The fig tree - what's that about?

I'm very new to Bible study, so please be understanding if this question is a little silly or if the answer is in-your-face obvious.

In Matthew and in Mark, there is the story of the fig tree, and of how Jesus cursed it when it offered no fruit. It struck me as being a little odd that there is no explanation for this. Jesus just did it and then the story quickly moves on, and there doesn't seem to be any point to the episode's inclusion in the narrative. (But of course I realize there is almost nothing in the Gospel that isn't there for a reason.)

Then I stumbled across this in Wikipedia just now:

In the Gospel of John,Nathanael is introduced as a friend of Philip. He is described as initially being skeptical about the Messiah coming from Nazareth, saying: "Can anything good come out of Nazareth?", but nonetheless, follows Philip's invitation. Jesus immediately characterizes him as "Here is a man in whom there is no deception." Some scholars hold that Jesus' quote "Before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you", is based on a Jewish figure of speech referring to studying the Torah.

It looks like there could be a tie-in. Can anybody point me in a direction here?

__________________
The message of the cross is foolish to those who are headed for destruction! But we who are being saved know it is the very power of God.
1 Corinthians 1:18

I don't think there is any tie in.

Jesus cursed the fig tree as a sign of the coming judgment to come upon fruitless (faithless) Israel in 70 A.D.

__________________
This is what the LORD says:

"Let not the wise man boast of his wisdom or the strong man boast of his strength or the rich man boast of his riches,
but let him who boasts boast in this: that he understands and knows me,
that I am the LORD, who exercises kindness, justice and righteousness on earth,
for in these I delight,"

delcares the LORD.

• A negative statement such as, no one will ever eat from you again, which is another way of saying; you are worthless, is a biblical curse!

Mark 11:21-24

• 21 And Peter, remembering, said to Him, "Rabbi, look! The fig tree which You cursed has withered away." 22 So Jesus answered and said to them, "Have faith in God. 23 For assuredly, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, 'Be removed and be cast into the sea,' and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that those things he says will be done, he will have whatever he says. 24 Therefore I say to you, whatever things you ask when you pray, believe that you receive them, and you will have them. Jesus is teaching us the principle of faith. Say with your mouth and believe in your heart. see Romans 10

• Jesus is teaching us that we can curse things and they will die, if we speak to them and believe. You can curse cancer or tumors in His name and it will shrivel up and die!

These are a few things we can glean from this lesson.




Thanks, JLB

By Charles H. Welch
Fig Tree. The Companion Bible at Judges 9:8-15 says:
The Olive Tree- Israel's religious privileges (Rom. 11).
The Fig Tree- Israel's national privileges (Matt. 21).
The Vine- Israel's spiritual privileges (Isa. 5).

The fig tree appears in one or two passages that have a dispensational bearing. The barren fig tree, Matthew 21 :18-20, Mark 11:13,14.
"And seeing a fig tree afar off having leaves, He came if haply He might find anything thereon: and when He came to it, He found nothing but leaves; for the time of figs was not yet. And Jesus answered and said unto it, No man eat fruit of thee hereafter for ever. And His disciples heard it" (Mark 11:13,14).
The time of year was a few days before Passover, for the Lord had just ridden into Jerusalem on the ass. The people had cried Hosannah to the Son of David, yet only a few days pass and the same people cry "Away with Him, let Him be crucified". The fig tree often has fruit of two or three years' growth, and elaborate measures are laid down in the Talmud for computing the age of the fruit for tithing purposes. The time of figs had not yet come, and so if the Lord went seeking fruit He expected to find some of the last one or two years still hanging on the tree. This particular fig tree was remarkable for its display of leaves, and as leaves and fruit often appeared together, it seemed to give some sort of special promise. It was a fitting symbol of the nation of Israel. Their "hosannahs" proved to be "nothing but leaves", the season for figs had not yet come, and Israel will not. see the Lord they rejected until in the fullness of time they shall again say, "Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord" (Matt. 23:39).
The parable of the fig tree and all the trees (Matt. 24:32, Luke 21:29). The fig tree and its growth is used by the Lord in the great prophetic chapter, Matthew twenty-four.
"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 (margin He) is near, even at the doors" (Matt. 24:32,33).
Luke twenty-one, consistently with the peculiarly Gentile-ward trend of its gospel, adds the reference concerning "the times of the Gentiles" (verse 24) and adds to the fig tree "all the trees" (verse 29). We are therefore instructed to ob serve the movements that will take place in the nation of Israel, but not only so, to observe also the movements that will take place among the Gentiles too. These movements are beginning to take shape before our eyes, and while the hope of the Mystery is unrelated either to the prophecies of Israel or the Gentiles as such, yet seeing that the dispensation of the Mystery must take place in time, and before the hope of Israel is realized, we can say with solemn emphasis that "Now is our salvation nearer than when we believed."
We read in Amos 7:14 that the prophet was "a gatherer of sycomore fruit", and an examination of this claim will yield an important lesson concerning Israel, their sufferings, and ultimate blessing. The R.V. reads "a dresser of sycomore trees". The LXX uses the word knizo "to scrape, to make to itch, to nettle". It may not seem, at first sight, a subject worthy of such importance as to hold up our exposition, but there is more here than appears on the surface. Theophrastus, the successor of Aristotle, in his History of Plants, tells us that the sycomore fruit "does not ripen till it is rubbed (knizo) with iron combs, after which rubbing it ripens in four days". Hasselquist, a Swedish naturalist, says: "It buds the latter end of March, and the fruit ripens in the beginning of June; it is wounded and cut by the inhabitants at the time it buds, for without this precaution, they say, it will never bear fruit."
The Fig, the Vine and the Olive are employed to set forth the peculiar privileges of Israel (Judges 9:8-13), the Fig probably stands for Israel's national privilege. The Sycomore has a leaf like the mulberry (Gk. moron) and fruit like the fig (Gk. sykon), hence the name in the Greek N.T. is sykomoros. The point that Amos seems to make here, and which has a typical teaching, is that Israel, like the sycomore, will not bear ripe fruit apart from great tribulation. Already, we learn from Amos 1:3 that Damascus had "threshed Gilead with threshing instruments of iron", and when we remember that "tribulation" is derived from the Latin tribulum "a threshing sledge for separating grain from the husk, a wooden platform studded with sharp bits of flint and with iron teeth" (Lloyd's Encyclopaedic Dictionary), the figure begins to take a deeper significance.
Further, the Lord says "For, lo, I will command, and I will sift the house of Israel among all nations, like as com is sifted in a sieve, yet shall not the least grain fall upon the earth" (Amos 9:9). Because the word translated "grain" is once translated "one small stone" in 2 Samuel 17:13; some have thought that Amos 9:9 should be translated "not the smallest stone", but this is unnecessary and untrue. It is the very object of sifting to get rid ,of "small stones" and leave the grain behind, and Amos's simile loses all point if the language be changed. In 2 Samuel 17:13 any word meaning "a small particle" would have done quite as well as "one small stone". Further, the word translated "grain" is the Hebrew tseror, from tsarar "to vex", "to be in a strait", "narrow", and is found in Amos 5:12 where it is translated "afflict". The one small "grain" is one that is oppressed and has passed through affliction, yet being one of the elect cannot fall upon the earth and be lost. It will be seen that there are many lessons to be learned from "the fig tree", but we are concerned in this analysis particularly with those that have a dispensational bearing, and must be content with what we have seen.

the first ,........

He made this fig-tree an example to the men of that generation. It was a figure of the doom upon the Jewish church, to which he came seeking fruit, but found none.

__________________
SingPeace

Malachi 3:10 - . . . Test Me, and see if I won't return to you a blessing too vast for you to receive.
To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 10 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

Follow the fig tree and it's leaves and fruit through the bible from cover to cover, and it will define in an ever expanding way, in you, what the words of Jesus, which was spirit and truth, the Father's words, reveal. If you allow the spirit of truth which is in you, to lead you into this all truth.

Pro_5:15 Drink waters out of thine own cistern, and running waters out of thine own well.

Hello WaytoomanyDaves,
I believe one of the things this bit of scripture talks about is in relation to fulfilling God's perfect will in His time,despite the many possible odds. The following I excerpted from Many Are Called;

. Hope this in addition to the previous contributions helps. God Bless you!!

__________________
daghewardmills.org

I believe the story is talking about what happens to those who are unfruitful. As the bible says not all who call me Lord Lord will enter the kingdom of heaven. We are without doubt saved through faith by grace. We then become a new creation. This means there should be a change in us. This change should produce good fruit by the works that God has prepared for us. So it partly symbolises those who claim to be christian but do not change at all and stick to their old ways.

What I used to always have trouble understanding was that it was cursed for not providing fruit when it wasn't in season. That seemed unfair to me. However the fact that the fig tree had leaves means it should have been producing fruit.

There is also the suggestion that it is connected to 1 Kings 4:25

__________________
against tradition simply for tradition. for tradition that has good reason.

I think The Dag pretty well nailed it.

We tend to get very wrapped up in trying to tie stories in the Bible to great, all encompassing entanglements with past and future events or (to get all Biblical and use a 25 cent word), dispensational explanations.

All we truly need to be doing with the Bible is simply reading it for the obvious personal application in our own lives, today. And The Dag showed us that.