Mark 11:12-14 NASB
¹²On the next day, when they had left Bethany, He became hungry.
¹³Seeing at a distance a fig tree in leaf, He went to see if perhaps He would find anything on it; and when He came to it, He found nothing but leaves, for it was not the season for figs.
¹⁴He said to it, “May no one ever eat fruit from you again!” And His disciples were listening.
Study
In these verses we read of the Christ, cursing the fruitless fig-tree.
He had a convenient resting-place at Bethany, and therefore He went there to sleep, but his work was to be done in Jerusalem, and so He returned there in the morning.
Apparently He left Bethany without eating breakfast, because He didn’t go far when He became hungry (Mark 11:12).
Finding himself in want of food, He went to a fig-tree, which He saw at some distance, and which being well adorned with green leaves He hoped to find some fruit. But he found nothing but leaves.
He hoped to find some fruit, but there was none.
▪︎ This could mean that He found none, because it was not the season for figs, or it was no good fig-year.
▪︎ But this could also mean that the time of gathering in the figs was near, but it was not yet; so that it could not be that the figs had already been harvested, for the season had not yet arrived, so there should be figs, maybe not yet completely ripened, but still, one might expect to find some fruit.
But this tree was worse than any fig-tree, for there was not so much as one fig to be found upon it, though it was so full of leaves.
The Christ made an example of it, not to the trees, but to the people, of that, and our generation, and therefore cursed it with that curse which is the reverse of the first blessing. All trees were created to be fruitful; But now He said to it, “May no one ever eat fruit from you again!” (Mark 11:14).
Sweetness and good fruit are, in Jotham’s parable, the honour of the fig-tree (Judges 9:11), and its serviceableness therein to man, preferable to the preferment of being promoted over the trees; now to be deprived of that, was a grievous curse.
This was intended to be a type and figure of the doom passed upon the Jewish people, to which he came, seeking fruit, but found none (Luke 13:6-9); and though it was not, according to the doom in the parable, immediately cut down, yet, according to this in the history, blindness and hardness befel them (Romans. 11:8,25), so that they were from henceforth good for nothing.
The disciples heard what sentence Christ passed on this tree, and took notice of it. Woes, as well as blessings, from Christ’s mouth are to be observed and kept in mind.
Twitter: @SchoemakerHarry
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