Friends: What did the cursed fig tree ever do to Jesus? Let’s discuss. Blessings, Bob

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Spirituality Column #955

March 4, 2025

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Withering Curse

By Bob Walters

“In the morning, as they went along, they saw the fig tree withered from its roots.” – Mark 11:20, said Tuesday morning, of the fig tree Jesus cursed Monday evening

Jesus is much more known for healing things than cursing and destroying things, but here we have Jesus Tuesday morning of the first “Holy Week” with a dead fig tree.

What did the tree do to Him to become “withered from the roots,” i.e., dead?

This is a story / parable that initially mystified me in my early days of Bible study 20 years ago.  But with the pre-Easter season of Lent upon us – Ash Wednesday is this week – let’s go over the ostensibly simple explanation: the fig tree is a metaphor of and for failed Israel. God’s own nation has shunned Jesus, rewritten the holy laws, and in three more days will have Jesus killed by crucifixion.

The fig tree is what Jesus sees as the present – and future – of Israel.

To back up the story by two days, on Sunday Jesus rode into Jerusalem to the rousing Hosanna’s of the people already gathered for that week’s Passover Feast. “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!” (Mark 11:9). Especially excited were the Galileans from the north, where Jesus had occupied most of his three-year ministry.

But Jesus didn’t ride into Jerusalem as a conquering king on a horse; He rode in humbly sitting on a year-old donkey. And before He mounted the donkey, within sight of Jerusalem, Jesus wept loudly for what Israel had become and what He knew would eventually happen to the Holy City.  Israel had not kept the Law and did not even recognize God’s Son. Did Jesus weep for his own pending doom? Perhaps, but Isaiah 53:7 says that later, facing crucifixion, Jesus was “silent, like a lamb led to slaughter.”

God had made Israel His own centuries before.  Now the Son of God Jesus, recognized by some, entered Jerusalem not to save the Jews from the Romans but to save the Jews – and all humanity – from its sin. Jews simply wanted the Romans dead. For all the scripture and prophecy available and studied, Israel failed to see its need for salvation and didn’t even understand its real problem: its sin and distance from God.

That’s what Jesus came to fix and restore as a perfect sacrifice for the Jews and all mankind. Compared with the world’s fallenness, the Romans were merely a “light and momentary trouble” (2 Corinthians 4:17). God’s will was to restore humanity back into eternal relationship with Him in heaven; all Israel could think about was killing Romans.

The Jews would then plot to have Jesus killed: some because He wasn’t the warrior they had hoped for, many because He revealed the corruption of the Pharisees.

The fig tree, then, is a Godly symbol for the unfruitfulness of Israel. A fig tree has leaves and small, inedible figs in the early growing season, as in springtime’s Passover. That indicates edible fruit will come later. Jesus found none of the small figs on the leafy tree, which signaled there would never be edible fruit from that particular tree.

So, the curse levied on the fig tree was a picture of Jesus’s levy of justice on Israel, over which He had wept bitterly on His approach two days prior. We all know that just as God’s mercy is great, God’s righteousness is absolute. Jesus, by His death and resurrection, would fulfil the Law of Israel and save for eternity all who believe in Him.

Jesus didn’t give a fig about the Romans; He came to save us from ourselves.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) notes that Easter is very late this year, April 20.