Board index ‹ Specific Bible verses, texts, and passages ‹ Matthew

[Superman]

I don’t understand this story. Jesus wanted figs. It was not the season for figs. Boom, you’re dead. It sounds like petulance to me. What am I missing?

[jimwalton]

The fig tree story (Mt. 21.18-22; Mk. 11.12-14, 20-24) goes in combination with the cleansing of the temple by Jesus. The two are really one story in two different forms—what truth is supposed to look like. When Jesus came to the temple, his expectation was to find spiritual harmony with God, filled with God’s life, prayer and worship, and conformity to what the temple's purpose is: fellowship with God. Instead he found uselessness instead of productivity, death instead of life, practices that were contrary to fellowship with God, and spiritual indifference. It was a situation requiring judgment.

As a living parable of that, the next day he comes upon a fig tree. While it is full of leaves, there is no fruit. He found uselessness instead of productivity, "death" instead of life, energy expended to no rational end. To make his point about the temple and the vapid emptiness of lifeless religious practice, he cursed the tree: "May you never bear fruit again!" And the tree withered. It was a parable of empty religious practices that never produce a love relationship with God, and it's worthy only of judgment and euthanasia. Spiritual bankruptcy and intractable failure, leading to an incorrigible situation cannot be revived, but only terminated. If someone hungry for spiritual food came to the temple at that time, they would go home still hungry, just like someone coming to the fig tree. Rather than perpetuating the negligence, hypocrisy and deceit, Jesus' actions showed that spiritual deadness calls for judgment. The rest of the chapter of Matthew 21 continues the theme:

• vv. 21-22: What is required is true faith and honest prayer.
• vv. 28-32: What matters most is the appropriate response of lifestyle, not the facade of good but unfulfilled intentions.
• vv. 33-42: What matters most is spiritual truth (the recognition and worship of Jesus), not self-serving hypocrisy and religious practice.

Mt. 21.43 is sort of a summary of the temple cleansing, the fig tree event, Jesus’ authority being questioned, the parable of the two sons, and the parable of the tenants: “Therefore I tell you that the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people who will produce its fruit.”