' warning to his followers that they will suffer tribulation...
.
Parable of the barren fig tree
The
Parable of the barren fig tree is a
parable of JesusThe parables of Jesus, found in the synoptic gospels, embody much of Jesus' teaching.Jesus' parables are quite simple, memorable stories, often with humble imagery, each with a single message. Jesus, for example, likened the Kingdom of God to leaven or a mustard seed. Like his aphorisms, Jesus'...
recorded in the
Gospel of LukeThe Gospel of Luke is the third and longest of the four canonical Gospels. This synoptic gospel is an account of the life and ministry of Jesus of Nazareth. It details his story from the events of his birth to his Ascension...
. A vinekeeper holds out hope that a barren fig tree will bear fruit next year.
Jesus and the withered fig tree
MarkThe Gospel of Mark is the second of the four Canonical Gospels, but is believed by most contemporary scholars to be the first gospel written, on which the other two synoptic gospels, Matthew and Luke, were partially based....
includes an account of Jesus
withering a fig tree:
A parallel is found in
MatthewThe Gospel of Matthew is one of the four canonical gospels in the New Testament. This synoptic gospel is an account of the life and ministry of Jesus of Nazareth...
. In , the next day, Simon Peter notices that the cursed fig tree has withered. In Matthew, the fig tree withers immediately and is noticed at that time by the disciples.
Interpretations
The
incident with the fig tree occurs in
Mark 11Mark 11 is the eleventh chapter of the Gospel of Mark in the New Testament of the Christian Bible, beginning Jesus' final week before his death as he arrives in Jerusalem for the coming Passover...
immediately before and then after the
incident at the TempleThe narrative of Jesus and the Money Changers occurs in all four Gospels in the New Testament. It occurs near the end of the Synoptic Gospels and near the start in the Gospel of John...
. The
cursing of the tree displays Jesus' power and the power of prayer coupled with full belief in God. Mark, placing the
fig tree before and after the
incident at the Temple, may be using the
fig tree as a metaphor, as Jesus himself might have, for what he sees as the barrenness of the priests (technically, the Temple priests were the
SadduceesThe Sadducees were a group of Jews opposed to the Pharisees , founded in the second century BC. They ceased to exist sometime after the destruction of the second Temple in Jerusalem in 70AD....
) and the withering of their teaching and authority due to their lack of true faith. As Jesus hoped to find fruit on the
fig tree, Jesus hoped to find "fruit", the fruit of true worship of God, at the Temple. The Temple,
Herod's TempleHerod's Temple in Jerusalem was a massive expansion of the Temple Mount platform and major expansion of the Jewish Temple by King Herod the Great around 19 BCE...
, like the
fig tree, is cursed. See also .
Simon Peter observes that the tree withered. Jesus responds that anyone can make a
mountainA mountain is a large landform that stretches above the surrounding land in a limited area usually in the form of a peak. A mountain is generally steeper than a hill. The adjective montane is used to describe mountainous areas and things associated with them...
throw itself in the
seaA sea is any large amount of water filled with animals such as crabs, whales, sharks, and fish, but there is inconsistency as to its precise definition and application. Most commonly, a sea may refer to a large expanse of saline water connected with an ocean, but it is also used sometimes for a...
, if he truly believes his command will be obeyed. A similar statement is also mentioned in the much earlier
Pauline EpistlesThe Pauline epistles, Epistles of Paul, or Letters of Paul, are the thirteen New Testament books which have the name Paul as the first word, hence claiming authorship by Paul the Apostle. Among these letters are some of the earliest extant Christian documents...
, where the
First Epistle to the CorinthiansThe First Epistle to the Corinthians, also known as First Corinthians, is the seventh book of the New Testament. The book, originally written in Greek, was a letter from Paul of Tarsus and Sosthenes to the Christians of Corinth, Greece....
argues that faith can move mountains.
A different statement is found in the
Gospel of ThomasThe Gospel According to Thomas , also known as The Gospel of Thomas, is a New Testament apocryphon, nearly completely preserved in a Coptic papyrus manuscript discovered in 1945 at Nag Hammadi, Egypt...
. Instead of referring to a lack of doubt, Jesus advises that mountains can be moved if two people make peace with each other in a "single house."
The early GnosticsGnosticism refers to diverse, syncretistic religious movements in antiquity consisting of various belief systems generally united in the teaching that humans are divine souls trapped in a material world created by an imperfect god, the demiurge; this being is frequently identified with the...
interpreted this statementThis article discusses the relationship between Gnosticism and the New Testament.The Gnostics were a rather diverse group of early movements finding a basis often in Christianity or Judaism. These people did not refer to themselves as "Gnostics" but rather the label was applied mostly by their...
as referring to the paths that lead to
gnosisGnosis is the spiritual knowledge of a saint or mystically enlightened human being. In the cultures of the term gnosis was a special knowledge or insight into the infinite, divine and uncreated in all and above all, rather than knowledge strictly into the finite, natural or material world which...
.
In the
Synoptic GospelsThe synoptic Gospels are three Gospels in the New Testament the Gospel of Matthew, the Gospel of Mark, and the Gospel of Luke, that display a high degree of similarity in content, narrative arrangement, language, and sentence and paragraph structures...
, the fig tree is revisited as a
parableA parable is a brief, succinct story, in prose or verse, that illustrates a moral or religious lesson. It differs from a fable in that fables use animals, plants, inanimate objects, and forces of nature as characters, while parables generally feature human characters.Some scholars of the New...
within the
Olivet discourseThe Olivet discourse is a biblical passage found in the Synoptic Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke. It is known as the "Little Apocalypse" because it includes Jesus' descriptions of future events, the use of end times language, and Jesus' warning to his followers that they will suffer tribulation...
. Jesus says that when the fig tree puts forth leaves one can tell that summer has arrived. Jesus continues that when this has happened the
kingdom of GodThe Kingdom of God or Reign of God is a foundational concept in the three Abrahamic religions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam....
will be at hand. This is almost always interpreted metaphorically, and is usually considered in contrast to the earlier tree withering.
Most modern Christians interpret the parable to suggest that the tree's withering meant the teachings of the Sadducees and Pharisees were far from the truth, and that this poverty of teaching was the source of Jesus' anger at the lack of fruit. At some point the fruits of Christianity will come forth and then an
eschatologicalIn Christian theology, Christian eschatology is the study of its religious beliefs concerning all future and final events , as well as the ultimate purpose of the world , of humankind, and the Church....
kingdom of God arrive.
The
Jewish EncyclopediaThe Jewish Encyclopedia was an encyclopedia originally published between 1901 and 1906 by Funk and Wagnalls. It contained over 15,000 articles in 12 volumes on the history and then-current state of Judaism and the Jews as of 1901...
states that the fig tree is a symbol of the coming of the Mashiach:
- The simple meaning of these parables, however, was lost later on, and they were taken to be allegories and mysteries, especially when they alluded to the Messianic expectations
Messiah Messiah Messiah is a term used in the Hebrew Bible to describe priests and kings, who were traditionally anointed with the holy anointing oil as described in Exodus 30:22-25...
, about which it was not safe to speak in public, as they assumed the end of the kingdom of SatanSatan is an embodiment of antagonism that originates from the Abrahamic religions, being traditionally considered an angel in Judeo-Christian belief, and a Jinn in Islamic belief...
(RomeRome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated municipality , with over 2.7 million residents in , while the population of the urban area is estimated by Eurostat to be 3.46 million. The metropolitan area of Rome is estimated by OECD to have a population of 3.7 million...
; comp. , ; , especially and ). Thus "the parable of the fig-tree" is actually a "symbol" of the Messianic advent, according to the MidrashMidrash is a homiletic method of biblical exegesis. The term also refers to the whole compilation of homiletic teachings on the Bible....
(Cant. R. ii. 13), but was no longer understood by the evangelists, either as an allegoryAllegory is a figurative mode of representation conveying a meaning other than the literal. An allegory is a device that can be presented in literary form, such as a poem or novel, or in visual form, such as in painting or sculpture...
or as a sign of Messianic success or failure, in the story of the blasted fig-tree .
In the noncanonical
Apocalypse of PeterThe recovered Apocalypse of Peter or Revelation of Peter is an example of a simple, popular early Christian text of the second century; it is an example of Apocalyptic literature with Hellenistic overtones. The text is extant in two incomplete versions of a lost Greek original, one Koine Greek, and...
, Peter discusses the significance of the fig tree with Jesus, who says the fig tree represents "the house of Israel."
In his 1927 essay
Why I Am Not a ChristianWhy I Am Not a Christian is an essay by the British philosopher Bertrand Russell hailed by The Independent as "devastating in its use of cold logic", and listed in the New York Public Library's list of the most influential books of the 20th century....
,
Bertrand RussellBertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, OM, FRS was an English philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, and social critic. Although he spent the majority of his life in England, he was born in Wales, where he also died.Russell led the British "revolt against idealism" in the...
argued that a
divineDivinity and divine are broadly applied but loosely defined terms, used variously within different faiths and belief systems — and even by different individuals within a given faith — to refer to some transcendent or transcendental power, or its attributes or manifestations in the world...
figure would either know that the tree would not have figs or could have simply produced the figs by a
miracleA miracle is a perceptible interruption of the laws of nature, such that can be attempted to be explained by divine intervention, and is sometimes associated with a miracle worker. Many folktales, religious texts, and people claim various events they refer to as "miraculous". People in different...
and thus finds the story illogical from a literal sense:
Christian teaching on the 'Withering of the Fig Tree'
There are approximately 30 references to the
The Fig tree in the Bible (depending on the translation) and approximately 50 references to a vine. Some are literal and some metaphorical. These are in the Gospels:
- The cursing of the barren fig tree by Jesus (Matthew 21:18-22), (Mark 11)
- The parable of the barren fig tree (Luke 13:6-9)
- The parable of the budding fig tree (Mar 13:28-29), (Mat 24:32-33), (Luke 21:29-31)
- In chapter 15 of the gospel of John, Jesus says he is 'the vine'.
- There are also references to 'the vineyard' in the Old Testament, believed to be related to Israel in the prophesies of Isaiah.
To understand in context the 'withering of the fig tree' it is important to see if Jesus' teaching elsewhere follows similar themes. We read in John 15 that Jesus says he is the true vine. John 15:6 (English Standard Version) says "If anyone does not abide in me he is thrown away like a branch and withers; and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned." . The mainstream Christian view on Jesus' miracle was that Jesus was teaching the disciples that although Israel was God's chosen people (Israel was commonly represented by the fig tree )- if Israel or any other, claims to be of Christ (or have spiritual life) yet do not keep his commandments (as Christ says this is the sign of his followers) then they shall not have salvation. Many Christians believe that this miracle of Jesus echoes the words of the prophet
IsaiahIsaiah is the main figure in the Biblical Book of Isaiah, and is traditionally considered to be its author. He was an 8th-century BC Judean prophet. Part of his message was: "The land will be completely laid waste and totally plundered. The LORD has spoken this word."...
who prophesied the rejection of Israel as having special spiritual significance. Isaiah says the reason for this withering or rejection is Israel's continual disobedience. The prophet
JeremiahJeremiah was one of the prophets of the Hebrew Bible. His writings are put together in the Book of Jeremiah and traditionally, authorship of the Book of Lamentations is ascribed to him...
refers to Israel as a choice vine planted by God which has turned against her creator to become a 'corrupt wild vine'. Jeremiah also describes a vision of good and bad figs representing people of
JudahThe Kingdom of Judah existed at two periods in Jewish history. According to the Hebrew Bible, a kingdom emerged in Judah after the death of Saul, when the tribe of Judah elevated David, who came from the Tribe of Judah, to rule over it. After seven years David became king of a reunited Kingdom of...
conquered by Babylon, those good eventually returning to Jerusalem, those bad being exiled and punished in nations of the earth.
Some say that Jesus responded harshly in such action (as the above mentioned
Bertrand RussellBertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, OM, FRS was an English philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, and social critic. Although he spent the majority of his life in England, he was born in Wales, where he also died.Russell led the British "revolt against idealism" in the...
). The significance of not bearing spiritual fruit means a branch or plant is spiritually dead and must be cut off. This may be considered in a context of the Biblical definition of spiritual fruit as love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. As understood here, to have such fruit we must be grafted onto Christ, the true vine.
The apostle Paul seeks to clarify the issue in Romans chapter 11,, correcting those who believed that Israel was rejected forever. There is difference of opinion on what Paul is actually referring to when he says 'all Israel will be saved'.
Dispensationalist theologyDispensationalist theology refers to the teachings of Dispensationalism to address what others see as divergent theologies in the Old Testament and New Testament. Its name reflects a view that biblical history is best understood as a series of dispensations, or separated time-periods, in the...
maintains that Israel will be restored politically and spiritually as the people of God. Reformed theology teaches that Israel is representative of all of God's children in Christ and includes those who Paul referred to having been 'grafted in'. These differences of interpretation reflect differing views of
eschatologyEschatology is a part of theology and philosophy concerned with what are believed to be the final events in the history of the world, or the ultimate destiny of humanity, commonly referred to as the end of the world...
. A example of a popular dispensationalist theologian is
Cyrus ScofieldCyrus Ingerson Scofield was an American theologian, minister and writer.-Biography:Cyrus Scofield was born in Lenawee County, Michigan, but during the American Civil War he served for a year as a private in the 7th Tennessee Infantry, C.S.A.. By 1866 he was in St. Louis, Missouri working in his...
, while the views of
Matthew HenryMatthew Henry , was an English commentator.-Life:He was born at Broad Oak, a farmhouse on the borders of Flintshire and Shropshire. His father, Philip Henry, had just been ejected by the Act of Uniformity 1662. Unlike most of his fellow-sufferers, Philip possessed some private means, and was thus...
are those of a reformed theologian.
Matthew HenryMatthew Henry , was an English commentator.-Life:He was born at Broad Oak, a farmhouse on the borders of Flintshire and Shropshire. His father, Philip Henry, had just been ejected by the Act of Uniformity 1662. Unlike most of his fellow-sufferers, Philip possessed some private means, and was thus...
comments on the Matthew 21 and Mark 11 passages but does not refer one to another, suggesting he thought they were two separate events