Jesus had cursed the fig tree the day before because it was not bearing fruit. Today the tree has withered away to its roots (Mk11:20-21). An irony has been noted that this time of the year was not the season for a fig tree to bear fruit. In the Hebrew Scriptures, the fig tree is used as a metaphor for Israel among the prophets (Hos 9:10: Jer 24:1-10; see also 8:13, Micah 4:4).
Morna Hooker has argued, “the incident of the fig tree is a
difficult one. It is the only ‘negative’ miracle in the gospels....The story is
dismissed by some commentators as out of character for Jesus....Whatever its origins...the
story is certainly used symbolically by Mark and probably had this symbolic
significance from the beginning. The fig tree represents Israel, which has
failed to produce the appropriate fruits when her Messiah looked for them” (The
Gospel According to Saint Mark, 261).
Raymond Brown notes, “to curse the tree because it had no
fruit seems to many irrational since, as Mark reminds us, this time just before
Passover was not the season for figs. However, the cursing is similar to the
prophetic actions of the OT whose very peculiarity attracts attention to the
message being symbolically presented (Jer 19:1–2, 10–11; Ezek 12:1–7). The
barren tree represents those Jewish authorities whose failures are illustrated
in the intervening action of cleansing the Temple, which has been made a den of
thieves instead of a house of prayer for all peoples (Jer 7:11; Isa 56:7). In
particular, the chief priests and the scribes seek to put Jesus to death, and
their future punishment is symbolized by the withering of the tree. The
miraculous element in the cursing/withering becomes in 11:22–25 the occasion
for Jesus to give the disciples a lesson in faith and the power of prayer. (The
instruction to the disciples to forgive in order that God may forgive them
resembles a motif that Matt 6:12 places in the Lord’s Prayer.)[1]
N.T
Wright makes this unique observation:
In Mark and
Matthew, Jesus’ Temple-action is closely linked with the cursing of the fig
tree. As has often been remarked, this has the effect of using one acted symbol
to interpret another. In this case, though, the symbol is further interpreted
by a riddling saying:
Whoever says to
this mountain, ‘Be taken up and cast into the
sea’, and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says will come
to pass, it will happen for him.
We have already
commented that ‘this mountain’, spoken in
Jerusalem in the vicinity of the Temple, would naturally refer to the Temple
mount itself. There is, however, a biblical allusion which suggests that the
saying was also a cryptic messianic riddle. Zechariah 1–8 is all about the
return from exile, the restoration of Jerusalem, the return of yhwh to Zion, and the rebuilding of the
Temple; and, not surprisingly, about the coming anointed ones, the priest and
the king. Zerubbabel is the Davidic figure on whom the prophet rests his hopes
for the rebuilding of the Temple, despite all opposition; and, to symbolize
that opposition, he uses the image of the great mountain,
perhaps (as in other passages in Zechariah 1–8) echoing Isaiah 40, which speaks
of the mountains and hills being flattened at
the coming of yhwh:
He said to me,
‘This is the word of yhwh to
Zerubbabel: Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, says yhwh of hosts. What are you, O great mountain? Before Zerubbabel you shall become a
plain; and he shall bring out the top stone amid shouts of “Grace, grace to
it!” ’
I suggest, therefore, that the saying about the mountain has a double thrust. First, it emphasizes that Jesus’ action signified the overthrow of the Temple; second, it pointed to Jesus as the one who would at last do what Zerubbabel was supposed to do, that is, to be the true anointed one who would build the true Temple. Whatever the ‘mountain’ may have signified in Zechariah’s prophecy, it was clearly something that stood in the way of the building of the Temple. Thus, in Jesus’ riddle, (a) the present Temple is seen as in opposition to the true one, (b) the present Temple will be destroyed, to make way for the true one, and (c) Jesus is the true anointed one, who will bring out the top stone of the building and thus complete it. Once again, the Temple-action lays claim to royalty.[2]
[1]
Raymond E. Brown, An Introduction to
the New Testament (New York: Doubleday, 1997), 142–143.
[2] N. T. Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God (Christian Origins and the Question of God; London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1996), 494–495.
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